Background
Collins was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1976.
Collins was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1976.
He attended West Charlotte High School in Charlotte, and he played high school football for the West Charlotte Lions.
The Oakland Raiders selected him in the first round of the 1998 NFL Draft, and he played his entire professional career for the Raiders. The Charlotte Observer ranked him as one of the top five high school football players in the state of North Carolina in 1993. Collins accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he played for coach Steve Spurrier"s Florida Gators football team from 1995 to 1997.
As a true freshman in 1994, Collins suffered a foot injury and was redshirted by the Gators coaching staff, but became a full-time starter the following season.
After his junior year in 1997, Collins decided to forgo his final year of National Collegiate Athletic Association eligibility and enter the NFL Draft. Collins graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor"s degree in exercise and sport sciences in 1998.
The Oakland Raiders selected Collins in the first round (twenty-third pick overall) of the 1998 NFL Draft, and he played for the Raiders from 1998 to 2003. In his six NFL seasons, Collins appeared in seventy-one regular season games and started in sixty-four of them.
Collins was hired as the head coach of the West Charlotte Lions football team of West Charlotte High School, his alma mater, on February 7, 2014.
Collins died Sunday, October 26, 2014. He had been receiving dialysis treatment after suffering kidney failure.
Collins played college football for the University of Florida, and was a member of a national championship team Collins was a key member of the Lions" North Carolina 4A state championship team in 1993.