Joe Phillips Speaks: The Other Side of the Story

We’ve had some interesting developments in relation to my Joe Phillips story and my take on how I didn’t buy HBO’s RealSports claim that former Chief Joe Phillips deserted his wife and family.

Over a month after ArrowheadAddict first published my story and take on the situation, Joe Phillips and his sister commented on this site with their side of the story, one that was suspiciously missing from Bryant Gumbel’s HBO piece, newspaper articles, and others. Phillips even recently created his own blog that details the entire story.

In a nutshell, Phillips’s former wife, Cindy Ream-Phillips (kinda funny/ironic her name was Ream, because Joe is getting reamed out pretty good) apparently carefully orchestrated a scenario in which she’d have the leverage over Joe in divorce proceedings. She hired private investigators to follow him around. Later, she’d take these reports from the private dicks, edit them, and send them back for them to sign according to Phillips. She liquidated his assets just over a month after the divorce, and then appeared on HBO to further damage Phillips who was not featured in the story because according to HBO and others he was a fugitive from justice in Oregon for DUI charges, and had deserted his family and went into hiding.

“Cindy’s parents worked as family law mediators in the courthouse of the county Cindy and I moved to. Yes, talk about a railroad job. Move to jurisdiction in which her parents work in the courthouse in a family law, when every ounce of financial or gain or status was beaten out of me after years of football, then construct a circumstance in which (I) was painted as something (I) was not-it took time, two years–then take the money,” Phillips said.

Joe’s side of the story rings true to me. If you go to his blog and read his statements, you’ll find that Cindy had dreams of being in front of the camera again, moved to New York City with the kids, and had a relationship with Sally Jesse Raphael of all people. Picture this, you’re an NFL player, one of the first United Way spokesmen (with the wife at his side…on tv) you pay for the following for her: “Beauty Salon, a personal trainer, full time nannies. plastic surgeons, a professional decorator and a cook”. Not to mention a home on the plaza in KC, law school tuition for her and three attempts at the bar exam (boy did that backfire). Once the football is over and the lights go down…the pads come off and the fans file out of the stadium; his wife didn’t want the fame to end. Well what better way than to move your husband into your parents legal den of wolves in Florida, manipulate the system and use his wallet to pay for building his own coffin, so to speak. Yikes.

Joe claims that once his wife told people he was trying to kill her, he filed for divorce for his own protection. Who could blame him. The funny thing is to me is that even once this entire ordeal was basically over and done with, then she manages to get this story on HBO on a segment about retired players dealing with pain. Sure, Joe had a few DUI’s but so did another former Chief. Why you might ask? Well, to get back on TV and be famous again, even for a short time and to vengefully damage Joe’s character even further to get his disability payments from the NFL. It always kills me how a former wife can be so vengeful and heartless…I mean does she go up to crippled people dancing too? Or someone in a wheelchair? “Hey ironsides…race ya!” Hat tip to Bill Hicks.

So, our friends at Deadspin chimed in on this too So, Windex! I believe I called this one. Sorry I had to get that in. We stick up for our Chiefs around here even if we bash them now and then, they aren’t forgotten.