Jump to content

4th and 5

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    3102
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by 4th and 5

  1. Good stuff, This young man has been through quite a bit.

     

     

    the-lead-icon@2x.png

     

    Iowa State WR Hakeem Butler gives thanks for what he has and what he had

    Max Olson Nov 21, 2018comment-icon@2x.png 21  save-icon@2x.png

    AMES, Iowa — Hakeem Butler has his own tradition for Mother’s Day.

    He makes a trip to the grocery on that Sunday in May to buy a card and a balloon. This year he picked out one with a dog on the front and a goofy and sweet message inside and wrote a note to his mom. He headed to Lake LaVerne, the peaceful pond on Iowa State’s campus. He tied the card to the balloon and he let go.

    Year after year, the day is a tough one for the Cyclones wide receiver. He’s spent too many holidays without her. The balloon, gently floating up and away, is his ritual for sending her his thanks.

    As badly as he misses his mother, he is deeply grateful for the path she set out for him. When Sherryl Ford died in 2012 after a two-year bout with breast cancer, her family made one of her longtime dreams come true: Her sons got out of Baltimore. Hakeem and his younger brother Khalil were taken in by the Harrisons, their relatives in far-away Houston. The 1,200-mile move to Texas granted them a chance to start a new life.

    And six years later, with the help of all those who believed in him, Hakeem is here, becoming something most never could have anticipated: one of college football’s finest playmakers.

    “I think I appreciate it every time I score,” he said, “just because I look around and all these people are cheering for me. They don’t even know where I came from or all that stuff, how hard it was for me to get here. It’s just crazy to me sometimes that I’m even here.”

    At the age of 16, he had a choice. He could use his heartbreak as his excuse, or he could focus on counting his blessings. And so many have come his way since. His mother made him strong, and when she passed, he was saved and supported by a veritable village of people who stepped forward to raise him. Her death didn’t have to be his ending — it was his beginning.

    “I always say she passed away to give me new life,” he said. “That’s how I look at it.”


    Sherryl Ford’s children admiringly say she was a diva in the best way.

    She loved to sing, especially Mary J. Blige songs. Her kids laugh when they look back on this and swear that, no, she couldn’t sing. But that never stopped her. Hakeem remembers her living her life to the fullest, whether donning her Postal Service uniform or dressing for dancing on Wednesday nights.

    “Most people would say when you saw her delivering mail, it was like a model delivering mail,” her oldest daughter Amber Ford-McCallum said. “She walked up and down the street like a model.”

    Her mail route took her through Charles Street and a variety of neighborhoods — “from the hood to the very rich,” Amber remembers — and she was embraced by all. She’d come home on holidays carrying gifts and cards given to her by the friends made on her route. And she’d do the same, buying gifts for less-fortunate children. This was her community, and she took pride in serving it.

    “Everybody loved my mom,” Khalil Butler said. “We’d go out to the store with her to get groceries and everyone would say, ‘Oh hey, Miss Sherryl!’ They’d stop and talk to her. Everybody knew who Sherryl Ford was. You couldn’t go anywhere in Baltimore City without somebody saying, ‘Hey! How you doing?’ and her just standing there for an hour having a whole conversation with them.”

    Butler_Hakeem18TTU_47-1024x683.jpg
     
    Hakeem Butler is No. 3 in the FBS in yards per reception and 12th in yards per target. (Iowa Athletic Communications)

    She was a resilient single mother who raised her three children right and worked hard for what she got. She put her all into her kids, teaching them to be respectful and thankful. Amber calls her the epitome of class and how a lady carries herself. If her mom struggled, she wouldn’t show it.

    For a time when Hakeem and Khalil were young, they lived in a one-bedroom house. Hakeem slept on the top of a bunk bed, Sherryl and Khalil slept on the bottom bunk and Amber slept in the living room. Amber says she’ll never forget the day, during her mother’s first month with the Postal Service, when that arrangement changed.

    “She sat me down and pulled out her first check,” Amber remembers, “and she said, ‘You see this? This means we’re never gonna have to struggle again.’ And we never did after that. She moved us out of the one-bedroom the next week. We moved into a house where everyone had their own bedroom.”

    Sherryl and Amber, who is 9 years older than Hakeem, kept the boys out of trouble. A common warning they’d dish out: “Do you want to be another statistic?” Amber says their northeast Baltimore neighborhood wasn’t too bad but admits they’d see the same things — drugs, crime, death — you’d find in the roughest areas. Hakeem and Khalil, born 18 months apart, kept their heads down and their focus elsewhere.

    “Every day you’d see something new,” Hakeem said. “Crackheads, drug addicts, drug dealers. Every day. For me, growing up, that’s just the way it was. I thought that was normal. I thought that’s what everybody saw. My mom kept us on the straight and narrow. She wasn’t about none of that nonsense. I thank her for it every day.”

    Hakeem always thought he was the best football player in the neighborhood games, envisioning himself as Randy Moss and wearing the purple Vikings jersey to prove it. When he was 9 years old, he signed up to play in pads and was put on the offensive line. He was offended but did enjoy pushing guys around. But his initial foray with tackle football didn’t last long. He remembers, during his first season, seeing a kid break an ankle.

    “That was it for me,” he said. “And it was too much running. I was like, ‘This ain’t for me.’ So I played basketball. But I used to foul out all the time so they’d say, ‘You should try football.’ ”

    Many weekends they would leave northeast Baltimore and stay with an aunt outside the city. Sometimes they would hit the road and visit family in Georgia or Texas. The boys spent many summers in Houston with Sherryl’s nephew, Aaron Harrison Sr., and his twin boys Aaron and Andrew, the five-star basketball prodigies. Because that always was safer.

    “There’s more to the world than Baltimore,” Hakeem said. “That’s something she always tried to get across to us.”


    Hakeem was close to turning 14 when Sherryl got sick. At that age, he didn’t really understand what was going on, but he does remember the day she received the phone call about her diagnosis.

    “She just fell on the floor and was crying,” he said. “I’m like, ‘What’s wrong?’ She said, ‘Call your aunt, call your uncle, tell them to get over here.’ ”

    Sherryl was diagnosed with breast cancer in the spring of 2010, a revelation that turned their family’s world upside down. She began chemotherapy and radiation, and everyone reassured Hakeem she was going to get better. He always believed she would pull through and they’d get past it together. His mother was Superwoman in his eyes, invincible and unstoppable.

    This went on for more than two years. The cancer went into remission at one point, then came back more aggressively. But she kept fighting. And she never lost her positivity, her diva swagger.

    “I have never seen anybody work a bald head like that,” said Khalil, who was 12 when Sherryl was diagnosed. “I’m so serious. People used to tell me all the time, ‘Your mom looks better without hair than she did with hair!’ ”

    Hakeem_Mom-1024x655.jpg

    She never stopped telling her children how much she loved them and that everything was going to be OK, trying her best to shield them from knowing how serious her condition was becoming. Their support system through the hardest times was an extended family that Hakeem says exceeds 400 or maybe 500 in number. Sherryl had 10 siblings, and her father had 12. Their massive family tree of aunts, uncles and cousins stepped in to help as much as possible.

    During this painful process, Hakeem was entering high school at Baltimore City College, a magnet school. He’d taken up football again when he got to middle school and all his friends were playing. He played quarterback and cornerback. He wasn’t really meant for quarterback, he says with a laugh, because he had a tendency to yell at his linemen too much. He moved from the position during his freshman year and started catching passes at tight end on the JV team.

    Away from school, Hakeem helped his mother get to doctor’s appointments, take her medicine, run her errands. Before her illness, he’d been an excellent student, but he missed so much school during his sophomore year that he was failing his classes. To get his grades and life back on track, he was sent to live with relatives in Macon, Ga., for a semester in the fall of 2012.

    “They didn’t want me to mess my life up in high school and never have the opportunity to do anything else in my life because of those two years,” Hakeem said.

    He visited his mother in hospice care when she was nearing the end, still unaware of just how sick she was. He’d remained hopeful that her condition was improving.

    “She was just my mom, making jokes,” Hakeem said. “It just felt normal to me, talking to her and messing with her. All her friends were in there laughing with her. People were crying, just because adults are so emotional. Me, I was just like, ‘Y’all gotta stop crying and just be happy right now.’ ”

    Sherryl Ford died on Oct. 18, 2012. Hakeem was in Georgia at the time. Her funeral at United Baptist Church in Baltimore was a standing-room-only event. Aaron Harrison Sr. guesses there were easily 1,500 gathered to celebrate her life. Khalil remembers the endless line of people — family, friends, folks from all over the neighborhood and her mail route — who came to say farewell.

    “At the funeral, my aunt stood up and said, ‘Would the family of Sherryl Ford please stand,’ ” Amber recalls. “So, of course, the immediate family stands. And she said, ‘No. Will the family of Sherryl Ford please stand.’ And the entire church stood up. If you had a chance to meet her, to know her is to love her, absolutely.”

    To this day, she says, Hakeem doesn’t talk much about how their mother’s death affected him, about how hard those two years were. The funeral, he says, was the moment when he finally allowed himself to grieve.

    “I think that’s the first time I really cried over it,” he said. “She’s really not coming back. That was the toughest thing for me, seeing everybody in my family cry so hard. I kinda let it in. My whole time, it was like, ‘Man, you gotta be strong.’ Because they tell you men don’t cry, so I can’t cry. Seeing the men in my family cry like I’ve never seen them cry before, all my uncles and stuff? Hardest day of my life.”

    A family meeting was convened afterward, and Sherryl’s wishes were conveyed: Her boys needed to stay together. They would be moving to Richmond, Texas, to live with Aaron Sr., who took Khalil home with him after the funeral. Hakeem finished out the semester in Georgia before relocating. And then he started over.


    Hakeem always looked up to the man he called Uncle Ron. Because Uncle Ron made it out.

    For Aaron Harrison Sr., bringing the boys to Houston was an easy decision, something he didn’t question. There was never a thought, he said, of them going anywhere else.

    The summers they’d spent together helped make for a smooth transition. And in some ways, the timing was ideal. Hakeem arrived eight months before Aaron and Andrew left for the University of Kentucky. Aaron Sr. says he would have been “smacked in the face with the empty nest” if Hakeem and Khalil hadn’t come along.

    Sherryl’s sons gained the father figure they’d always lacked. Their biological father was in and out of the picture early on. He left when the boys were young and hasn’t attempted to re-enter their lives. Anybody can be a father, Hakeem says resolutely, but it takes a real man to be dad. They call Aaron Sr. their dad and the twins their brothers. And Aaron Sr. calls them his sons, no different from the twins.

    “For a while there, I looked at it like I don’t have a mom or a dad now,” Hakeem said. “But my dad now, he stepped up and did an amazing job. I could never be more grateful. I always text him on Father’s Day to tell him he changed my life.”

    Butler-Harrisons-1024x1021.jpg
     
    Hakeem Butler, Aaron Harrison, Aaron Harrison Sr., Andrew Harrison and Khalil Butler.

    Aaron Sr. taught them about accountability and taking care of your business. He’s strict with them, no question, but Khalil says they have fun together. When Hakeem first moved in, Aaron Sr. remembers seeing him wear a pair of Superman socks that had small capes hanging off the back. They were one pair in a large collection of colorful socks. Aaron Sr. wasn’t having it.

    “My uncle sees those and goes, ‘Boy, what is this?’ ” Khalil recalled. “Keem says: ‘It’s my swag!’ ”

    “Men don’t wear them kinda socks,” Aaron Sr. said. “I took all those.”

    He could easily tell, though, that the boys appreciated their new setting in the Houston suburbs in a way most kids might not.

    “The culture here is so much different,” Aaron Sr. said. “You’ve got these kids in Texas who want to be the tough, hard kids. Hakeem had a chance to see that life in Baltimore and then see this one and realize, ‘I like this one much better.’ The kids here don’t appreciate safety. They want to be worse than what they are. Hakeem has told me, ‘I always wanted to live here.’ ”

    Aaron Sr. runs an AAU basketball team there, the Houston Defenders, and his new sons started playing hoops for him. Hakeem was a long and lanky 6-feet-6, but that didn’t mean he could play. When he hit his growth spurt as a teen, he swears it threw off everything — his coordination, his dribble, his shot. And his dad gave him no special treatment when it came to minutes.

    “Hakeem was terrible,” Khalil said. “Awful. The worst. He wasn’t gonna play. He might get you a couple rebounds. He’s definitely going to foul somebody.”

    Hakeem stuck with it and improved over the years, but early on he asked Aaron Sr. if he could try getting back into football.

    At Fort Bend Travis High School, he had so much catching up to do. Because he’d essentially failed a year of classes in Baltimore, his transcript was a mess and he had to repeat his sophomore year. He was quieter and more guarded as a new student, understandably so given what he’d been through.

    Two women managed to bring him out of his shell. Lizzie Herring is an associate principal at Travis High and Becky Martinez is the school’s college and career readiness adviser. They took the lead on helping Hakeem get back on track academically, which required full course loads plus online classes, summer school and credit recovery just to become a qualifier. The task required great grades and a lot of motivation.

    “Those are like my second moms,” Hakeem said. “I’m forever indebted to them.”

    Butler-Mentors1-e1542760770316.jpg
     
    Butler with Becky Martinez (left) and Lizzie Herring.

    Herring says you won’t find a staff member at Travis High who will say a negative word about Hakeem. He was polite, always smiling and adored by his teachers. Martinez got to know him well through basketball — her husband, Brian, was one of Hakeem’s coaches — and through his visits to her office. She and her husband consider him one of their sons, and their twin sons Alex and Zack admire him like a big brother. He and Khalil like to stay at their house when they’re back in town.

    “It doesn’t take long before Hakeem can become family for you,” Becky Martinez said. “He just fits. He’s just part of the family. I don’t even know how to explain it. He walks in your life and you gotta love him. You just gotta take him in and love him. He does the same for us. He loves our kids right back. Any parent knows that if they’re gonna love your kid right back, there’s a special place in your heart for them.”

    They have a special place in his, too, for the way they helped fight for him. His efforts to restart his football career were full of hurdles. Butler had to six out six games as a junior because the University Interscholastic League (UIL), which governs Texas high school athletics, suspected his transfer was for athletic purposes. The next year, he had to apply to the UIL for a fifth year of athletic eligibility and prove he hadn’t been playing during the year he missed school in Baltimore. When that request was denied, they traveled to Austin to plead his case at a UIL hearing.

    To make those administrators understand why he deserved his senior season, Hakeem had to explain where he’d been.

    “We had to have a conversation of, ‘OK, I know this is not your comfort zone. This is not something you want to talk about,’ ” Herring said. “ ‘But we have to go in there and let them know why you want to play. This is what you’ve been working so hard for.’ ”

    So he told his story of his former life in Baltimore. He opened up about what it was like to care for his sick mother and what it was like to lose her. And the panel listened and voted unanimously to let him play.

    Butler played in eight football games the fall of his senior year and caught 28 passes. He showed flashes of potential but was still too raw. When the season ended, he had no scholarship offers. He figured he’d have to turn his attention back to basketball, where he was receiving some low-level recruiting interest. But then Lou Ayeni found him.


    Hakeem still remembers what Ayeni said in the hallway outside the Travis basketball gym when they first met.

    “I only recruit freaks.”

    Ayeni, then in his first year as the running backs coach at Iowa State, was in Houston recruiting in the winter of 2014 when he got word of a long, athletic kid worth looking into. The senior tape didn’t show a ton. But there were four clips of him busting through lines and using his length to block kicks. There were clips of Hakeem delivering devastating blocks. There was enough there to pique Ayeni’s interest.

    He showed up to a Travis basketball practice and saw the 6-6, 175-pound senior slamming dunks and alley-oops. Ayeni was puzzled why nobody else was on the kid. What are his issues? What did he do wrong? His coaches vowed he was a great kid and explained his backstory. So Ayeni introduced himself in the hallway and they got to talking. Hakeem was intrigued, even if he’d never heard of Iowa State.

    Ayeni went back to campus and didn’t have much luck selling the rest of the Cyclones’ coaching staff on the two-star steal he’d discovered. They didn’t have room for him in their 2015 class. And Butler was clearly a risky take. Not too much tape. Too much work to be done in the classroom. But Ayeni liked the kid so much that he promised, even if the Cyclones couldn’t sign him, he’d tip off other college coaches to check him out.

    “One of our first conversations was about his mother,” Ayeni said. “That’s what kinda drew me to the kid. I could feel his pain and I could feel his desire and drive to make his mother proud. I just wanted to help him. I really did. I didn’t want him to miss out on an opportunity to honor her with his ability.”

    Ayeni says one Iowa State staffer who backed him on wanting to take Hakeem was strength coach Yancy McKnight. So when McKnight left to join Tom Herman’s staff at Houston that offseason, the Cougars gave Hakeem a scholarship offer and a chance to stay home.

    “When those guys offered, I finally had my stand-on-the-table moment and was like, ‘Tell me what’s wrong with this kid,’ ” Ayeni said. “Finally, all the coaches and Coach (Paul) Rhoads were like, ‘Yeah, absolutely, let’s go for it.’ ”

    They brought in Hakeem on a Monday in late January for his official visit. When Rhoads sat down with him and heard his story, he said it all made sense. He was ready to offer. Hakeem took his visit to Houston that weekend and then faced a difficult decision. Two days before signing day, he called Aaron Sr., who was out on the road with the twins for a Kentucky game, and told him he was going to be a Cyclone.

    “I wanted to see something different,” Hakeem said. “I’m all about new experiences.”

    He needed to finish out strong, getting all A’s and B’s in his senior year at Travis, in order to even make his 1,000-mile move here. Herring and Martinez kept him on track, and he put in the work. And when he finally qualified, he joined his new team eager to prove he belonged.

    When he got to Iowa State, Hakeem found out just how raw he really was. In his first 7-on-7 drill, he ran a hitch and cornerback Sam Richardson raced in front of him for a pick-six. Welcome to college, kid. Everybody’s fast here, a teammate told him, and everybody was the best at their school. He still had a lot to learn. He says he was a “knucklehead” during his redshirt season, showing up late too often and not taking things seriously. A lot of people, he says, didn’t know if he would last at Iowa State. He had doubts, too. But in practices, his vast potential would intermittently reveal itself.

    “I wasn’t always consistent,” he said, “but I would make a crazy play and you’d be like, ‘This kid’s a little different.’ ”

    Butler_Campbell-1024x720.jpg
     
    Iowa State coach Matt Campbell says Butler’s best days as a player are ahead of him. (David K. Purdy / Getty Images)

    New coach Matt Campbell and his staff arrived after Hakeem’s first semester in the program and pushed him. They urged him to dedicate himself to becoming the best possible version of himself. In his first college game against Northern Iowa, Hakeem delivered one of those crazy plays with his first career catch: a one-handed touchdown grab on a back-shoulder fade.

    He’s been adding to that highlight reel ever since. He’s scored 15 touchdowns over the last two seasons, and many of them have been jaw-droppers, like the one-handed catch against Baylor last year on which he spun, ran through two tacklers and scored. He makes those look easy.

    Now that he’s playing with some long-sought consistency, Hakeem’s game has reached an elite level. He’s putting up 21.8 yards per catch, which ranks third best nationally. He only needs 85 more yards to reach 1,000 on the season and could do so on fewer than 50 catches. He set out to prove Ayeni was right about him. In doing so, he’s become everything Ayeni hoped and much more.

    “Oh, I literally think we’re not even scratching the surface in a lot of ways,” Campbell said. “The ceiling for Hakeem is really as high as he wants it to be.”


    Hakeem Butler emerged from the visitor’s locker room at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium a little before 11 p.m. Saturday, one of the last to leave after Iowa State’s 24-10 loss to Texas. About 30 people awaited him near Iowa State’s team bus. Aaron Harrison Sr. was there with more than a dozen members of their extended family. So were Lizzie Herring, Becky Martinez and their families. Hakeem grinned as he waded his way through the crowd, stopping for hugs and chats and countless photos.

    Whenever he plays Big 12 games in Texas, he gets a chance to reunite with so many of the people who played roles in his life since his mother’s passing. The folks who made Houston feel like home even make trips up to Ames year after year to pay him visits.

    Amber says she wishes she could have been there Saturday night. She’s still in Baltimore, raising two boys and working as an assistant manager for Amazon. Her second child was born on Oct. 18, giving the family something to celebrate on that date. She misses Hakeem and watches all his games. She says it still hurts to this day that she doesn’t get to see her younger brothers as much as she’d like, but she’s proud of who they’ve become.

    Khalil is playing basketball at McMurry University, an NCAA Division III school in Abilene, Texas, and studying biology to become a veterinarian. Hakeem appreciates their FaceTime chats, often held late at night, and likes to video chat with him from the locker room before every Cyclones games. Khalil sees the chiseled 225-pound version of his older brother — “I don’t know what they did to him,” he jokes — and confesses he can’t quite believe all this. Years ago, if you’d told him when they first arrived in Texas how their lives would play out, he’d call you crazy.

    Ayeni left Iowa State at the end of last season for a job at Northwestern, his alma mater. Saying goodbye to Hakeem was tough, but Hakeem still calls to catch up and to say he loves him. Ayeni wants to be there on the day Hakeem graduates, the day he gets drafted into the NFL.

    “I would’ve loved to watch that and watch him be who he is, just so I could hug him and say, ‘You did it,’ ” Ayeni said. “I’ll be watching from afar and smiling ear to ear. He’s helped put Iowa State on the map.”

    Andrew Harrison is playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers these days, and Aaron is in Istanbul playing for Galatasaray in the EuroCup. They’re thrilled to watch Hakeem thriving. Their father has been hitting the road to see all four of his sons play. He made the trip to Ames for the season opener this year and later admitted he had tears in his eyes upon seeing Hakeem carrying the flag and leading his team onto the field. Hakeem’s reply: “Man, you’re getting soft on me!”

    Campbell says he sat down with Hakeem recently and asked about his mother. He wanted to better understand the source of what makes his receiver special. He can tell Sherryl Ford’s son embodies so much of what she stood for in raising him. She shines through in his personality and his play.

    “I think Hakeem is one of those guys that, when you cut him open, the thing I love about him is he has an incredible heart,” Campbell said.

    Butler_Hakeem18KU_6-1024x683.jpg
     
    Butler has a size/speed/strength combination that should impress NFL scouts. (Iowa State Athletic Communications)

    His breakout star will have a decision to make soon about whether to enter the NFL draft. Whether he goes pro this year or next, Aaron Sr. says scouts will be in for a surprise. He says Hakeem is closer to 6-feet-7 than 6-6, with a 7-1 wingspan and a 40-inch vertical and size 3XL hands. He’s even confident his son would run a sub-4.5 time in the 40. Hakeem admits he’s kept an eye on guys like Arizona State’s N’Keal Harry and Ole Miss’ A.J. Brown this season. He doesn’t get the media attention those receivers command. He can’t say he’s surprised.

    “My whole life, I’ve been counted out and under-recruited and under the radar,” Hakeem said. “I wouldn’t expect nothing less. But at some point, you’re gonna have to believe what you see. It’s not a fluke.”

    Still, the mere idea of playing pro football is something he never, ever thought would happen. A few weeks ago, he made one of his greatest catches yet. He leaped and reached over a Kansas safety to bring in a ball with his left hand, then threw the defender out of his way with his right and finished a 51-yard touchdown.

    The next morning, the highlight played on ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown.” Randy Moss broke it down live on the air.

    “There is nobody that can tell you, ‘I knew this,’ ” Aaron Sr. said. “He can’t tell you that he knew this. None of us knew this. I knew he was very athletic. But I never knew he had an opportunity to do this.”

    Sherryl never got to witness this. Hakeem has no doubt she’d be going crazy at his games if she were here today, the loudest and proudest diva in all of Jack Trice Stadium. He kneels and talks to her before every game.

    But instead of dwelling on her absence, he gets to share all of this with people he loves, the community of family and friends and coaches with whom he’s found kinship. As Khalil puts it, blood couldn’t make them any closer. Becky Martinez can’t help but get teary when she talks about wishing she could meet Sherryl. She just hopes they’ve all made her proud.

    Hakeem never really had a father. Then he lost his mother. He knows he’d be lost today without all the parental figures who’ve filled the void by taking him in and changing his life. They ensure he’ll never feel alone.

    (Top photo by David K. Purdy / Getty Images)

    What did you think of this story?
    rating-meh@2x.png
    MEH
    rating-solid@2x.png
    SOLID
    rating-awesome@2x.png
    AWESOME
    theathletic_019_bw.png
    Max Olson covers national college football for The Athletic. He previously covered the Big 12 and recruiting for ESPN.com and also worked for the Omaha World-Herald. Follow Max on Twitter @max_olson
    21  COMMENTS 
     
     
    Johnny M.
    15h ago
    14 likes
     
    Ugh. Quit making me cry. Rooting for his future.
    Sam H.
    13h ago
    4 likes
     
    Proud of you Hakeem!! Go clones.
    Aaron F.
    13h ago
    6 likes
     
    I can't be the only one that read this as an E:60 video segment. LOL! Fantastic story and fantastic player!
    John M.
    13h ago
    2 likes
     
    You got that right. And I'm a Longhorn.
    Ryan H.
    13h ago
    3 likes
     
    Sensational writing. Great story. Hakeem is a hell of a Cyclone.
    Cory T.
    12h ago
    2 likes
     
    What an incredible story and a remarkable young man. Big things for him in his future
    Lisa G.
    12h ago
    1 like
     
    Excellent storytelling! An exceptional family and community embraced and lifted this worthy young man. Looking forward Hakeem’s next chapter! (And rooting for his brother, Khalil, too)
    Jameel M.
    12h ago
    2 likes
     
    Wonderful story. Best of luck in your future Hakeem, except when playing WVU 😉
    Dwain R.
    12h ago
    3 likes
     
    These background stories are awesome! How can you not root for this guy to succeed?
    Max D.
    12h ago
    1 like
     
    What a incredible story. Great young man
    Jeff A.
    12h ago
    1 like
     
    Great article about an inspiring young man
    John W.
    11h ago
    1 like
     
    Maybe the perfect piece for Thanksgiving. I can’t believe I took so long to subscribe to such a great publication!
    Wendell E.
    11h ago
    1 like
     
    Such a good story. Like the song says the rest is still unwritten. Can’t wait to see what he does next.
    Robert L.
    11h ago
     
     
    A spectacular article! It definitely made me cry!
    Sam J.
    11h ago
     
     
    Unbelievable article Max. Well done.
    Ted H.
    11h ago
     
     
    Texas Tech fan here and he has just killed us, after reading this - it doesn't bother me anymore. Great story. Good Luck Hakeem and Khalil, I'll be rooting for y'all!
    Michael V.
    6h ago
     
     
    Fantastic article. Thanks.
    Benjamin P.
    5h ago
     
     
    Great read!!!
    Sweet Arby M.
    3h ago
     
     
    Long form sports journalism is alive and well. Great story and very well told.
    Sam B.
    1h ago
     
     
    It's nice to have stories like these, they give you people to cheer for. Everyone has a favorite team. These remind you that you still can have a player to pull for that isn't on your team. Even wish for him to do well if he plays your team. (Not win, but do well) Hakeem has more fans after this article for sure. Wish him the best going foward.
    Terry B.
    1h ago
     
     
    A bit more on field exploits for those that don't know him. Like dragging the Oklahoma secondary 20 yards into the end zone
    • Like 4
  2. On 11/11/2018 at 12:29 AM, futureman said:

    maybe he just really loves his teammates and his school and decides to pass up that money for one more year because he’s a hard working lunch-pail american hero.  

    Does his girlfriend go to UT. You know the one.

    Maybe pussy is undefeated. 

    Even against LJ

     

  3.  

    Coaching job profile: Pluses and minuses of the Texas State opening

    Coaching job profile: Pluses and minuses of the Texas State opening

    GettyImages-1030044786-1024x683.jpg
    By Chris Vannini  Nov 20, 2018comment-icon@2x.png 19 save-icon@2x.png

    When there’s a football job open in Texas, it’s going to draw a lot of attention. That’s the case in San Marcos now with the Texas State head coaching vacancy.

    Everett Withers arrived in 2016 and attempted a full overhaul of the program. He needed time, but little progress was shown though three years. He went 2-10, 2-10 and 3-8, and patience ran out.

    Texas State has been playing football since 1904, but it’s only been at the FBS level since 2012. Under Dennis Franchione, the team went 6-6 in 2013 and 7-5 the next year, but it has never made a bowl game, and it has won only 10 games the past four years.

    How good is the Texas State job? What kind of name can the Bobcats land? Here are some factors to keep in mind.

    Are ties to Texas a must?

    Withers arrived with few connections in the state. While he did coach Texas’ defensive backs from 1998-2000, he hadn’t coached near the state since and most recently had been the head coach of James Madison, an FCS school in Virginia.

    Only nine players on the Texas State roster are from outside Texas, and some of them are transfers. The next coach may need deep relationships in the state. It was a big factor in Sonny Dykes getting the SMU job, and Major Applewhite became Houston coach in part because of strong support from high school coaches. There are plenty of people within the state who will jockey for the job through their relationships.

    How much is Texas State willing to pay?

    Withers was paid a $700,000 salary, which was in the middle of the Sun Belt, but only $150,000 behind the highest-paid coach (Louisiana Lafayette’s Billy Napier). Among Group of 5 conferences, only the MAC pays lower, and there aren’t expected to be many Sun Belt or MAC job openings.

    Withers’ salary was tied with UTEP’s Dana Dimel as the lowest among FBS schools in Texas. The next closest is Frank Wilson’s $1.1 million at UTSA. Will the Bobcats pay up to compete with the rest of the state, even if in a different league?

    The facilities are decent, but it’s all relative

    Bobcat Stadium is a solid 30,000-seat on-campus stadium for Texas State’s level. An end zone complex opened in 2002 and includes meeting rooms, a strength and conditioning room and more.

    But this is Texas. There are high schools with better facilities than some Group of 5 schools. Players notice that. Texas State doesn’t have an indoor practice field, while many high schools in the state do. SMU and North Texas have indoor plans on the way. There is work to be done.

    There’s a lot of potential for this job.

    Any job in Texas has the opportunity for success. Texas State has 38,000 students. It’s a big school in a fertile recruiting area. People in college athletics feel the ceiling is high there. It also helps to be in the Sun Belt, which is more winnable than Conference USA. This should be one of the better jobs in the league. But the flip side is that the Sun Belt can also be a tougher sell to Texas recruits.

    So what names could get in the mix?

    Let’s start with some current head coaches. Incarnate Word head coach Eric Morris led the Cardinals to a share of the Southland Conference championship and an FCS playoff berth in his first season, just down the road in San Antonio. He’s a former Texas Tech receiver and assistant and would bring an Air Raid attack. Texas A&M-Commerce head coach Colby Carthel is 57-17 in six years and won the Division II national championship a year ago. Current Sam Houston State head coach K.C. Keeler had four consecutive seasons of at least 11 wins before going 6-5 this year.

    Among current assistants, West Virginia offensive coordinator Jake Spavital has ties to the area and is a former Texas A&M assistant. Ole Miss offensive coordinator Phil Longo has produced an explosive offense there and previously directed the top offense in the FCS at Sam Houston State. Texas special teams coordinator Craig Naivar was a Texas State assistant from 2004-06 and 2011-13, and Texas cornerbacks coach Jason Washington was a Texas State assistant from 2004-06 and 2011-14. North Texas offensive coordinator Graham Harrell is rising in the coaching ranks, but he might stay in Denton if Seth Littrell leaves for another job.

    Some recently fired coaches’ names have also come up. Former Kansas coach David Beaty and former Bowling Green coach Mike Jinks are both former Texas high school coaches with deep ties in the state, but they might be a tough sell coming off poor head coaching experiences.

    There will be plenty of options for this job. We’ll see where the Bobcats go.

    Other profiles: Bowling GreenColoradoLouisvilleMaryland

    (Photo: John Rivera / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

  4. 2 hours ago, Agent47 said:

    I hope Colt wins and keeps winning and becomes a Redskin legend and takes on Drew Brees in the NFC Championship game and whomever wins wins the SB and it is established that Longhorns and Austinites are magic QBs and they win championships & trophies just like Foles last year and Mayfield even and Sam wins out this year and wins the Heisman and a national championship next year and everybody goes what's up with Austin and then there is a close up on Matthew McConnaghey's Oscar and the camera is circling it like as in that famous Walter Cronkite commercial circling the tower and the haunting echoes of alright alright alright and then Dabney Coleman glows orange.

     

    I’ll have what he’s having!

    HAIL TO THE REDSKINS

    HAIL VICTORY

    BRAVES ON THE WARPATH

    FIGHT FOR OLD D.C.!!!

    We are getting the W! Happy Thanksgiving boys!

     

    • Like 1
  5. 1 hour ago, irishtexan said:

    OK. How do you propose we address the mental health crisis in this country with respect to mass shootings? Because whenever Second Amendment advocates say that the rash of mass shootings has absolutely nothing to do with the availability of firearms, magazine capacity, ARs, etc., and instead say that this is 100% a mental health issue, they seem to lack specific proposals on how to address the mental health component of this. We should have a serious discussion about it, because you're right in that this absolutely is a mental health issue. That being said, in my experience, the political leanings of Second Amendment advocates typically don't align with dedicating public resources to issues like mental health.

    As to your last statement, you are absolutely correct. You'd also be correct if you said the political leanings of advocates for anything typically don't align with dedicating public resources to issues like mental health. Mental health care is wildly underfunded. I deal with people who have MH issues every day in the context of the criminal justice system. If you have a substance abuse problem, they've got all kinds of resources and places to treat you. Inpatient, outpatient, short term, long term. There is no place for people with mental health issues. Some places have dual diagnosis treatment centers for SA + MH issues. But for MH issues alone, there's barely a fucking old band aid to stick on the problem. The court system does not have the resources. I didn't say they don't have the funding for more resources. I'm saying there are NO RESOURCES AT ALL. Probation conditions are "go see your mental health provider, make 2 appointments with your local mental health authority. Take your meds as directed." If these people could follow directions like that they wouldn't be MH people!

    My clients may sit in jail because their parents won't bond them out for their own safety, and then they sit in jail for months before a bed opens at Austin State Hospital (ASH). A fucking county jail is about the worst place to put these people. I've had two clients attempt suicide in jail this year while waiting for ASH. And one come real close a few weeks ago. They get sent to ASH, where they try to hurry them out and coach them up to competency so they can get rid of them and bring in someone else. Just rub some dirt on it and get back out there.   

    1 hour ago, Fondren & Main said:

    I don’t think anybody is writing things off.  I think they’re just offering counterpoints.  The fact is that high capacity mags are banned in California, but the killer used them anyway.  Now, we could ban them nationwide, but another counterpoint was offered.  What stops someone from buying ten magazines and walking in to start the carnage?  I’ve already suggested making the age to own weapons 25.  That’s a band aid solution at best though.  Why is law enforcement not being held accountable for abject failure either in this instance and in the case of the Florida school shooting?

     

    Every fucking time there is a warning sign. Law enforcement had prior contacts. EVERY FUCKING TIME. Whether it's mental health or terrorism.

     

    1 hour ago, GringoSalado said:

    Yes but the ban (of high cap magazines) didn't work in this case did it? Meanwhile a bunch of otherwise law-abiding people are now instant criminals because they have the wrong kind of pistol magazine. So your response to that law being totally ineffectual  is to pass another one (or ten)?

    From that perspective it doesn't seem like you particularly care about this murder as much as you are excited about making more firearms owners into criminals for no good reason.

     

    It's not the mags. This happened in CA, where they are banned, as you pointed out. There's millions of them now. The horse is out of the barn. 

     

    59 minutes ago, Trey3216 said:

    A lot of gun advocates have offered a myriad of solutions on this and TOS before.   Honest ones. I could get behind the idea of requiring a concealed carry type course for people to buy a firearm.   It’s not unreasonable.  I could get behind a 14 day wait.   Several other items.   But the constant maniacal rants about mag size is almost funny to me.  Very few have the courage to encounter a gunman when they aren’t armed similarly.    Someone trained with a firearm isn’t delayed by more than about 3.5 seconds changing mags, especially with a pistol.  I have a pistol with 10 rd mags.   I can fire accurately while holding 2 mags in my non-firing hand.  It’s easy to change.   That’s 30 rounds I can fire, highly accurately, in less than 15 seconds.   Does it matter if I have 20 round mags or 10?   

     

    Gun safety classes would be a great idea. I think it would be constitutional. Background checks for every sale. Fine. Database for MH people. Fine. It's already on form 4473!

    I'd agree with all those things. But it don't mean shit, it'll never pass. They couldn't even pass a safety class.

     

     

    20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    It wouldn't matter much for you.

    It likely would matter for a much less experienced shooter, which several of these guys have been.

    No measure prevents EVERY incident.  Just like seatbelts don't prevent EVERY death (you have a head-on with a truck at 100 mph, seatbelts aren't going to matter).  But just because in SOME accidents, seatbelts won't help, doesn't mean seatbelts are a bad idea.

    I think there's a lot we could try, and some ideas that we probably shouldn't because they either go to far or would be mostly worthless, which we could perhaps figure out if we could have a meaningful discussion about reasonable gun control.  But we can't.  Not at all.  Hell, look on this thread, how ANY mention of gun control is met with the straw man response of "you can't just ban all guns!"

    I think we the people have thoroughly demonstrated that we cannot have a productive conversation about guns.  Ever.  At all.  So nothing is going to happen.  That's the way it is.

     Brisket, any idiot can swap a mag in short order. Crowds don't require aim. Mass murder is not a skill, it is a state of mind.

    The only way to stop deaths caused by firearms is to ban firearms, and that's not going to happen.

    • Like 2
  6. Y'all are just pissing in to the wind. With respect to firearms, nobody's going to do anything. And there's nothing anyone can do.

    You can replicate this bar shooting with any common firearm. Multiple "normal" capacity mags, multiple firearms, where there is a will, there is a way. ARs aren't going anywhere. 30 round PMags or extended Glock mags aren't either. Wouldn't matter if they did. A crowd and your grandpa's semi-automatic shotgun loaded with buckshot will still fill the morgue.

    There is a mental health crisis in this country, and we've done literally nothing to address it.

     

    • Like 1
  7. 22 hours ago, ocugolf said:

    So this is an extension of my post in the Surly Dad thread. Short story: wife and i were having our first December 8. We lost her on November 2. So, to get out of the house and help ease her mind around the due date, I’m surprising her by taking her to New Orleans December 6-10. Got free rooms through Caesar’s at the Hilton Riverside. Get in around 5 on Thursday the 6th. No real budget. Give me what and where you’d do. We’ve both never been other than 21 during Mardi Gras, so i remember basically nothing. So we are open to anything.

    Take her to some really nice meals. I'd recommend: Doris Metropolitan, GW Fins, Upperline, Irene's, Restaurant R'evolution, Shaya, Restaurant August

    Walk the length of Royal Street during the day. Let her look around and shop, while you walk with her and drink beer on the street. I prefer a tasty Yuengling.

    Sorry for your loss.

  8. 8 hours ago, SDG said:

    Look we all come across dumb asses all the time; we don’t have the right to kill them. Watch the video...

     

    6 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

    nobody made that guy the jury / judge / executioner. just curious, which one of those offenses warrants the death penalty ?

    in my book, that's not nearly enough justification to murder someone / get pounded in the ass in prison / possibly see your wife get prison time.

    his wife was a deputy, she makes one call and a unit is there within minutes. she made the wrong decision that night by letting her husband 'handle it'. she made the second wrong decision by not pulling her husband off the guy. she made the third wrong decision by encouraging the outcome.

    she'll have time to think it over in her jail cell. im sure prison is just like Orange is the New Black !

     

    4 hours ago, relapse98 said:

    Putting aside the fact that it wasn't self defense and this idiot should have never gotten involved.

     

    What on earth changed between the 2 trials? That's a huge swing.

    It was self defense. Hernandez assaulted Thompson first. But the force used by Thompson was found to be excessive  by a jury (beyond what was justified by Texas Penal Code 9.31: when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful force.)

    Certainly he intended the act, I doubt he intended the result. That's all I'm saying.

  9. A friend of mine is the defense attorney.

    Jury was hung 11 to 1 not guilty in first trial, with the one juror revealing after the trial they did not believe in using force to defend one’s self. Should have never been on the jury, but the trial judge gave little time for voir dire.

    Second jury then convicts the guy.

    My understanding is that the deceased was drunk, drove to Denny’s drunk, with a kid in the car (felony DWI), whipped his dick out in front of the accused and underage girls to piss in the parking lot, the accused calls him out and the deceased hits him. D chokes him out, perhaps excessively. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Like 1
    • Fuck You 3
×
×
  • Create New...