Adams, Kennedy like to keep things loose, but on the field, these guys are all business

Tackles: PSU's Adams, Kennedy have serious plans

   This couldn't be good, and Zack Mills knew it.

Anthony Adams was running toward him, carrying a microphone. And a television cameraman was in tow.

"A couple questions for you, Zack," Adams yelled to his teammate at Penn State's media day last Saturday.

The Lions' free-spirited defensive tackle asked Mills, their quarterback, something about his hair, his parentage and what was going through his mind during the comeback against Ohio State last year.

"I was trying to do it for Spice," Mills said, using Adams' nickname.

"You weren't thinking about me," Adams said, "because it wasn't practice."

"No, I was. You don't remember: One time I was running on (the field) and you were running off. You got all pumped up and you head-butted me. So I was trying to get it so I wasn't head-butted."

The mike passed to Mills.

"I got one question," he said to Adams. "I heard you're known around the team as the guy to rap. I was wondering if you could bust out a few lines for the people back home."

And then Adams, who in the course of his career has invented a rap alter ego known as Goldie, launched into some verse.

"I'm Spice, I'm Goldie," he sang at one point. "Hug me, love me."

Adams is "all-the-time funny," according to Jimmy Kennedy, his friend and the more celebrated part of PSU's tackle tandem. The funniest guy on the team. Now he would like very much to see his work and that of his teammates taken seriously. They all would, after the first back-to-back losing seasons of Joe Paterno's career.

That will take some doing on defense, seeing as the Lions finished dead last in the Big Ten (and 100th among the nation's 115 Division I-A teams) against the rush last year, allowing 206.2 yards a game, and were 98th in the nation in total defense (443.0 yards a game).

Kennedy is taken seriously, no doubt. Despite modest statistics last year (51 tackles, 1 sacks), he has made four preseason All-America teams, and his name appears on the checklists for the Nagurski Award, given to the nation's top defensive player, and the Lombardi Award, which goes to the top lineman in the country.

And he seems to take himself seriously, too.

"I believe I can win all the awards I'm up for," he said. "I don't feel there's another defensive tackle out there in the nation better than me. It's just a matter of going out and proving that to everyone else."

Manheim Township graduate Bob Brandt, a starting offensive tackle for Indiana, said Kennedy was the finest defensive tackle in the Big Ten last year, when he was a first-team all-leaguer and for a time pondered turning pro. This year he is listed as the country's sixth-best NFL prospect by The War Room, a scouting service that publicizes its rankings in The Sporting News.

And there was this in Sports Illustrated from an anonymous opposing coach: "(Kennedy) moves around very well. They slant him so he doesn't get doubled, but I don't think you can block him one-on-one."

The 6-foot-5 Kennedy is primed for a big year, having pared his weight down to 316 pounds, with plans to lose six more in preseason drills. He played at between 335 and 340 last year, and was at 325 in the spring.

"He's lost all this weight," Adams said. "All of a sudden this guy goes out and buys every color tank top you can imagine. .... Last year this time he had three shirts on."

"He's just mad because my body fat is lower than his," said Kennedy, who on occasion refers to the 6-foot, 293-pound Adams as "Mini-Me."

The two fifth-year seniors were drawn to one another when both were scout-team fodder as freshmen in 1998. Maybe it was because both are city boys: Adams is from Detroit, Kennedy from Yonkers, N.Y. Maybe, Kennedy said, it was something more.

"There was one point where he was nervous and I was nervous, because we were both competitors and we both have the same talent level," he said. "It's just like, "All right, who's going to start? If he messes up, I'm going to start. If I mess up, he's going to start.' ... Freshman year we always used to discuss how we're going to take this game over and change Penn State from Linebacker U. to D-Line U. We're working on that still."

Kennedy cracked the lineup midway through the '99 season and hasn't been dislodged since. Adams became a starter a year later, but has always been in the middle of things otherwise. He plays Santa at the team's Christmas party and pulls pranks constantly (loosening the lid on the pepper shaker before trainer George Salvaterra, a pepper devotee, uses it at mealtime; donning the clothes of conditioning coach John Thomas and imitating him as his teammates lift, etc.).

Adams also is the defender of the white "S" that is stitched into the blue carpeting in the PSU locker room. Anybody walks across that, they owe him 10 push-ups. That includes the brother of defensive line coach Larry Johnson Sr. And it includes a guy who delivered Chinese food one day.

"He did his 10 and he never came back -- ever," Adams said.

But the best thing he has done is give birth to Goldie.

"Goldie is a pimp, and Anthony Adams thinks he is," Kennedy said. "He puts the little suits on and the fake teeth (one of which is gold) in, he dresses like a pimp and starts rapping.

"If you see him dressed as Goldie you'd probably think he was drunk, but he doesn't drink. It's just like, "Wow, where did this come from?'"

Adams somehow picked up his nickname of Spice in high school because there were too many Anthonys on his team and he wore braids one day. He also wouldn't mind being known as "Big Slash," if only the coaches would use him at running back, as they did in the Blue-White Game. (To everyone's joy -- his in particular -- he scored a touchdown on his lone carry.)

And for a couple days this past spring, he wouldn't have minded being Jimmy Kennedy. Kennedy, named to the Playboy All-America team, was invited on a trip by the magazine. Only he couldn't go; graduation was the same weekend.

"I said, "Let me be Jimmy for just a couple days,'" Adams said. "I would have represented Jimmy well."

"I told him, "Take the jersey and go have some fun,'" Kennedy said.

Didn't happen. Still, Adams would like everyone to hug him, love him.

And take him seriously. Especially that.