When Kevin Dyson was 12 years old, he made a promise to his mother, Susan, who was working long hours and raising four kids alone. "Someday, when I'm a pro basketball player, I'm going to buy you a house," he told her.
Susan, a bank teller who was barely making ends meet, returned the next day with a list of the astronomical odds of someone becoming a professional football, basketball or baseball player. She showed them to Kevin and taped them to the refrigerator as a daily reminder. Education was his ticket, she told him; the odds of him becoming a professional athlete were nothing to bank on.
As it turned out, not only did Susan's brood produce a professional athlete, it produced two of them, both football players. As if that weren't enough of beating the odds, not one of her boys played in the Super Bowl, but come Sunday two of them will have played in the world's biggest game a total of three times.
Andre, the youngest of her three sons, will play in Super Bowl XL Sunday in Detroit, starting at cornerback for the Seattle Seahawks. Kevin, the oldest of her children, played in the 2000 Super Bowl as a starting wide receiver for the Tennessee Titans and then played in the 2003 Super Bowl for the Carolina Panthers.
"What are the odds?" Susan asked Andre immediately after the Seahawks' Super Bowl-clinching win over Carolina in Seattle a week ago.
The Dysons are only the fourth set of brothers to play in the Super Bowl, along with Tiki and Ronde Barber, Bruce and Clay Matthews, and Shannon and Sterling Sharpe.
"How many families get to go to three Super Bowls in six years?" says Andre.
The first time Susan walked into Atlanta's Georgia Dome with her sons just a few days before Kevin's first appearance in the Super Bowl there, she broke down into tears.
"Mom, you gonna be all right?" the boys asked her.
The Dysons beat the odds on that refrigerator and then some, and they revere their mother for helping them to do so. Andre gave his mother a surprise gift on her 50th birthday last fall: A red Jaguar. A few years ago, Kevin bought her a house.
"We owe her a lot," says Kevin. "She sacrificed a lot. I saw that. Money was tight. We weren't the norm — people around us had a lot more than we had. I was in high school before we got a microwave."
"She's done everything," says Andre. "She was a single parent who taught us wrong from right. She did a great job of raising four kids by herself. It was difficult. I would never want to let my mom down. She never asked for anything, never wants anything. This (the Jag) is something I wanted to do."
Susan divorced her husband Steve Dyson when Kevin was a little boy. Steve, a football player at Utah State in the '70s, saw little of the family after that. Susan (she went by Susan Hall at the time) raised Kevin, Patrick, Andre and Stefani in a small house in Clearfield.
She took a job as a teller at Key Bank (and during the next 20 years worked her way up to area manager). She was usually gone by the time the children awoke each morning, and she didn't return until dinnertime. For a time, she even attended night school in Salt Lake City to complete a degree. The kids learned to be independent. They had to get themselves up for school and get ready for the day. They cooked and cleaned the house. They took care of each other.
"We didn't have a lot of stuff," says Andre. "We didn't have the nice clothes. We didn't always have Christmas, and when we did it wasn't a big Christmas. We all had to get jobs as early as we could."
"I always had a job and we lived within our means and I was honest with them about what I could afford," Susan says. "One would get a bike and it might take four years to get them all bikes. I didn't let what other people had affect us. (At the bank) I saw people struggle with that all the time."
To this day, despite the millions they've earned in the NFL, Kevin and Andre, who both earned college degrees, don't live lavish lifestyles, as many pro athletes do. Before he bought his first house, which he could easily afford, Andre called his mom to ask her, "Do you think I can afford this?"
"Everyone calls me cheap," says Andre. "I'm not scared to admit it. Mom has to tell me to buy things. I wouldn't want to be raised any other way. You learn things that way."
The kids were all athletic. At Clearfield High, Stefani played basketball and soccer. The boys all won football scholarships to the University of Utah, where they became fixtures in the starting lineup. The Titans made Kevin the 16th pick of the 1998 NFL draft, the second-highest pick in the history of the school. (Alex Smith was No. 1 last spring.) Three years later the Titans made Andre the 60th pick of the draft.
Patrick, the enigma of the family and, some say, the most athletically gifted, originally had to walk on at Utah after skipping his senior year of high school football. He started as a defensive back for the Utes and then played in the Arena League for a year in Florida. Now 28, he is unemployed and lives in Clearfield with his wife and two children. Stefani, 27, is serving in the Navy, stationed in Seattle.
After a series of injuries, Kevin, who lives in Tennessee with his wife and two children, has retired from football at the age of 30 and is trying to break into the coaching profession.
Kevin is a part of NFL lore, having been a central figure in two of the most famous plays in league history. The Titans found themselves trailing the Buffalo Bills 16-15 with 16 seconds left in a 2000 playoff game in Nashville after the Bills kicked a late field goal. The Titans' Lorenzo Neal fielded the ensuing kickoff, handed off to Frank Wycheck, who threw a pass across the field to Dyson, who then ran 75 yards for the game-winning touchdown in one of the most improbable trick plays in history. It has become known as the Music City Miracle.
The Titans went on to beat Indianapolis and Jacksonville to advance to Super Bowl XXXIV against the St. Louis Rams in what many consider to be the greatest Super Bowl ever played. Again, Dyson figured in a famous play. After the Rams took a 23-16 lead with 1:54 left in the game, the Titans marched steadily downfield. Dyson, who had only one catch for nine yards in the first 58 minutes of the game, caught three passes for 32 yards on the final drive. His 16-yard reception moved the Titans to the 10-yard line with just six seconds left and no timeouts.
On the game's climactic play, quarterback Steve McNair completed a pass to Dyson slanting across the middle, but the Rams' Mike Jones tackled him at the 1-yard line to end the game. The play has been played and replayed on TV since then, and it was even mentioned in the movie "Castaway." It became known as The Tackle.
In the 3 1/2 months after the Super Bowl, Dyson watched the replay only once — alone in a coach's office the day after the game. When the Titans were shown a highlight tape of that season, Dyson lowered his head and refused to watch when that play was shown. Dyson finally watched the play again after Sporting News flew him and Jones to St. Louis to give a blow-by-blow account of it.
"I still get asked about those two plays all the time," says Dyson.
After the Super Bowl season, which concluded Dyson's second year in the league, his career was hampered by a series of injuries. He played in only two games the following season. He rebounded the next two seasons, catching a total of 95 passes, but injuries to his knee, Achilles tendon and hamstring all required surgery to repair.
He signed with Carolina for the 2003 season — which ended with another narrow Super Bowl loss — but Dyson played in only one regular-season game. His play in the playoffs was largely limited to special teams. He signed with San Diego for the 2004 season but was unable to play because of injuries. He signed with Washington in 2005, but was cut before the season began.
His career stats: Six seasons, 59 games, 178 catches, 2,325 yards, 18 touchdowns.
Now it is his little brother's turn to play in the Super Bowl. Andre watched Kevin play in two Super Bowls from the bleachers. After the last one he told Kevin, "I'm not coming back to the Super Bowl unless I'm playing in it." And now he is.
"Now Kevin gets to sit in the seats and watch me," says Andre.
Kevin and Andre played together for the Titans for two years. After Kevin left the team, Andre played two more seasons with the Titans before signing with Seattle in 2005. During his five-year career, Andre, 26, has collected 243 tackles and 17 interceptions, returning four for touchdowns.
Andre will make his first Super Bowl appearance with family and extended family in the stands, including, of course, his mother, who is now a Super Bowl veteran. (She doesn't have spare tickets, so don't ask.)
"I've learned that you plan ahead the things you want to do, have fun and don't expect to spend a lot of time with your son," she says.
Susan's life is considerably easier these days. She remarried five years ago and is a collections manager for CitiGroup, with a new house and a new car in the driveway.
"I never looked at it as hard," says Susan, looking back. "I just looked at it as my life and made the best of it. If I was feeling down, my mother would say, 'Now is not forever.' "
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E-mail: drob@desnews.com