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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/content/sports/epaper/2004/09/17/a1b_george_0917.html
Friday, September 17, 2004
Saturday a special day for Morgan
Ex-Ohio State recruit wound up at N.C. State after horrific automobile accident
By John Delong
JOURNAL REPORTER
RALEIGH
When DaJuan Morgan suffered multiple injuries in an automobile accident a little more than a year ago, he would not allow himself to cry in front of rescue workers and his mother.
But months later, when Morgan was told that Ohio State had taken his football scholarship offer off the table, he broke down and cried for a full half-hour.
Football players can endure physical pain. Dealing with shattered dreams is something altogether different.
And that makes Morgan another of the many interesting story lines in Saturday's showdown between Ohio State and N.C. State at Carter-Finley Stadium.
Morgan, a wide receiver from Riviera Beach, Fla., wound up signing with the Wolfpack last February. He's still working his way up the depth chart and won't likely see much action on offense Saturday, but he is a starter on State's special-teams units.
"This game is going to be special for me," Morgan said earlier this week. "It's going to be different - just coming out to play Ohio State after what I've been through, knowing that I could be on that sideline but instead I'm on this sideline. I have a goal to show them what they're missing. I start on punt return, so I want to block a kick or something. I want to do something big."
State, 1-0 after a 42-0 win over Richmond on Sept. 4, rates as a slight underdog against the ninth-ranked Buckeyes. Ohio State is 2-0.
Morgan was a prized recruiting target after his junior year at Suncoast High, rated as the No. 27 wide-receiver prospect in the country by Rivals.com. In the summer leading up to his senior year, he was heavily recruited by the likes of Oklahoma, Florida, Tennessee - and, of course, Ohio State and N.C. State.
Then came the horrific events of Aug. 22, when Morgan, his brother and two friends were involved in a head-on collision with a truck. Morgan, in the back seat, was knocked unconscious briefly and was trapped in the wreckage. He wound up suffering a dislocated hip, broken thumb, and cuts and bruises.
The memories remain haunting, especially the panic he felt when he was trapped and someone told him that gas was spewing and the car could catch on fire.
"My hip locked on me," he said. "It was the worst pain I've ever felt. I couldn't move. I heard a voice say 'This car is leaking, it might catch on fire,' so like, I was panicking. I got to get out. The driver, Melvin, he was slumped over, the blood was pouring out of his mouth. I heard my little brother screaming and crying. He thought I was dead."
Help arrived quickly, and all four were pulled out of the wreckage alive.
And at that point, Morgan vividly remembers making sure not to cry.
"The ambulance came, and then the chopper came, and then my mom came. I was lying there on the stretcher and she said, 'Baby, you all right?' I almost cried. But she was so strong, and she has so much faith, I didn't want to cry in front of her."
The dislocated hip ended Morgan's senior season before it started and put his football future in serious jeopardy. Morgan missed four weeks of school and needed eight weeks of mending before he could even start serious rehabilitation. He was told that he would be able to play football again, but the question was, would the injury discourage recruiters from continuing to pursue him.
Ohio State and N.C. State remained interested, however, and each kept its scholarship offer on the table.
Morgan took his official visit to Columbus in late November, watched the Buckeyes beat Purdue in overtime in front of 104,000 at Ohio Stadium, and came away mesmerized. He loved the atmosphere. He loved the thought of playing for the defending national champions. And most of all, he wanted to play for Coach Jim Tressel.
"When I first met Tressel, I mean, I just loved Tressel," he said. "There was something about him, I wanted to play for that man. I mean, he ran everything so smooth when they were in meetings before the game, things like that. I just like the way he addressed the players. I came home from my visit, and I was like, 'Man, that was nice. I want to play for this team. I like this.'"
He committed to Ohio State shortly thereafter, more than two months before national signing day in February.
But then, things turned bizarre.
As national signing day approached, Morgan was informed that Tressel and Bill Conley, Ohio State's recruiting coordinator, would visit. Morgan said he was under the impression that Tressel was coming to meet with his parents and firm up any remaining details.
Instead, only Conley showed up. And when he did, he met with Morgan's coach, Jimmie Bell, not Morgan. And he had shocking news.
The scholarship offer was being retracted because of grade issues, even though Morgan had a 3.25 grade-point average and had already scored 18 on his ACT - easily above requirements to play Division I football.
A provision in Ohio State's admissions requirements says that students must rank in the top 50 percent of their class, or they must be approved by an admissions board. Morgan, they said, was two percentage points shy at Suncoast.
"I knew something was going on when Conley left," Morgan said. "My coach had a look on his face I'd never seen. He said, 'Coach Conley didn't tell you why they were coming here, did he?' And I was like, no, I thought we were going to talk like we always do, and then they were going to come meet my parents.
"So my coach is like, 'OK, here's what is going on. Ohio State has changed to the Ivy League something and their standards are higher and there is something called admission fees and you have to have points add up to 50 percent, and you're missing two percent.' I was still lost, so I said, 'Coach, break it down for me, I still don't know what you're talking about.
"And he said, 'Right now, your scholarship's being put on hold.'"
The impact was more powerful than a head-on collision.
Morgan said he immediately broke down and started crying.
"I was like, 'I committed to Ohio State, I cut off everyone else, I didn't take all my visits, I gave them my word - and here it is two weeks from signing date and this comes?' I just stayed there like 30 minutes crying. My mom called for me, and I couldn't even talk to her.
"I mean, everybody in the community knew where I was going. It was always, Ohio State, Ohio State. And it was like, after all I'd been through, more adversity now. All that rehabbing I did, it was in anticipation of coming back 100 percent so I could play for the Buckeyes."
Morgan tracked down Conley and met with him in Fort Lauderdale later in the day. Conley offered several options, including prep school or grayshirting; i.e., enrolling a quarter or two late.
But the damage had been done.
"I was like, 'Nah. I worked hard to keep my grades over 3.0 so I wouldn't have to go to prep school,'" Morgan said. "That was out of the picture. And coming in in January was out of the picture, too."
Bell contacted N.C. State on Morgan's behalf shortly thereafter, and State made it clear that its offer was still on the table. Morgan visited Raleigh the next weekend, committed on the spot, and wound up signing on national signing day.
Questions arose quickly about Ohio State's motives for pulling the offer, especially after Morgan's grades were examined further. Suncoast is a school with accelerated programs, not a regular public high school, so the fact that Morgan didn't rank in the top half of his class was skewed.
"I was in a college prep program," Morgan said. "We have so many top-notch programs, we're really like a small college. My guidance counselor, she said had I been in a public school, I'd have been near the top of my class. And the thing is, they knew my grades all along. When they started recruiting me, I had a 3.2. My grades didn't change at all."
And there were indications that Ohio State might have wanted to free up a scholarship to recruit other receivers who entered the picture late in the recruiting process. Another wide receiver, Miles Williams, also had an offer pulled after making a commitment, and wound up at Michigan State.
So what really happened?
"I think they weren't sure about me being able to play, and they were taking a big risk on me, and I think they probably had their eye on another player," Morgan said. "They were recruiting others (Dwayne Jarrett and Fred Davis, who went to Southern Cal, and Albert Dukes, who signed with Ohio State), and those guys were probably ready to come in and play right away."
Morgan said he has tried to get over his bitterness, but he still feels betrayed.
"The thing that hurt me the most was they didn't tell me to my face, they left the message with my coach," Morgan said. "I never talked to Coach Tressel. He never called to apologize."
Conley, coincidentally, resigned last spring after 17 seasons as Ohio State's recruiting coordinator to enter private business.
"I think they know they screwed up," Morgan said. "My guidance counselor was from Ohio State, and a lot of the alumni sent her e-mails saying how they thought that was crap, and their wishes go out to me and good luck. So I think they know they messed up."
Tressel declined to comment on the Morgan situation earlier this week, saying he could not talk about recruits who wound up elsewhere.
On signing day, however, Tressel did address the situations of Morgan and Williams to reporters who regularly cover Ohio State football.
"You'd have to take a hard look at what retract means," he said to the Akron Beacon-Journal. "When all the visits are taken and all the evaluations are made, that's when scholarships are offered. When a national letter and a Big Ten tender is mailed and when it's signed, that's the only two times it's official."
Morgan said he is trying to move on.
"I've put a lot of pressure on myself this week, but I'm trying to relax about it," Morgan said. "I've talked to my parents, and we don't have no animosity to Ohio State now. I mean, at first in the process, that happened. But I'm a man. I overcame that.
"God put me here for a reason. It's a better climate. I'm closer to home than I would have been in Columbus, and now I'll get to go home to play Miami and Florida State. And maybe I'll an opportunity to showcase my talents here quicker."
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/content/sports/epaper/2004/09/17/a1b_george_0917.html
Former Suncoast star Morgan beats life's blows
By Dave George
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 17, 2004
This started out as such a simple story. Fantastic athlete, wonderful student, outstanding reward. Even better, Da'Juan Morgan is one of Palm Beach County's own, a Suncoast High School graduate strong enough in every area to cull through offers from a wide selection of prime-time colleges.
Then came the tornado, and then a career-threatening auto accident, and finally a devastating blindside hit from a little man in a red sweater vest.
It's truly a wonder that this resilient kid has managed to make sense of it all. At 18, he has summoned all his energy and good intentions and anxieties, too, into one attainable goal. On Saturday afternoon, with mom and dad and little brother and nine other relatives watching from the stands, Morgan means to block an Ohio State punt.
Sure, that might be a real kick in the gut, but it would be one of Morgan's choosing, and that would be a very nice change.
"I knew this game was on the schedule when I signed," Morgan said by phone from his new football home at North Carolina State. "I have no animosity toward Ohio State. This just gives me an opportunity to show them what they're missing."
Coach Jimmie Bell has long taught that iron strain of positive thinking at Suncoast. Nothing else would do when the freak tornado of Aug. 8, 2003, tore through Riviera Beach and chased Morgan, with his entire family, into a closet for protection. Their home was badly damaged, requiring months of reconstruction to be inhabitable.
A few weeks later Morgan and two other Suncoast players were involved in a head-on car collision on their way home from football practice. Melvin Simmons Jr. was in critical condition with serious head injuries when Bell and the Suncoast team arrived at St. Mary's Medical Center to present him with a game ball from their first victory of the season. Morgan was in better shape, but because of a dislocated hip that doctors initially feared might be similar to Bo Jackson's injury, his senior season of football was completely wiped out.
"I was really scared," Morgan said this week. "That was the first thing I wanted to know in the hospital, would I be able to play football. I was dying to get out of bed, I couldn't even sit up on my own."
Weeks of painful therapy and work with a personal trainer solved the physical problems. Incredibly, Morgan won a state track title in April in the 400-meter run. In the end, it was only the man in the sweater vest, Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, who had the power to break Morgan's resolve.
Temporarily.
"I always tell the kids," Bell said, "that life gives you the exam first and teaches you the course much later. That came into play after Da'Juan committed early to Ohio State. Coach Tressel came by my office a couple of days before signing day. I knew there was a problem because he didn't want to talk to Da'Juan, didn't want to pull him out of class."
The Buckeyes, like most major schools, were dangling scholarship offers before more high school stars than they actually could accommodate, figuring some would naturally fall by the wayside because of grades and others would simply choose another program. More to the point, Morgan's crash injury was a concern.
Tressel told Bell something else. He said that Morgan, a 3.25 GPA student at a college-prep magnet school, did not pass the muster of Ohio State's academic screening committee because he was not in the top 50 percent of his graduating class.
"I tried to keep a poker face when I saw Da'Juan in the hallway," said Bell, "but I don't think I did a good job. I took him into a quiet room and told him what had happened. Da'Juan tried to hold it in but he broke down in tears. He said, 'I've done everything I was supposed to do but it still didn't work.' I told him that it didn't work out at that place, true enough, but God wanted him to take his story to another place."
Too late for the a calm and reasonable round of official visits, Bell got Morgan immediately up to North Carolina State. That's where he signed, turning down offers from Florida, Oklahoma and Tennessee. There was a degree of doubt about his physical status at every school, but the Wolfpack stood by its promise and added one of the state's most highly rated recruits as a result.
Morgan can take a punch, all right. On Saturday, he'll hope to catch a pass, too, if the score ever settles into one of those spots were true freshmen make their way onto the field. And if there's a chance to make a big hit on special teams, will he endeavor to remind the Buckeyes' coaching staff of the power and speed that so interested them?
"Most definitely," he said.
Suddenly it's all so simple again.
