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+---- Thread: *The Most Hated Man In College Football (/showthread.php?tid=27608)
*The Most Hated Man In College Football - Southie - 11-19-2020
At six foot four and three hundred pounds of raw muscle, Devonte Crook looks like a football scouts dream. His long, graceful strides in the forty-yard dash and explosive agility during the twenty-yard shuttle belies his natural athletic ability, he would be the perfect football player if it wasn’t for his checkered past. Born in the slums of Chicago, Illinois on January, Fourth, Two-Thousand Nineteen, Devonte grew up in a hellish nightmare of inner city street crime and drug abuse. By the time he was only ten years old, he had already seen two people die in front of him. This exposure to violence at a young age changes people and it’s had a devastating effect on the development of Devonte Crook.
It's hard to know who Devonte Crook truly is as a man. On the outside, he's a soft-spoken quiet guy. Despite his talent as a football player, he's not someone who's hungry for the spotlight and after the trauma that he's experienced in his life it's easy to see why. Internally, Crook struggles with his own demons. He struggles with the violent nature of his past and his life as a football player. Football is an inherently violent game and one needs to be skilled in violence to succeed at it. Yet violence is any many ways just as addictive as any other drug. This is a fact that Devonte Crook knows all too well.
Five Hundred And Forty Seven days, Thirteen Thousand, One Hundred and Twenty-Eight Hours or Eighteen Million Nine Hundred Four Thousand and Three Hundred Twenty minutes. That is how long Devonte Crook spent incarcerated in Jacksonville Correctional Center, a minimum security prison in Jacksonville, Illinois. Eighteen months. The worst eighteen months of Devonte Crook's life. Eighteen months trapped in an eight by six foot concrete box. He watched his eighteen birthday come and go locked away inside a cage like an animal, far from the glitz and glamour he had acquired during his highschool football years. He went from the USA Today All-USA high school football team to another number in America’s overcrowded prison system.
When he was released, Crook was desperate for the familiarity and comfort Football provided, however few high level college programs wanted to take the risk of recruiting a convicted criminal. Especially given the violent nature of his crime. After an exhaustive search, he found a Junior College team willing to give him a shot at redemption in small-town Texas. Brenham, Texas is a city of only fifteen thousand people and as far from the bright lights of The Windy City as you can get. Life in the Lone Star State was an adjustment from life in the harsh, cold midwest inner city he had grown up in but it was a much needed refreshment after his time in prison.
It didn’t take long for Crook to readjust to life as a football player and with the low skill level of most Junior College teams, Devonte absolutely dominated the SWJCFC . He racked up two sacks and a forced fumble in his debut game with the Blinn Buccaneers. That game was the single happiest moment in Devonte Crook’s life. It was the first time that he felt he had truly escaped the horror of his childhood and incarceration. The rest of Devonte’s season was just as dominant as he finished the year with twenty-two sacks and eleven forced fumbles. For his effort that season, he was named a Junior College All American and secured the NJCAA defensive player of the year award
If Devonte Crook were a typical player, this sort of season performance would’ve opened a world of opportunities for him but his criminal record still haunted him and he was left with only a few Division One schools to transfer too. Somehow through sheer luck one of the teams to reach out to him were the storied Michigan Wolverines, firmly entrenched in the middle of a rebuild and desperate for high level talent on the defensive side of the ball. Crook’s transfer to Michigan was not without its cost however as he the domestic nature of his crime made him an instantly disliked figure on the University’s Campus. In Junior College, Crook was seen as just another face looking for redemption after the derailment of his promising football career. At Michigan, He was seen as a monster unleashed on the hallowed halls of The Big House. His first game at home against Rutgers was marred by a sizable protest and a hail of audible jeers rained down upon him as he stepped onto the field of The Big House for the first time. The game was relatively uneventful for Crook as he ended the day with Four tackles and One Tackle for loss. It was his first rivalry game against Ohio State where people would get the first glimpse of the athletic greatness Crook was capable of. He ended the day with three sacks and two forced fumbles, completely dominating the Buckeyes offensive line in a Twenty-Eight to Three blowout. He would finish his freshman campaign with the Wolverines with twelve sacks and three forced fumbles.
Despite the constant barrage of violent threats and insults he faced, both from rivals and his own fans, Crook would remain stubbornly dedicated to his craft as a football player. Perhaps out of a love of the game or perhaps out of sheer desperation. By the time Crook took his first step onto the field with the Wolverines in his second season, he had molded himself into a stalwart figure hardened to battle in the trenches. In his sophomore season Devonte Crook would unleash a reign of terror on the Big Ten that would rival the greatest campaigns in the history of College football. Fifteen sacks, six forced fumbles, twenty tackles for loss and two defensive touchdowns. Crook’s fifteen sacks set the school record for Michigan and would rank as fifth all time in Big Ten History. For his success that season he was awarded The Nagurski-Woodson award for defensive player of the year and the Smith-Brown defensive lineman of the year award.
Those who thought Crook's second season was a fluke were terribly mistaken when his Junior Season turned out even more domintant than his first. He would score twenty sacks that year, breaking the Big Ten confrence record and becoming the first player in confrence history to break out of the teens. He would score the Chuck Bednarik Award that year though he would miss out on the Bronko Nagurski Trophy. With his name firmly entrenched in the college football record books, Crook decided it was time to take his talents to the professional level and he declared for the two-thousand and forty one DSFL draft.
Critics will say that Devonte Crook is nothing more than a thug and a womanbeater who's spent his entire life coasting on his natural athletic talent, The few fans that Crook has will say he's the most unlikely underdog in Football history, A giant of man despertately searching for redemption for his past mistakes.
What lies ahead for Devonte Crook in the DSFL remains unknown, but what is known is his dedication to the sport and the journey of absolution that he appears to be on.
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