Since the end of his career in the National Football League, Andre Royal has spent years working with youth, trying to be a mentor and a role model.

One of his strongest messages was to stay in school, but the former Tuscaloosa County High School and University of Alabama football standout always had a fear: that they would find out that he never graduated from UA.

Royal, 41, doesn't have to worry about that anymore. After three long semesters back in school, he completed work on his degree in criminology, with a minor in sociology, and last weekend graduated almost two decades after he left for the NFL.

"I work with so many kids in camps and coaching little league football and high school football, I preach it a lot," he said. "Every time I said it to a kid, that was in my head: I hope one of these kids doesn't ask me, 'Coach Royal, do you have your degree?' That's not a fear anymore.

"This is something I wanted to do. I made a promise to myself that I was going to finish my degree."

That Royal earned his degree after being out of the classroom for so long is even more remarkable considering the fact that he almost didn't make it into UA for academic reasons, and that he was nearly dismissed by former Alabama head coach Gene Stallings.

"When it came to my senior year in high school, when guys were signing (scholarships) I didn't have my ACT (entrance exam score) or my 2.0 GPA (grade-point average), but I ended up making it," he said.

He was part of Alabama's 1991 freshman class, and he won a national championship in his sophomore season, but trouble plagued him. He was suspended from the football team four times. He got in fights. He broke team rules.

"I got in trouble a lot," he said. "I wouldn't turn down a fight. There was a point in time when I didn't even like myself, I didn't trust myself, times when I wouldn't go out because I was afraid I was going to get in trouble and screw up again.

"That's a terrible feeling to have when you don't trust yourself."

After his final suspension, which caused him to miss the 1993 Southeastern Conference Championship Game and the Gator Bowl, Stallings showed Royal the meaning of tough love. The coach laid out a regimen of academic and behavioral standards that the player would have to meet to return to the team.

Royal buckled down and made it.

"It was my final straw that he gave me," Royal said. "He made it so tough that I had to stay focused on what I had to achieve. It was a great thing.

"Coach Stallings was a mentor of mine. If you say something bad about Coach Stallings, you've got a problem with me. With all the problems I had there, he believed in me."

Royal never participated in spring practice during his collegiate career, twice sitting out with suspensions and another time with a knee injury.

"It hurt me," he said. "I was never able to develop correctly. When the fall starts out, you find yourself last at your position. Coming into my senior year, I was ninth-string - ninth - at Sam linebacker, teaching kids who were in front of me."

Royal's talent got him back on the field, and after his senior season he tried out with the NFL's Cleveland Browns. When the Browns cut him, he signed a free-agent contract with the Carolina Panthers, an expansion team readying to play its first season in 1995.

Royal shined, particularly on special teams, and after three years he signed a $3.085 million contract with the New Orleans Saints, but his relationship with the team got off to a bad start and further deteriorated. The night before signing the big contract with the Saints, he was arrested after an incident at a French Quarter strip club.

"The incident in New Orleans is one of the ones I'm least proud of," he said. "Actually, I got out of jail and signed a contract without letting them know. Even to this day I don't like myself for that decision that I made."

He was involved in a training camp hazing incident that resulted in a lawsuit by a rookie player against Royal, the Saints and other players (the team settled and the suit against him was dismissed) and got into a highly-publicized public shouting match with New Orleans coach Mike Ditka. The Saints traded him to the Indianapolis Colts before he the season. He signed a lucrative four-year deal, but only played two more seasons before retiring after five years in the league. He estimates he made between $2.5 and $3 million in his career.

While his playing career was tumultuous, something else was at work inside Royal. Despite all the bad decisions, underneath all the bad behavior, was a drive to make it. He was driven to do what it took to become eligible out of high school when his grades and entrance exam score were lacking, and to persevere through Stallings' lay-down-the-law mandate after his final suspension.

That drive got him to the NFL and, all these years later, to graduation day.

He moved back to Charlotte, where he had purchased a home during his days with the Panthers, and worked with kids. He worked as a fundraiser and was named to the board of directors of a few charitable organizations.

Royal matured, and settled down.

"I got older and started making better decisions in life. I still made a couple of bad decisions here and there, but I'm proud of the person I am today and I like myself," he said.

When his daughter, Tierra, graduated from high school, he got to thinking about that degree he never got.

"I always wanted to go back to school but the timing wasn't right, even when I was up with the Carolina Panthers," he said. "I looked into a lot of colleges up there in Charlotte, N.C., about taking classes but it never did fit. It was either take classes online, but I wanted to experience actually going back to class, and I wanted to get it from Alabama. I didn't want to take the classes somewhere else and then have them transfer (the credits) to graduate from Alabama."

He moved back to Tuscaloosa, where he had bought his mother a house, and enrolled in the spring of 2013.

In his youth he always sat in the back of class, if he didn't skip it altogether. When he did show up, he often slept through his classes. When he returned to school, his approach changed. He passed 12 classes to earn the 37 credit hours needed to complete his degree.

"I only missed one class this spring," he said. "I sat in the front row. I recorded lectures when I first started back so I could take them home and listen to them. I wanted to earn it."

Getting the degree was important for his family. He wanted to set an example for Tierra, a 20-year-old sophomore at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and sons Kelby, 15, and Braeden, 14.

"I just want to use it as a tool for my kids, something to motivate them," he said.

Walking across the stage in cap and gown and collecting his diploma, Royal said, ranks with his greatest accomplishments.

"I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know how I was going to feel," he said. "I would have to compare it to me getting a scholarship at the University of Alabama and winning a national championship and making it in the NFL.

"A lot of times when guys leave the NFL it's hard for them to find something that compares to the NFL or playing college football, and getting my degree was that."

Reach Tommy Deas at tommy@tidesports.com or at 205-722-0224.