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Giants.com's Michael Eisen sits down with CB R.W. McQuarters
By Michael Eisen, Giants.com

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EAST RUTHERFORD -R.W. McQuarters is going into his third season with the Giants and his 11th in the NFL. He entered the league as a first-round draft choice of the San Francisco 49ers in 1998. McQuarters was traded to Chicago in 2000 and played five seasons for the Bears. He played one season in Detroit before joining the Giants as a free agent prior to the 2006 season.

Q: What were your earliest memories of playing football?
McQuarters: "I was in the fourth grade, so I was about eight or nine. I have played every year ever since then. My memories were playing at the Mabee Center, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is like a YMCA but it is called the Mabee center. I can remember my first day. We didn't have positions yet. We did this drill where two players laid on their back, facing away from each other. I had the ball in my hand and when the whistle blew, I had to get up and try to run a 10-yard span. I was going up against a big guy, like a defensive lineman, and when he hit me he literally spun me around. I was trying to be like a tough a guy. I didn't know why I was doing, because I was new. I started out as a tailback. That is the only position that I played in fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grades. When I got into my sophomore year in high school that is when they moved me to wide receiver and cornerback, but I was a tailback from day one."

Q: Were you on good teams in high school?
McQuarters: Number one in the state (at Washington High School in Tulsa). My sophomore year we made to the first round of the playoffs. Junior year we made it to the second round. We actually should have won the state championship my junior season. We had some guys like Marcus Nash, who played with the Broncos. We had a team full of athletes. There is no way we shouldn't have come home without the state championship, but we didn't. I played basketball throughout high school and we won a state championship my junior year. Ryan Humphrey (who played at Notre Dame and was a first-round draft choice of the Utah Jazz) and Etan Thomas (who played at Syracuse, was a first-round choice and is now with the Washington Wizards) were on my team. I played football, basketball and ran track; I ran the 100, the 200 and the 4X100 relay."

Q: Was football your favorite sport?
McQuarters: "Football and basketball were my two favorites. To this day I would love to go play basketball, but I can't during the offseason because of injury and your job. I have been off the basketball court for probably about six years now. I still may play in like a charity basketball game or something, but it is not hard, all-out. I had to stop playing basketball after my third year in the league, because that is when I realized the importance of the offseason and realizing if I got hurt then it could affect my career. When I retire I am going to be the king of basketball pickup games and tournaments."

Q: Were you a good student? Did you like school as a kid?

McQuarters: "I was a good student. I enjoyed school. I was not a trouble maker, I liked going to school. You got to see your friends. The middle school that I went to was around the corner from my high school, so it seemed like every day after middle school there was a fight. It might have been one of those situations where it was a guy in eighth grade and you get the guy who is coming from high school who is in ninth grade, who technically was in middle school last year, but he went to another middle school a couple of miles away. You knew the guys and they would come back over and try to pick fights just because they were in high school and probably were getting punked by seniors, so they are taking their aggression out on middle school guys."

Q: Did you get into some of those fights?
McQuarters: "Nobody really messed with me. I was just one of those guys who didn't want to start the fight, I wanted to finish it. I wasn't going to pick on anybody, I wasn't a bully, I wasn't that type of guy. But if they messed with any of the younger kids it might happen. Nobody really messed with me because I didn't mess with anybody and they knew I wasn't going to back down from anybody."

Q: Do you have siblings?
McQuarters: "I have two older sisters, one younger sister, and then both of my brothers are younger. One of my brothers is in his freshman year at Oklahoma State."

Q: What was your home life like?
McQuarters: "My parents had problems and got divorced when I was about five or six years old. Both of them have always been there for me. I lived with my mother until I got to about seventh grade. You get to a point in your life when boys need to be raised by men and I think females need to be raised by women. I'm not saying solely; I have both male and female children. But there is only so much a mother can teach a boy and there is only so much a man can teach a female."

Q: So you lived with your mom until the seventh grade and then you lived with your father?
McQuarters: "I moved in with my father, who was about four or five miles away. I lived with my father from that point on until I was able to get into the league and purchase my own place. When I was living with my mother I was in a house with three women, my mother and my two sisters. Living with three women is hard. You don't have a big brother to play with, you don't have a little brother to play with. Everything I wanted to do was outside. But my mother was so strict. She has a real worrying soul. A lot of times she didn't want me to go outside because she couldn't watch me. She didn't want me to be around the corner and getting mixed up with the wrong group. A lot of times I would ask to go around the corner to play basketball and she wouldn't let me. There were times when I would go with my mother and sister grocery shopping and we would pass by guys playing basketball and I would ask, 'Momma can I stay?' and she would be say, 'No, you can't stay.' I was eight or nine or 10 years old and there was nobody to watch me. But I just thought she didn't want me to go play basketball. If they were still playing when we were on our way back, she would let me go play - for 30 minutes or an hour.

"When I moved in with my father, I hated to leave my mother, but she understood that I needed to be with my daddy and I needed to just be around him and I couldn't live with both. He could show me how to be a man. She could teach me to keep your room clean, how to respect a woman, those types of things. My father could teach me the same things, but there are certain things that I needed to hear from my father."

Q: Your name is Robert William. Have you always been called by your initials?
McQuarters: "From the day I was born I was R.W. I think my aunt gave me that name."

Q: Nobody ever called you Robert or Bob?
McQuarters: When I was in college I worked at World Travel Service, a travel agency, and the accounting department was all guys. They used to call me Bob Bill, and they knew I hated it, because Bob is short for Robert and Bill is short for William. Other than that they have always called me R.W. or R-Dub or Dub or R. I always wondered how two initials could get shorter. R - pretty soon I won't have a name."

Q: Did you consider other colleges besides Oklahoma State?
McQuarters: "I was a die hard Sooner fan. I always wanted to play basketball for Billy Tubbs. He was cool, he was a fun coach. From what I saw, even as a young guy, it just seemed like Billy Tubbs coached around the talent that he had. All through middle school and high school I used to wear this OU football shirt, like a half cutoff shirt. I used to wear it under my shoulder pads every game. I went on visits to Oklahoma State, OU and Baylor. Arkansas recruited me late."

Q: If you are such a big OU fan, why you didn't go to school there?
McQuarters: "Mike Gundy, who is the head coach at Oklahoma State now, recruited me heavily. He was the quarterbacks coach at the time. We had a good relationship and I trusted him. At the time Oklahoma State and OU were actually going through coaching changes. OU had hired Howard Schnellenberger. Oklahoma State hired Bob Simmons. It came down to OU and OSU, but the relationship that I had with Mike Gundy pushed me over the top."

Q: Did you have a good time in Stillwater?
McQuarters: "I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. I really enjoyed my time there during the summer. Bob Simmons had us on a four-year graduation plan where you had to take 15 hours the first semester and 15 the second semester. If you didn't get the 30 hours then you had to go to summer school. Even if you got the 30 hours and you wanted to go to summer school that was still fine, too. During the summertime were some of the best times in Stillwater. There is not a whole lot to do. It is a country town, a lot of cows, a lot of land, no mall."

Q: Did your teams beat OU when you were there?
McQuarters: "Yeah, I beat OU. I was there three years (1995-97) because I left school early. I beat them twice out of the three years. The one year that I didn't beat them I didn't play because my leg was broken. That was my sophomore year. When I suited up and played in the game, we were 2-0. And both wins were in Norman."

Q: When did you first think you might play in the NFL?
McQuarters: My freshman year we opened up against Nebraska at home on ESPN. They had a great team. Their D-line had guys like Christian Peter and Grant Wistrom. They beat us 64-21 that game, but I had like six kickoff returns for 100-something yards. After that week I was leading the nation in kickoff returns. Coach Gundy said, 'You keep that up you might be able to lead the country in kickoff returns.' I was like, 'Man this is nationally ranked now, and this is college.' Later on in the year, he was talking about a game that we played and I had a big game and he said, 'You just keep doing what you are doing and just make sure that you do the right things and you'll be in the league in the next three or four years.' That is when the light turned on, probably halfway through my freshman year. I think from that point on that is what I was working toward. That was my goal, to get to the next level.

"Growing up in Tulsa, I was a big time Dallas Cowboy fan, because they are right down the street. I was a huge Cowboys fan. I knew all the names. I always wanted to spike the ball because you couldn't do it high school, you couldn't do it in college, and in the league money wasn't even a factor. It was just playing in the league, scoring a touchdown, spiking the ball, and just being in the NFL. That was my vision as a little kid. That is what I saw as the NFL. I want to play in the NFL, I want to be good like these guys, and I want to score touchdowns and spike the ball like they do. As you get older you realize everybody doesn't make it to the league, you understand that, but that doesn't mean that everybody doesn't want to make it there or everybody doesn't try to make it there. That is what I tried to do. I tried to get to the league so I could spike the ball and be like these other guys."

Q: The first time you scored in a NFL game did you spike the ball?
McQuarters: "Nope, I kept it. That went back to me being a Cowboys fan. I liked to see Emmitt (Smith) score touchdowns and he kept every ball. I think that is a little bit of history, and you can either keep it for history or you are throwing it away for history. The ball was always history. It reminded me that I got to the NFL."

Q: What was your first NFL touchdown?
McQuarters: "Punt return, 72 yards against St. Louis my rookie year. I have a football care of me standing in the end zone doing a little dance. The picture was in the end zone in San Francisco and that was my first NFL touchdown."

Q: Did you graduate in four years?
McQuarters: "No, I left school early (to enter the NFL Draft). I was a broadcast journalism major. I am going to get my degree, most definitely. I told you my little brother is a freshman there. I told him before I left, 'You will not beat me to my degree.' I look at the people that I went to high school with when I was a senior and they have a degree now and that is almost like a slap in the face to me. When my brother got to college I was like, 'Oh no, you will not beat me to my degree.'"

Q: "Is it still a sense of pride to you that you were selected in the first round of the draft?
McQuarters: "Yes. You talk about busts or whatever, and I have been associated with first round busts before, but to me I am not in on that. When people starting talking about all these other guys who went first, a lot of them are from Michigan, Notre Dame, and Florida. Those teams get a lot more looks through television and scouts. Those are the programs that over the years have won national championships and wins. When I got to Oklahoma State, they hadn't had a 10-win season in probably 20 years. You feel like you have to work harder. I think it is more of a respect thing. When you are talking about Oklahoma State now, when it comes to golf we are well-respected. When it comes to basketball, to a certain degree, we are well-respected. Football, we didn't get that national respect."

Q: You have played on both coasts and in the Midwest. What's your favorite region?
McQuarters: "I love Chicago and I love New Jersey. The city, I love New York, too. I might be a little biased toward Chicago because I spent more time there. Soldier Field was just a great atmosphere to play in, like Giants Stadium. I think Giants Stadium is a great atmosphere to play in. Chicago and New York, they have been my two favorites. I like the big cities."

Q: What are the names and ages of your children?
McQuarters: "Robert William McQuarters III is 10. Rylan Wyland McQuarters, he is seven, and then my daughter, my fair lady, her name is Raegan, and she is three. Kids are life's true riches."

Q: You might hold the NFL record for most toiletries in a locker? Why do you have so many?
McQuarters: "Everyone is on me about taking showers all day, but I think it is professional courtesy. I just like to feel clean when I practice. I know I am going to get dirty, I know I am going to get sweaty, but if I am getting ready to go take a shower I want the right shower gel. I think it probably got to the point where I had one bottle of lotion, one deodorant, and one shower gel and then all of a sudden I don't have any lotion, any shower gel, or any deodorant because my teammates were taking them. So I said, 'Let me stock up a little bit. When I did it was like I became CVS or Walgreens. It got to a point where literally I opened up a shower gel and I guarantee you two days later it was gone. I said, 'You don't have to ask me, I'll try to set it out, help yourself, just don't put it in your locker when you are done with it.'"

Q: When you look back on your career are you proud and happy with what you have accomplished in the NFL?

McQuarters: "Most Definitely. I am totally happy with my career, pleased with my career. We all feel like it could be better. We all feel like we wish we could do more. If I could say I made the Pro Bowl every year that's great. If I could say I led the league in interceptions every year that would be great. If I could play in the Super Bowl every year that would be great. But those things don't always happen. It's definitely been a roller coaster ride, but in the end the bottom line speaks the loudest, in my opinion. In the end I am totally happy with my career.

"When I first got to the league I wanted to play 10 years. Then I got in the league and I couldn't look 10 years down the line. This is a different game now. This is a business. Different bullets are flying now and I'm just trying to survive. When I first got to the league I was just trying to survive. You say 10 years just because you get the double digit. I could have played one year and I would have been satisfied - maybe not satisfied, but I would have been happy. Everything happens for a reason and by injury or whatever if I didn't play, I didn't make to 10, right now God bless me because I have been healthy. I still would have been happy if I would have played two years in the league. I was able to fulfill a dream that a lot of people weren't able to do, but at the same time when you are young and you set your goal on something and you actually reach that goal it is a great feeling. I know there is more work that needs to be done and there is always more work that needs to be done, but to set a goal for yourself and to reach that goal to where you are able to set another goal is an honor. It is an honor to play in the league. It is an honor to play one down in the league or one snap. You can play one snap and end your career. You could play one snap and be paralyzed.

"I try not to focus on that. My thing is to just keep playing. That is my attitude, to just keep playing. If it gets to a point where I don't want to play anymore and I don't feel it in my heart and don't feel it then I will do whatever is necessary at that time. For me right now, keep playing, keep playing."