Associates say Underwood has trouble coping with pressure

Associated Press/October 21, 1999

Dimitrius Underwood is massive - 6-foot-6, 270 pounds of muscle - but the powerful NFL player has had a hard time dealing with pressure, in the eyes of some who know him.

It's one reason a relatively minor ankle sprain kept him from playing at Michigan State his senior year. It might have contributed to his decision to walk away from a $5.3 million, five-year contract with the Minnesota Vikings the first day of training camp.

And it could be part of the reason the defensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins slashed at his neck with two steak knives last Sunday after pacing around his girlfriend's apartment yelling, "I am not worthy of God." The pressure has come from many places, said his high school pastor, the Rev. Moses Townsend, who visited Underwood Friday at the inpatient mental health clinic where he is being treated.

He felt pressure living up to football's demands while at Michigan State. He had trouble dealing with the media spotlight when he got the Vikings contract, then spent four days in a Philadelphia hotel deciding if he should play football or serve God.

And he felt pressure from an unidentified man from Immanuel's Temple Community Church in Lansing, Townsend said.

"He was throwing him off course," Townsend said Saturday. "He (Underwood) wasn't taking as much interest in his mother as he had in the past. Whatever this man said, that's what it looked like he wanted to do."

Underwood's mother, Eileen Underwood, an ordained minister who lives in Philadelphia, first said her son was being affected by "a cult that's posing as a church." Then on Friday, she said that she and Immanuel's Temple's pastor, the Rev. Phillip Owens, both are born-again Christians.

"So it goes without saying that we should both be on the same accord, rather than creating conflict caused by misinterpretation," she said in a statement released by her son's agent, Craig Domann.

Underwood attended Immanuel's Temple on and off for about a year. He now has no interest in returning, Townsend said.

"The people who were around him seemed to have a lot of influence, and it didn't turn out well," he said.

Owens has denied his church is a cult. He led a men's breakfast meeting Saturday but declined to speak to an Associated Press reporter about the church. He said a statement would be issued in the future.

The church got more attention Friday when Michigan State police said a 23-year-old former Spartans student found dead Sept. 22 in an unused cooler in a dorm basement also had attended Immanuel's Temple for about a year.