I spent the first morning of 2019 binge watching old episodes of an ’80s sitcom. It was a show that had it all: A theme song sung by Alan Thicke, a precocious child star ... and a laugh track.

Why did I start my year out with this trip down memory lane? I blame Marcellus Wiley.

These days, Wiley is a host for Speak for Yourself on Fox Sports. But back in the ’80s, he was just a kid growing up in Compton and South Central L.A.

"Before it became a song or an album — or before it became a movie — it was just life or death," Wiley says. "I had uncles who used to be gang members, and I saw how they were respected and feared in the streets. But then I saw them come in the house. And I saw the tears. And I saw the weakness. They didn’t know how this was going to end. And, unfortunately, two were murdered, and one committed suicide."

Wiley didn’t want that life. But to avoid it, he had to know what not to wear, what not to say, what streets to avoid.

"I just hated that," he says. "To know those things was going to help me survive, but it wasn't going to help me thrive in life. I wasn't going to leave the neighborhood and set up my family and get generational wealth by knowing, ‘What does a Raider hat really mean in the 'hood?’ "

The idea that there was a different life outside the 'hood — that there was such a thing as generational wealth — Wiley learned about that by watching TV.

"My favorite was Diff’rent Strokes," he says. "That told me a lot. It told me that there is a better place — there is a different place."

For eight seasons starting in 1978, Diff’rent Strokes followed the lives of two orphaned boys from Harlem who were adopted by their mother’s former employer.

"But I didn’t see the path that connected to me," Wiley says. "Like, I didn’t see how affluence was going to be attained by me."

There was one feature of the family’s penthouse in Manhattan that really stuck out for Wiley: the circular staircase in the kitchen.

"I always told myself, ‘When I make it, if I make it, I'm gonna get me a circular stairwell.’ It was just the thing that I wanted."

Wiley knew there was no rich white man coming to adopt him. He’d have to find a way to take himself — and his family — out of the 'hood.

Luckily, when he was 8, Wiley found football. And, just like schoolwork, it was something that came naturally.

"You give me the ball, I was just gonna run circles around every other 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-year-old — scoring four, five touchdowns a game," he remembers. "It was simple."

Wiley playing with the Buffalo Bills in 1998 (Getty Images/Todd Warshaw)

High School And Football

Wiley knew that a career in the NFL could get him to where he wanted to go. But first, he had to get to college.

Wiley started at Westchester High, a public school with a great football program. He hoped that would be enough to attract the attention of college scouts. But by the end of his sophomore year, he had doubts.

"Lot of people were underachieving based on how good they were," Wiley says. "All-state, All-American players, but going to community colleges — and I just was, like, ‘That can't be me.’ I was too responsible for my family in terms of getting us out of the neighborhood. So I just couldn't underachieve."

So Wiley transferred to a private school: Saint Monica’s in Santa Monica. To get there every day, he’d catch a ride with his mother, who worked at the post office. She’d drop him off at the front gate by 5:47 every morning so that she could get to work by 6:00.

Wiley would set himself up near the stairs by the gym. He’d sprawl out on an old sleeping bag to finish his homework.

"Your thoughts wander to good places when you're on campus but you're not with your peers," Wiley says. "You're not with your classmates. You're not with your teammates. You're just, kinda, thinking, ‘What's next in life?’ "

But Wiley's plan hit some snags. First, there were his knees. He was in constant pain.

Then, the coach that had recruited Wiley to come to St. Monica’s left for another school and took most of the team with him. Marcellus thought about leaving, too. But his mother wouldn’t hear of it.

"She was like, ‘You are not going to three high schools in four years. You're not that kid.’ And she was right."

So Marcellus stayed at Saint Monica’s for his senior year.

"And it was pretty disturbing," Wiley says. "Because we were sorry as hell. We were the worst team. We were 0–10 on the field. Not the best way to get recruited. But it all worked out."

It worked out, in part, because of all those long mornings Wiley spent sprawled out on that sleeping bag by the stairs to the gym. He went from being a good student to being a very good student — one good enough to get recruited by a university not too far from that Manhattan penthouse on TV.

Columbia

"The first time I heard of it, I actually saw it — it was on my coach's shorts," Wiley remembers. "I just noticed the colors at first. I was like, ‘Coach, what's Columbia?’ And he's like, ‘Oh, that's where I went to college.’ I was like, ‘Yeah?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, it's an Ivy League school back East.’ "

At the time, “Ivy League” only meant one thing to Marcellus Wiley. Those were the schools on the sweaters worn by Bill Cosby on the Cosby Show.

"So I was like, ‘Oh, so it's like Harvard, Yale, Princeton?’ He was like, ‘Yeah. Trust me — it's the worst football program in the country. Don't even think about going there. But it's an amazing school.’ "

Only a year earlier, Columbia University had finally broken “The Streak,” the longest losing streak in NCAA Division I history: 44 losses in a row.

Wiley was being recruited by UCLA and UC Berkeley. But he found himself drawn to Columbia. If his NFL dreams didn’t work out, he knew a degree from an Ivy would open a lot of doors.

So, in the summer of 1992, Marcellus Wiley went to Columbia. But the Marcellus who left L.A. wasn’t the same as the one who arrived in New York.

"So in the 'hood, I was the nerd," Wiley says. "I was the MVP. I was the nice dude. I get to Columbia — I'm the big, bad, black dude from Compton that just plays football. And I was like, ‘Whoa. That was a switch. I'm no different. But the backdrop changed.’ "

Life As A Lion

Just as Wiley had been introduced to life in a Manhattan penthouse through TV, his classmates — some of whom arrived on campus via helicopter — had been introduced to life in Compton and South Central through the music of NWA and the movie Boyz n the Hood. They were fascinated by Wiley. They loved hearing his story of dodging bullets during a football game. But they didn't love the music he played at all hours of the night.