Rookie Linebacker Curran Has A Unique Background & Heritage

TORONTO — He’s been greeted in his homeland by exuberant relatives, all links in a bloodline that extends back to Liberian royalty.

When he was in high school, he kept a tuxedo in his locker to go from football practice to orchestra recitals.

When his NFL options dissipated and he was in football purgatory, he wrote a book about his life.

When arguably the best defensive player in the Canadian Football League is injured, his team turns to him without question.

So on Sunday, Rennie Curran will get his first CFL start with the Edmonton Eskimos.

Curran just may be the league’s most interesting man. At five-foot-11 and 230 pounds, he will be in the thick of competition on Sunday at Toronto, playing middle linebacker in place of J.C. Sherritt, who is out indefinitely (at least two to six weeks) with a broken thumb.

Sherritt suffered the injury on Aug. 2 against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and had surgery during the bye week.

With that, the door opened for Curran, a third-round NFL draft pick by the Tennessee Titans in 2010 who amassed 298 tackles in three years at the University of Georgia. He’s been in a reduced role to this point in Edmonton, practising behind Sherritt and trying to convince coaches to give him more while playing on special teams, where he has six tackles.

“I just went in every week and prepared like I was the starter. I knew I had to be ready for the opportunity, because in this business you have to be ready for the opportunity through injury — which I hate, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” Curran said. “But at the same time, I have to be ready to go. The team is depending on me, the defence is depending on me, I have to show up and let the team know that they can depend on me and they can trust me.”

When you listen to Curran speak, you hear an old soul inside a 23-year-old body. It likely comes from his parents.

When Rennie was just a glimmer in his parents’ eyes, his mother, Josie, left her native Liberia in 1987 to pursue her master’s degree in nursing, two years before a civll war broke out. His father, Rennie Sr., joined the family a few years later in Snellville, Ga., opened a shoe repair business and worked 12-hour days to get it off of the ground.

“My mom came to the States with $10 in her pocket,” said Curran, who was born in Snellville and only heard about Liberia through his parents as he grew up.

They also taught him that hard work was the only option available to him.

“She’s smart, she definitely has brains,” Curran said of his mother. “She showed me her report cards on many occasions, just to show me that I had no excuse. It was awesome to see what they both accomplished.”

As good an athlete as Curran was turning into, his parents wanted him to be a well-rounded person. That’s where the piano lessons came in.

“My mom had me start playing piano at the age of eight and, from there, I started playing drums and playing in my church and, by the time I got to middle school, I’d played in an orchestra for eight years,” he said.

He was excelling in both fields and juggled both until he was 16. The musical repertoire continued to grow as well, as he picked up the viola.

“I had my tux in my locker and I’d go from practice to the orchestra,” he said. “Once I chose football, I kind of had to let it go. But I still play and music is a big part of my life.”

At the end of his rookie season with the Titans, Curran took his family back to Liberia. It cost him $15,000, but the decision was a no-brainer, he said. What he saw will stick with him for the rest of his life.

“We showed up at my mother’s village and there was 150 people back there, waiting for us, celebrating,” he said.

His grandfather on his mother’s side of the family was a bishop who played a signifiant role in Liberian peace efforts during the war; his great grandfather was a tribal chief who fathered 25 children.

“He had a huge family,” said Curran. “It was about farming and the more people you had, the better. We come from a proud heritage and it was cool to see that in Liberia, to trace my roots.”

As impressive as Curran has been in practice and his limited involvement thus far, Eskimos head coach Kavis Reed said he’s enjoying Curran’s presence off the field as well.

“Rennie is a very cerebral young man, he’s an insightful young man, he is wise beyond his age,” Reed said. “This may seem oxymoronic saying that a 23-year-old is a very sage individual, but he is a very sage individual who brings a lot of confidence to the locker-room. He brings some laughter, but he also brings a lot of wisdom to the locker-room, which again, for his age, is a credit to his experience and how he carries himself.”

When Sherritt is healthy, or at least ready to get back into the game, Curran will return to a special teams role, back to putting in work and paying dues. But while he’s on the field these next few weeks, he’s going to enjoy every minute of playing time.

“I had a lot of ups and downs in my career, but at the end of the day, I’m just still so thankful to be able to do what I love,” he said. “So many people don’t have a job. What do I have to complain about?”

coleary@olearychris