‘Not a place for prima donnas’: NFL pedigree behind success of Auburn’s Eugene Asante
AUBURN — Champ Bailey, DeAngelo Hall, Malcolm Jenkins, Eddie Lacy, Ndamukong Suh and Muhammad Wilkerson all have something in common. And it's not just the fact that they've each had a taste of NFL stardom.
The connection, rather, is that each has made an impact — whether small or large — on the development of Auburn football's Eugene Asante. Asante, who has burst onto the scene in 2023 as Auburn's top linebacker, has been up close and personal with NFL players since his youth, studying their habits for more than a decade.
That's thanks to his big brother, Larry Asante.
"I was about 12, 13 years old when I started working out and going to my brother’s house in the summer," Eugene said of Larry, a former all-conference safety at Nebraska and fifth-round pick in the 2010 NFL Draft. "That was when he was in his peak NFL career. ... I got to be around elite NFL guys. ...
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"My brother was just trying to show me the ropes. I would workout with them. I would be in the NFL workouts with them. ... It was a really good experience, a really big experience. I think it’s one of the reasons why I am the way I am."
Larry and Eugene would frequent Chip Smith Performance Systems, a training facility in Norcross, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. The man behind the gym, Chip Smith, claims he and his staff have trained more than 1,600 NFL players to date, ranging from the aforementioned group all the way to hall of famer Brian Urlacher.
Former Tennessee Titans linebacker Rennie Curran, who was an All-American at Georgia and calls Larry one of his best friends, is included in that bunch, too.
"It’s not a place for prima donnas or those who’ve made it," Curran said of Chip Smith Performance Systems. "That’s the place where guys go who are trying to make it, who are hungry. (Larry and I) were both free agents when we were training together. (Eugene) saw us in the toughest times in our career. That hunger that we all have, man, it’s just something that’s contagious.
"I could see it from an early age from the first time I met (Eugene), being in there with us, knowing he was younger of age but he still didn’t back down. He wanted to learn, he wanted to compete, he wanted to get better. Even back then he stood out to me as someone who I knew would have a future.”
Curran, along with six-year vet Lawrence Sidbury, are a couple of former pros Eugene still keeps in contact with who've reached out to let him know they're watching his recent rise; the linebacker has registered a team-best 19 tackles and two sacks in Auburn's first three games of the season.
“He has access to all of them now," Larry said of the NFL players they'd train with. "Guys have been texting me out the woodwork like, ‘Yo, little bro is doing it.’ ... Sometimes it’s like, I deal with my brother, I deal with my brother, I deal with my brother. It’s like a broken record. He hears it from me over and over and over again. But when you hear the same wisdom and knowledge from other pros, a lot of times kids are more receptive to it. ...
"It’s like a parent. A lot of times we try to advise our kids, but they’ll take it from their uncle. They’ll take it from an outside source than it coming from you."
Larry, along with his other brother, Nicholas, the oldest of the five children in the Asante family, have been thrust into parent-like roles over the last 18 months. Their father, Paul Asante-Manu, passed away in February 2022 after a long battle with health complications.
Paul's passing took a toll on the Asantes — Larry said Paul and Eugene were "best friends" — and the wounds are still fresh. But the heartbreak Eugene has overcome has only made the drive Curran first noticed a decade ago even stronger.
“That’s his motivation, is his dad," Larry said of Eugene. "... His purpose is different. What he’s playing for is by far way different than what any of those kids are out there on the field are playing for. It’s personal to him. He keeps saying, ‘I pray that my father is proud. I hope that my father is proud.’ That man is already proud. But in (Eugene's) mind, (he's) out here on the field to make my father proud.
"How do you stop a man like that?"
Richard Silva is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at rsilva@gannett.com or on Twitter @rich_silva18.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Auburn football: Eugene Asante leans on NFL guidance with Tigers
