They didn’t call Lawrence Taylor a sackmaster for nothing.
The Giants great has revealed that one of his winning strategies was to tire out his opponents the night before big games – by dispatching hookers to their hotel rooms.
“You know what they like and what type of women they like, and you just call the service [and ask], ‘What you got?'” Taylor said in a “60 Minutes” interview that airs Sunday night on CBS.
Big Blue’s party-hearty linebacker said the goal was to get the call girls to keep the other team’s running back up all night long.
He would instruct the escort service that every time the target started to complain about needing to get some sleep, “that’s when the party really starts.”
Taylor, 44, admits his fantasy-football scheme wasn’t original.
He said he got the idea after the dirty trick was played on him before a big game in Houston.
“Knock on the door, you open the door and you got two beautiful women sitting there saying, ‘We’re for you!'” Taylor remembered.
“And I’m, like,
‘You’re in the right place.'”
Asked whether they wore him out, Taylor said simply: “They did a pretty good job.”
Taylor was the NFL’s most feared defender for more than a decade – even though he admits he was hooked on cocaine and crack for much of it.
With startling candor he admits he first tried cocaine during his rookie year in 1981 and was obsessed with smoking crack by his third season.
“They’re handing out free drugs because they want to get in,” he said of his dealers.
“They want to be in your world. So, everything is free while they’re getting into your world. But once they get into your world, oh, they take over your world. Now it’s their world, and you just a part of it.”
He used teammates’ urine to beat drug tests, but it didn’t always work. After he flunked two tests and was on the verge of being tossed out of the NFL, he went straight.
But he never stopped thinking about the high times he would have when he retired.
“I saw coke as the only bright spot in my future … because that’s how powerful the drug is,” he said.
He was back on crack the day after his last game in 1994 – followed by a series of arrests for drugs and tax evasion and the breakup of his marriage.
After two stints in rehab, L.T., who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1999, now spends most of his free time playing golf.