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Converts are the best. They justify long hours away from family. They give meaning to 100-hour work weeks. They challenge you like no one else. They entice you to gamble a precious scholarship. They’re the ones you remember forever.
Converts are the reason Northern Illinois linebackers coach Tom Matukewicz got into coaching. He isn’t the only one. Without the converts, coaches wouldn’t see boys become men. The job wouldn’t offer the same fulfillment. It would be wins and losses … and that’s it.
“You get to see kids come in a certain way and see three or four years later how they turned out,” Matukewicz said.
Senior linebacker Jordan Delegal is one of those kids. He came to NIU in search of a second chance, already having endured the deaths of his parents, a dead end at Marshall, and a stint at junior college. He’ll leave after the Huskies play their GoDaddy.com Bowl game Sunday against Arkansas State, knowing he’s as much a convert as Matukewicz ever coached.
‘WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME’
Delegal never was ready for Huntington, W.Va. Delegal said the diversity he knew so well growing up in Miami didn’t exist at Marshall.
This didn’t stop him from having a good time. Maybe he was naive, too.
Four years ago, on a buddy’s 21st birthday, shots started early and kept coming. The night had Delegal after the first sip. It carried him and three friends to Huntington’s bars.
What happened next depends on perspective.
Leaving the club at closing time, Delegal’s group was the target of a racial slur that ordinarily, Delegal would have ignored. But alcohol had erased his self-restraint. A fight broke out. When the cops arrived, accusations flew.
The three white men who sparked the incident said Delegal’s group – which consisted of four black men – tried to rob them. To this day, Delegal denies the allegation.
“We had nothing on us to say that we robbed them,” Delegal said. “We didn’t reach into their pockets. We didn’t grab anything off of them.”
But in Huntington, Delegal said it didn’t matter.
“It was our word against theirs,” Delegal said. “We ended up getting picked up.”
When he was younger, Delegal caused plenty of mischief. But that October night in 2007 was the first – and still the only – time he was in trouble with the law.
When police called Delegal’s grandmother, Thelma Brown, the next morning, she told them she didn’t know a Jordan Delegal who would be in trouble, and hung up. The police called back, and Brown did the same.
“I honestly thought it was someone else,” said Brown, who helped raise Delegal.
The charges were dropped, but the lasting news reports from the night were polarizing. They mentioned a “failed attempt to rob an ATM customer,” and “three counts of battery.” The racial slurs Delegal said sparked the fight didn’t show up in the report.
Delegal didn’t want to leave Marshall. Brown didn’t think her grandson had any choice. Marshall coach Mark Snyder didn’t immediately boot Delegal off the team, but he gave no reassurances.
“If he’s not saying you’re on the team now,” Brown told her grandson, “he’s not going to later.”
Delegal says accounts of the incident were inaccurate, but he doesn’t shirk responsibility. He knew better.
“I look at it, and I shake my head at myself because I definitely didn’t use my best judgment,” Delegal said. “... It was just really not the best situation for me to be in. Wrong place, wrong time, but I’ve grown so much from that.”
BACK TO JUNIOR VARSITY
Mark Guandolo also coaches for the converts. Delegal always represented a challenge.
During workouts before Delegal’s sophomore season at Chaminade-Madonna High, Guandolo tried to get the most out of him. Guandolo pushed his limits. He asked for more work, another rep. Delegal quit.
When his uncle found him at home, Delegal knew he wasn’t staying long.
“He nearly kicked my butt all the way back to practice,” Delegal said. Delegal returned with a mea culpa and asked to be allowed back on the team.
“I told him he could come back, but he had to play on the JV,” Guandolo said. “He didn’t last long until we pulled him back up to varsity.”
When Delegal returned from Marshall, his future was anything but certain. After a conversation with Guandolo, he convinced his coach that football still was something he wanted to pursue.
Guandolo found Delegal a spot at Joliet Junior College. It was JV all over again, but Delegal gladly accepted it. At that point, all he wanted was a second chance.
“I was just trying to get back on my feet,” Delegal said. “It’s crazy how Coach G never quit on me. When I went back to him, he said, ‘You must really be one of my sons, because if anybody else went through this, I don’t know if I would have the same response.’ ”
‘I WANT TO BE THAT SMILE’
Circumstances were aligned for him to fail. Guandolo has to admit, most kids in Delegal’s situation would. But that “bright light” he possessed kept intensifying.
From a young age, Delegal resembled his parents. But he never knew Regina Brown Washington or Lucious Delegal, who played football at Miami in the early 1980s. Their deaths when he was a year old were horrific. The details remain scattered on the Internet. More than two decades later, Delegal prefers to avoid it.
“The way that it was written out, the way that I can feel that my family would respond to that, is very, very sensitive,” Delegal said. “That’s why, out of all the darkness that comes from that story, I try to build as much light as possible because I know my family has been through a lot of stuff.
“It’s crazy how my family is affected by it, but I’m not affected by it enough to where I can’t do something about it. I will do something about that. I want to be that smile they have.”
Delegal thinks about his parents every day and knows their memory lives with him. After the Marshall incident, he embraced that burden to make him and his family proud.
Behind a renewed focus, Delegal took care of business at Joliet Junior College. In one season, he received JUCO All-America honors and was named first team all-conference and all-region. The leadership he consistently demonstrated for NIU this past season started to take root.
“I can’t be more proud. I’m beaming with pride,” Guandolo said. “What he’s gone through, and where he’s come from, and where he’s come now is just great to see.”
CONVERSION COMPLETE
The silence seemed like it wouldn’t end. On the other end of the phone, Delegal’s grandmother was holding back tears. For a moment, Delegal had thought about bringing up his parents’ death. Instead, he settled on a simple question.
“Are you proud of me?” he asked.
“He asks me that all the time. ‘Grandma, are you proud of me?’ ” Brown said. “The answer always is yes. ... He came out real good because he didn’t stop. He kept striving to do better and better every year.”
There’s no question, Delegal is the pride of his family. When his younger cousins play football or baseball, they always ask for Delegal’s No. 29.
Last month, he became the first person in Brown’s family to graduate from college, earning a communications degree. After the ceremony, she said Delegal broke down crying on her shoulder.
His conversion was complete.