Archdeacon: Sydney and Randy Moss share daughter-father bond like no other

Although the Quakers did surge back and take a five-point lead, they couldn’t hold on and lost by four, 81-77.

But her dad — as the sports world and especially the NFL now knows — was a winner that day.

Six days later, Randy Moss ― the Pro Football Hall of Famer who was one of the greatest wide receivers the NFL has ever known and then became an analyst for ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown — announced why he’d recently stepped away from his TV duties to address unspecified “health issues.”

Appearing on Instagram Live wearing a gray hoodie and aided by a cane, he introduced himself as “a cancer survivor” and thanked his “prayer warriors’' for their support.

He said a cancerous mass outside of a bile duct — between his liver and pancreas — was removed during a surgery called a Whipple procedure.

That involves removing the head of the pancreas, part of the small intestine, the gallbladder, the bile duct and nearby lymph nodes. He was hospitalized six days and Sydney said he soon will begin chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

After the Marietta game, she headed to Charlotte and spent two days with her 47-year-old father before returning to her team.

“I talk to my dad about every two weeks, but I had no idea about the cancer,” she said. “He just said he hadn’t been feeling too good. To me he was still Superman. He was still healthy and ate good and worked out.

“My dad and cancer don’t go hand in hand, so when I found out I was shocked. But he has a really good support system with his friends and his family.”

That she’s now a real part of that system is good medicine for both of them. In years past, their relationship was unlike most father-daughter bonds.

Her mom, Libby Offutt, was 18 and her dad was 17 — both still in high school back in West Virginia — when they had her.

“They were just teenagers and they said being parents was a learning experience,” Sydney said before sharing a family tale that made that clear:

“They told me they took me to a swim club and my dad clipped the metal part of my pacifier onto me. They said, “You were screaming the whole time, and we thought you didn’t like water.’

“When they got home, they realized the binkie wasn’t attached to my bathing suit, it was attached to my skin.

“Now, I’m like, ‘Well that’s a 17-year-old not knowing what the heck he’s doing.”’

Although they had an on-again, off-again relationship, the couple would have four more children. Although Randy is now married, Libby never did wed.

Sydney lived mostly with her mom, and her maternal grandfather, Frank Offutt, a former West Virginia University athlete, longtime referee and a youth coach, was a primary male figure in her life.

Playing multiple positions, Randy led DuPont High School, just outside Charleston, to back-to-back state titles. He was twice named West Virginia’s high school football and basketball player of the year and some years back Parade Magazine named him one of the nation’s 50 greatest high school football players of all time.

He ended up at Marshall University, won All America honors, and was a first-round draft pick of the Minnesota Vikings.

He spent 14 years in the NFL — playing for the Vikings, Oakland, New England, Tennessee and San Francisco — was a four-time All Pro, set the single-season touchdown reception record with 23, is second all-time in NFL career TD receptions and fourth in receiving yards.

Although she spent time with her dad, Sydney said her mom eventually moved them to northern Kentucky and that’s where she began to forge her own identity.

“In those early years being Randy Moss’ daughter had its pros and cons,” she admitted. “I felt like I was kind of in his shadow. Everywhere I went, it was ‘Oh, you’re Randy Moss’ daughter!’

“When you’re young, you have this picture in your head of what a dad looks like; what a mom looks like. But my dad’s career was different. He was always gone, and I’d get kind of upset.

“I’d look at my neighbor’s dad and he worked 9 to 5 and was home for dinner and went to all her games. My dad did what he could, but when I was a kid I focused on what he wasn’t doing.

“Some people only knew me as his daughter and I wanted to be known for me. I wanted my own identity and my dad wanted that for me and my brothers and sister, too.”

Her sister Senali is now a 5-foot-7 guard at Stetson University.

Brother Thaddeus was a tight end on the 2019 LSU National Championship team, signed with the Cincinnati Bengals three years ago, then played in the USFL and Canada, Her youngest brother Montigo was a wide receiver with the Maine Black Bears.

None of them were more celebrated though than Sydney, who, as a young teen, started playing AAU basketball in Cincinnati and in her words “got my butt kicked” by the older girls:

“Right then I became determined to be the best I could be so this wouldn’t keep happening.”

And it never did.

Celebrated playing career

She played six years of high school varsity basketball.

She was a starter for Heritage Academy in her seventh-grade year; played at Ryle High School the next two seasons and then reached real stardom in three seasons at Boone County High School.

Her senior season (2011-12) she was the Gatorade and the Associated Press Player of the Year in Kentucky and was named Kentucky Miss Basketball. She ended her career with 2,997 points and 1,602 rebounds and is now in the school’s Hall of Fame.

She committed early to Florida and was an instant star, starting 24 of 37 games as a freshman and leading the team in assists while finishing second in scoring (11.8 ppg), rebounding (6.8) and steals. She was named to the All-Southeastern Conference Freshman team and made the WNIT All-Tournament team.

“I got a little homesick though and then my grandpa passed away (following complications from surgery) around Thanksgiving,” she said.

She had not been allowed to leave the team before he passed and that hurt her.

“He was a pretty big person in my life, and I missed being around my family,” she said.

Her decision to transfer didn’t sit well with the Gators. It was reported then that they wouldn’t grant her transfer to another D-I school and she didn’t want to sit out a year.

Back in northern Kentucky she had friends at Thomas More College (now University), then an NCAA Division III school where she could play right away.

Her plan was to stay for a year and then return to a D-I school, but she tore up her knee at the end of the season and that caused some schools to back away.

Staying at Thomas More, she ended up a three-time Division III National Player of the Year and a three-time All American.

The Saints won two national titles with her and along the way she tied the D-III mark for most points (891) in a season, set a record for most points in a game (63 against Waynesburg University), and led the nation in scoring her second season with a 27.2 ppg.

Although she set numerous other records, one season’s marks were wiped out by a miss-the-mark NCAA sanction because she recovered from her knee injury at the home of an assistant coach and his family whom she’d known since childhood and had sought out when she couldn’t navigate the stairs in her apartment building.

Thomas More never let that dim its appreciation of her. She was inducted into the school’s hall of fame and later returned to the program as an assistant coach after first paying her dues as a high school assistant, a volunteer at the University of Charleston and an assistant at St. Thomas University outside Miami.

She was an integral part — as a recruiter and coach — of Thomas More’s 2022 national championship team at the NAIA level, which the Saints participated in for four years after leaving the NCAA Division IIII ranks and before moving to NCAA Division II.

Two seasons ago she joined Wilmington as an assistant and then became the head coach last year.

“I like the community and family feel here,” she said. “And I like the Quakerism, so to speak.

“A lot of people don’t know about it, but it’s kind of like everybody’s equal. It doesn’t matter what you look like, where’s you’re from or what you believe. You’re welcome here and that’s kind of how I walk through life.”

She was especially moved when both the Quakers men’s coach, Micah Mills, and the athletic director, Matt Croci, offered to take over her practices for a few days so she could be with her dad.

“That’s really rare, but that’s the way it was from a lot of people here,” she said.

The Quakers won a Division III national title in 2004, but have had just one winning season in the past seven years.

Although her first team went 6-18 last season and was 4-6 going into Saturday’s game at John Carroll, she’s confident she’ll turn the program around:

“I tell our players when I recruit them, ‘I’m a winner. I came from a winning background. I hate losing. And eventually I’m going to figure out how to build this program back up here.’”

Embracing Randy

Although people long appreciated Randy Moss for his football heroics, he was often misunderstood and viewed negatively off the field.

“Early on he was always the bad guy,” Sydney said. “People really got to know him once he started on TV.”

In those past nine years, he’s shown himself to be smart, insightful and funny.

“And he still has the country accent,” Sydney said with a smile. “People always talk about it.”

Since Moss’ cancer revelation, NFL players, teams, fans and his TV co-hosts have embraced him in sincere fashion.

During their Dec. 16 game with the Chicago Bears, the Vikings honored him with a jersey walk in led by his former teammates Cris Carter and Jake Reed.

Later in the game, after Minnesota wideout Justin Jefferson’s touchdown catch, he made a heart gesture with his hands and spoke into the field camera:

“We love you Randy. That’s for you!”

Last weekend the New England Patriots paid tribute to him before their game with the Chargers. A flag with Moss’s name and his No. 81 jersey number was carried across the Gillette Stadium field as the crowd stood.

Overhead, the Jumbotron message showed his picture and urged fans to adopt his new slogan to “Moss Out Cancer.”

Soon after Moss responded on X:

“It’s the BIG crybaby here… wanna thank u all for this!! LUV IS ALWAYS IN THE AIR.”

By showing his vulnerable side and, before that, his caring side — he’s been involved in several charities aiding children back in West Virginia — Randy Moss is now seen in different light.

No one knows that more than Sydney.

The young girl who said she “butted heads” with her dad when she was growing up is now a 30-year-old woman who appreciates him for who he is.

While her mom was an early influence in her life and they remain connected — “When we’re on the road, she dog sits my two pit bulls, Zorro and Zeus,” — Sydney said her competitive nature and personality come from her dad:

“I feel like our overall mindsets are pretty similar. From the outside we might look a little tough but on the inside we have big hearts and care about people.”

She’s found a special kinship with her dad as a bass fisherman. They go fishing a few times a year and she recently launched a bass fishing club at Wilmington College that has some 40 members.

Another misread by outsiders might come from her heavily tattooed forearms.

But then she explains the right one contains all her “religious things” and a tribute to “Papaw,” as she called her grandfather, who died in 2012.

The left arm includes a needle and ink tribute to Thomas More’s two national titles,

“Right here,” she said pointing to an open space beneath the championship references, “I’ve left that open so we can put in the one we could win here one day.”

She said that in matter-of-fact fashion, with no hint of boast, or backtracking.

Once again, she’s just following her dad’s advice.

She believes she — and her players — can make their own mark.