Recently, Real Sports on HBO did a segment on NFL wives of former players dealing with mental and physical health issues. One of the player/wife features was crazy Joe Phillips; former Chiefs DL who played with Dan Saleaumua and helped the Chiefs make the playoffs 5 of the 6 years he was in Kansas City.Now, much like Osama bin Laden, Phillips is a fugitive from justice and “no one” knows where this 6-5 300+ lb former NFL beast can be found. What is it with tall guys no one can find? Maybe we can call him JoeSama bin Phillips.
Apparently, the rush of the NFL, the pain suffered and the following crash into a boring regular-joe life was too much for Phillips and others to handle.
from Randy Covitz’s story on 7/25/2006 : “Phillips, 43, is a fugitive from justice in Oregon. He has been arrested twice on charges of driving under the influence during the past two years and once for an outstanding bench warrant for failure to comply with the terms of probation stemming from the first DUI in January 2005 in Clackamas County, Ore.
He was on the lam–or “on abscond”–from November 2005 until May 2006, when he was arrested in Portland, Ore. He was transferred from a jail in Portland to Clackamas County, but was set free because of jail overcrowding. Two days before his June 20 arraignment, police picked up Phillips on another DUI charge while driving a motorcycle in Lincoln City, Ore.
Phillips was released pending a hearing and was to appear in court June 30 in Clackamas County. He never showed. And he’s been missing ever since.”
Phillips is a guy who everyone thought had “it all figured out.” Armed with a law degree and a stockbroker’s license…he would workout mornings in the off-season and head to the law office in a suit for the rest of the day. His wife, also a lawyer, and he appeared in commercials for the United Way (one of the first in the NFL) and participated in philanthropic activities in Kansas City.
“A downward spiral…”
“Phillips played his last game with the Chiefs on Jan. 4, 1998, a bitter 14-10 loss to the Denver Broncos in an AFC playoff game at Arrowhead. Phillips was so distraught that he drove home in full pads and uniform.
He spent 1998 with the St. Louis Rams and 1999 with the Minnesota Vikings before calling it a career. And then, despite all the years of preparation, Phillips’ life plan began to change.”
His wife, Cynthia, claims he “relapsed” into drugs and alcohol, but according the the article, no Chiefs ever saw him take a drink or drug. Also, allegations surfaced of domestic abuse between the two.
But wait a second, HBO portrayed Phillips as a guy who “snapped”, slammed some drink, beat his (ex)wife’s ass and split for no reason. Something I dug up online paints a slightly different picture.
Hat tip to Chiefs Planet’s Message Boards-In a comment dated 1-24-08, a person claiming to be Joe Phillips’s sister wrote the following:
“As Joe Phillips’ sister, I would like to make a few statements.
Cindy Ream-Phillips saw my brother less than a month ago in a Florida court. Real Sports was well-aware of this fact, filming this court date as well as one in the fall. In fact, the litigation has been ongoing between Joe and Cindy, and they have, either in-person or through representation, been in the same room numerous times over the past six years: three times since September alone.
Cindy left their marriage a wealthy woman; she took at least 1/2 the marital assets. She also defied a court order and took sole control of the children’s substantial trust accounts.
During the divorce and for at least a year after, Joe submitted willingly to random testing. He never tested positive for anything.
Joe is living on disability from the NFL. He has been consistently re-evaulated and the result is the same: The damage to his body is among the worst the physicians have seen. He is in constant pain.
While Joe is behind in child support, that only occurred when he ceased to be updated as to the children’s trust accounts.
In addition, child support should have been adjusted long ago due to Joe’s disability, Cindy’s income, and Ashley’s majority. However, Cindy continues to insist on the original amount, which insures that Joe will be forever behind in payments.
Cindy’s statements of abuse are unsubstantiated and they were not deemed valid in the original divorce decree. Joe did not abandon his children; he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in court fees and visitation costs. He did not abandon Cindy; If a person is unhappy in a marriage, they have the right to leave.
It is not hard to imagine how the pain, the lies, and most of all the lack of contact with a person’s children might drive him to despair. My brother is not perfect, but he is not what Cindy alleges.
There is much more to this, but I assume this is enough.”
This “information” was missing from the HBO report, they said no one had seen or heard from Joe in years…when in fact, they had allegedly filmed him in the courtroom(s) but left that detail out for the dramatic effect.
Cynthia’s story on HBO seemed a little too pat for me when I watched it the first time. Vague details about why he left…a generic claim of abuse that was deemed unsubstantiated, and just a “poor, poor me” type of a story. After watching, I really felt like the story was 1 sided despite his up-and-leaving. Just because someone leaves their wife, doesn’t mean they are out of their mind.
What was more likely to me is…he moved his family to warm, sunny, income tax-free Florida and his wife started nagging him. “Now what Joe, now what Joe, now what Joe, now what Joe? What are we going to do to stay rich and get richer? Hmmm?”
“Let open a law firm, lets open a law firm, lets open a law firm!!!”
“…when are you going to get off your ass Joe?!? Huh?!? I don’t give a fuck if your knees hurt…Mommy needs new shit to wear around and a convertible!” That’s enough to make anyone reach for the Jack and Coke. (pun intended)
Joe might have snapped after all that. Destroy your body for 10 years in the NFL, have fans screaming like maniacs each time you run on the field. All to finally try and get some peace and quiet in Florida…and your wife won’t STFU. You are aching each day, but you have millions of dollars so you buy some toys…no happiness. You try to take it easy, but you need that rush again…so you drink one weekend…do some drugs that you’ve spared yourself from and the instant you realize that you’ll never get that high back again; crash of ego and id are inevitable. The Joe we know had to go. He’s gone forever. Searching.
I worked with a former DL very recently and even attended a Seattle Seahawks game with him, his first since retiring from the NFL in ‘96 . He couldn’t even watch the game, he went inside and hung out at the beer garden the whole game. I asked him if it was tough…and he told me he couldn’t even put it into words.
The lack of adulation, coupled with nagging pains and wives and the boredom of Regular JoeLand where most of us reside…proved to be too much.
Joe is probably somewhere up in Oregon, (a good place to hide out if you don’t want anyone to know what you’re up to) riding his Harley up and down the hilly back-roads, between lines of fir trees; maybe a little buzzed and half lost. No one knows who he is, or who he used to be; or who he is now or what he is looking for. He doesn’t know what he is looking for. All he knows is that he once had it all.
He’s kinda like Michael Jackson- He’s white… instead of the moonwalk it was the rip move…and instead of pre-pubescent boys…its strong drink and maybe some drugs.
Empathize with Joe, let him do anything to ease the pain of being a broken Gladiator.
He’s not JoeSama or Joe Phillips anymore…he’s Hunter S. Thompson!
Riding the crest on a high and beautiful wave!
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well written. im glad someone came out to try to right some wrongs that might have been said about joe. i said before “i kinda like this guy” now i can drop the “kinda” glad you wrote this. everyone knows that there’s 2 sides to every story. joe’s side does need told. i hope one day he’ll be able to tell it
Nice Article! I am always reminded when I see these “NFL” beasts that they ride high only for a little while, then must come down to earth. I wish Phillips the best!
Usually once out of the NFL they have a hard time dealing with being an average person again. I don’t hate them for getting all the money they can. I personally know Duane Clemons (DE) and after football, since he made a good living, he is doing OK, but it is always weird to go out with him, and see this behemoth of a man just being one of the regulars. He attracts a lot of attention. We went to a “gentleman’s club” in Vegas for a bachelor party and everyone stares at him, but can’t figure out who he is. (Duane Clemons is orginally from Riverside, CA). I just laugh. He is doing well, but doesn’t get all the perks anymore. He is a really cool cat by the way.
Did you know that every NFL player gets a “player’s card” and when they are in town for a game, they use the card at restaurants and don’t have to wait in line. When the Chiefs played the 49ers (The Year Tony G went out of bounds and hit that camera man who turned out to have a brain tumor) we went to the Elephant Bar and the wait was three hours. With Duane, he showed the card and we were sat right away. I don’t know what this has to do with the post, but it is kinda cool. NFL players get a lot of perks and feel invincible when they are playing. They lose the attention afterwards and it is difficult.
Thanks guys!
I can’t help but wonder if maybe post-concussion syndrome plays a role in some of this behavior as well. Mike Webster, the former Steelers and Chiefs center, exhibited a range of bizarre transient behavior, as well as financial problems, after leaving the NFL, very similar in some respects to what is described with Phillips. Given that Phillips played most of his career in an era where concussions were apparently very frequent but frequently undiagnosed, I wonder if that might be a cause.
In any case, divorces are often messy, bitter processes (even when people try to keep it amicable), there are always two sides to every story, and I don’t think that any of us can really know what happened between Joe and Cindy Phillips and it’s probably best not to speculate or take sides until both sides of the story do come out.
That said, about 50+% of shows that appear on Real Sports are fluff pieces or hatchet jobs. Their journalistic integrity is pretty close to zero…right down there with Dateline.
I am his sister; thanks for posting this.
I was a friend of Joe’s at Oregon State. I was thinking of him today and did a google serach. I find this story and am saddened.
He is a kind person at heart. I hope the best for him.
Bill in Keizer OR
Thanks for not taking the distortions of my former wife as truth. The entire idea that i abandones those children is a lie. I did everything possible to save the family I had and the relationship I had with my children. I left my friends, contacts and my job at McDowell Rice to move closer to Cindy’s parents as she wanted. (we moved ten miles away from them)after all they had lived with us, during my fiootball das, for times extending up to a full calender year. I battended maritial counseling for 10 nmonths by two different counselors. Ifought forover a yesar andhalf against allgations of abuse and drug abuse. Allegations which did not begin until Cindy and I decided to divorce. I went to so far as to have myself tested for drugs and alcohol and even allow cindy to schedule the tests-in order to counter her baseless claims. I turned my head the other way while cindy blatantly disregardee our agreement to keep our parents-mostly hers-out of our relationship so our family could finally form. I even asked her if i could go to portland-my home town-and say good bye to my dieing 91 year old grandmother-cindy replied “NO” she wouls nor allow it and if I did travel to portland to say goodbye to my grandmother rosie cindy would see it as a kind of action as evidence of me not being committed to the marriage. well guess what the entire period this agreement was in place cindy was seeing andcommunicating with her parents–it came to a head when one of the minor children told me they were going to cindy’s parents for an easter egg hunt-i had not been told or consulted-I asked cindy to explain, i asked her parents to please speak with me-instead cindy loaded th kinds in the van I begged her not to go but shew did anyway–asked hern what this meant for us and she said yes but her parents were “different then mine”
I continued to fight cindy’s alleations of instability and drug use and was diagnosed only with chronic pain and depression due to the breaking up of my marital relationship. I continued to work on cindy and my marriage until it came to my attention she was telling people I was threatening to kill her. I knew that cindy was either unstable or executing a plan to gain the upper hand in a divorce involving a former NFL Player. I was advised by multiple counselors that I needed to file for divorce from Cindy for my own protection–her lies had grown and been so well developed and or hestrated uninformed people mught believe them. It wa and is my belief cindy was reeiving advice from attorney’s and her family law mediator parents–whom both worked in the court house where the divorce took place–what a railroads job-wait to the end of a football career, pretend to be unhappy, have your generous accommodating husband move to a place your parents work in the family law division create a kind of fable about abuse etc… and make off with a lions share of the money and the children-smells kind of bad
yes cindy transfered 2 million dollars out of joint accounts to her private accounts-most of which is still unaccounted for-I spent over a year and hundreds of thousnads fighting to see my children-I was determined not to allow her and her lies to prevail–remember no allegations of abuse were made until the divorce-and these were not the kind of people to allow abuse to gooon-they are a family a PHDs-# lawyers-2 and cindy had access to all the money we had–she had a business a personal trainer, nannies for the kids, a television show-and beleive me if people saw us together she would not have been seen as ythe abused one.
CINDY LEFT FLORIDA FIRST. I was seeing the children 3-5 times per week at there scchool and at my home in floeida-cindy chose to use ashley0our oldest daughter as leverage to move all the children to New york. Fot two yeards i flew back and fgorth tonew york-stayed in hotels and saw my childtren. I flew the children across counrty 6 ntimes to spend summers holidays and vacations with my family as the children had had little time with my family. I exhausted my financial and emotional resources as during visitations the same unfounded allegations of drugs and alcohol were made. I continued testing to protect myself.
finall y in june of 2004 iwa sinformed CINDY WITHOUT CONSULTING OR INFORMING ME IN ANYWAY WAS MOVEING THE CHILDREN TO RURAL SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA-even though shepurchsed th house in october of 2003 three and had made multiple tripsa preparing to moveI WAS SHUT OUT ANBD NOT CONSULTED. Since that ime I have no information about my children and there well being and I had to bring legal action just to get medical bills.
I traveled to drop my children off in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004–again I face distortions about me and my interaction with my children-for example-Cindy had taken my luggage from the airport without muyy permission and I HAD TO PHONE THE POLICE-insteads he alleged she had to call the police-she hung up on multiple times as i tried to tell her of our travel plans from seattle to Pittsburgh–she nthe n accused me of not mvcommunicating and trying not return the children even though i flew three thousnadx miles in her direction to bring them to her
In september of 2004 $277,000 was withdrawn from our daughter Ashleys Uniform transfwer to minors acr acocounbt. the account governed by the laws of New york required the beneficiary-ashley -be 21 years of age to receive her mopney and that the custodian(whom was still cindy as she refused to transfer the funds in accordance with a court order)must trransfer to asheley. Ashley was only 18 and she and hwer morgwe maintained ashley withdrew the money after ashleys 18th birthday–in frustration I suspendend support payments–I was relying on that college money to have a chance to talk to Ashley-she had been used by cINDY AS A TOOL IN THE DIVORCE-CINDY REFUSED TO MAKE HER AVAILABLE TO COUNSELORS–IT WAS HORRIBLE WHAT SHE WAS PUT THROUGH–TRAGICALLY i HAVE BEEN TO COURT THREE TIMES TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH aSHLEY AND GET TO THE TRUTH-THEY HAVE BEEN UNSUCCESSFULL-SO i HAVE NOT OPPOSED THE TAKING OF HALF MY DIABILITY PAYMETNS AS SUPPORT AND i WILL PAY THE ARREARAGE OF SUPPORT OUT OF MY PENSION. It is important for me to tell chiefs fans I have been involved in a dispute concerning my ability to communicate with all my children and there futures and the coolege money I saved for them while playing-
Please I am not lost-I am not what my ex would characterize me to be-I am the same generous caring person I have alwaysz been–I have struggled to find away to deal with chronic physical pain and the horrible emotional pain of the betrayal I went through at the end of my football career.
Please chiefs fans beleive me when I say this stuff is just the tip of the iceberg nad I only say it publicly because I berleive my children do not deserve to be told there father abandoned them. I have boxes of documents to show them how hard I fought and how misguided cindy’s approach has been.
thanks seeing through the distortions and manipulations-I was taught to keep to ones self about matters like this-what good can come from me telling about Cindy’s actions–I have kept to myself to protect the children–children will only feel as good about themselves as they feel about each parent.
thank you,
joe phillips
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it all about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table
Holy $hi+.
You’re welcome Joe. Ol Crane Damage knows bullshit when he smells it.
Also, Joe…don’t kick my ass for the drink/drug/lost stuff, most was just speculation for dramatic effect. and I’m glad I got your story out there. We as Chiefs fans got your back dude. Hope it all works out for you in the end.
Great blog big brother! It is really neat you got both sides of the story, and it came together really well! Plus, Joe commented himself and that itself is awesome!
thanks-hey-love the hunter thompson thing-believe me I am no angel but I am a pretty good man —GO Chiefs!
Joe Phillips
One last thincheck out my blog–www.JoePhillipsFootball.blogspot.com–pass it on-I have just started it
Joe will you please email arrowheadaddict@gmail.com so we can verify that it is really you. We’d like to do an update of this story but want to make sure we’re not dealing with an impostor…etc. Thanks
I HAVE KNOWN JOE A LONG TIME AND IF YOU BELIVE THE THINGS SOME HAVE SAID ABOUT HIM U DONT KNOW HIM YOUR LOSS I DO MY GAIN STEVE DRURY360 356 5657
Brilliant work here Crane, you have some serious talent. Keep it coming, it was a pleasure to read. Maybe some good for Joe and his kids can come from some animated Chiefs fans supporting Joe.
I kno his kids and they r very kind.I go to school with his oldest son. And someday wish to meet him personally