Anthony “Spice” Adams is a former American football player for the National Football League (NFL), actor, comedian, and television host. He was born on June 18, 1980, to Anthony Adams Sr. and Constance Davis in Detroit, Michigan. Adams, who had two siblings, attended Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School in Detroit, Michigan, graduating in 1999.
Adams then attended Pennsylvania State University, where he played on the Nittany Lions football team. During his junior year, he helped lead his team to the 2003 Capital One Bowl, where they lost to the Auburn (Alabama) Tigers. His Penn State teammates nicknamed him ‘Spice,’ a moniker that reflected his energetic and dynamic playing style.
Adams graduated from Penn State with a business degree in 2003. He declared himself for the 2003 NFL Draft and was selected 57th overall pick by the San Francisco (California) 49ers. Adams played defensive tackle with the 49ers until he became a free agent in the 2006 NFL season. Then, he signed in the same role with the Chicago (Illinois) Bears.
Adams’s best season with the Bears came in 2010. During that season, Adams started all 16 games and helped the Bears make it to the National Football Conference (NFC) championship game against the Green Bay (Wisconsin) Packers, where the team lost the game. Adams was given the Brain Piccolo Award at the end of the season. The Brain Piccolo Award is an honor given to one rookie and one veteran player of the Chicago Bears each season who shows courage, loyalty, and teamwork. The award was named after Chicago Bears halfback Brian Piccolo, who died of cancer in 1970. After the 2011 NFL season, Adams was released from the team.
On March 24, 2013, Adams retired from the NFL at 32. Following retirement, Adams received his master’s degree in business administration from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. That same year, he began hosting a weekly half-hour show called Inside the Bears and had a recurring role on the Home Box Office (HBO) series Ballers. In 2017, he became one of the new hosts of The Great American Baking Show, an American Broadcasting Company (ABC) cooking competition that was an American adoption of the British show, The Great British Bake Off.
Adams continues to live in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan, where he is involved with Youthville, a local program. In 2009, while still playing with the Chicago Bears, he visited the Chicago Public Schools to help students write letters to troops overseas during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Adams is married to Andenika Adams, and the couple have four children. He is also a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and was initiated at Nu Chapter in 2000 at Penn State University.
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“Anthony Adams,” Pro Football Reference, https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/A/AdamAn20.htm; “Anthony Adams,” Stamped, https://www.thecut.co/blog/retired-nfl-player-anthony-spice-adams-and-his-fatherly-love; “Anthony Adams,” International Movie Database, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4281672/.
