Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Children, football connect ex-players
David Hood has been a dad and a college football player and sometimes he had to do both at the same time.
Last year during summer workouts at Temple, little David IV, then 3, tagged along with his dad for a few days. Up at 5 a.m., Hood brought his son to the locker room, the training table, the practice field — where the youngster stretched with the team — and then the weight room.
“It was adorable,” Temple Coach Geoff Collins said.
Exactly how many major college football players are fathers is difficult to know. The NCAA does not keep track of student-athletes who are parents, and schools often don’t share such information. But it is certainly not uncommon in college football.
Hood, who was Temple’s leading rusher last season, was one of four Owls players parenting young children in 2017, including Hood’s former roommate and fellow running back Ryquell Armstead. Neither is married, but both are raising their child with the child’s mother. They each receive plenty of help from other family members and say Temple coaches have been supportive and accommodating. And, of course, they can turn to each other for encouragement and guidance on juggling school, fatherhood and football.
Hood, 21, has moved on from football, graduating from Temple and leaving a year of football eligibility behind after sustaining a concussion this past spring. He has decided to focus solely on a promising career as a rapper.
The native of Atlantic City,
N.J., arrived at Temple in 2014 as a father, something he kept hidden from coaches who were recruiting him, worried they would pull his offer. He was living with his girlfriend, pregnant at the time, when then-Temple assistant Francis Brown came for an in-home visit.
“I told her to put the biggest hoodie on she could find,” Hood said with a laugh. “They cannot know. So they didn’t know until I got there.”
When he got to Temple, Hood found that Coach Matt Rhule and his staff wanted to help him be a parent and a student-athlete.
Freshman and sophomore football players were required to live on campus, but Hood was allowed to get a place off campus with his girlfriend, Tiffany Gordon, and David IV.
“I was coming from class and going straight home to my son and my girl,” Hood said.
Now at Baylor, Rhule said he believes educating every man in his program about fatherhood is part of his job. Rhule held a weekly voluntary class on fatherhood last season at Baylor, led by his father Denny, 69, a former minister.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘Hey, I want kids to be great fathers,’ ” Rhule said. “It’s another thing to give them the tools and resources not just for them but for us (coaches). Look at what it really means to be a father and how to do it. That’s the first thing is giving formal training and not just giving lip service, but having something there. The second thing is: understanding as a coach how hard it can be to be a father.”