A hungry Da’Jon Terry had just received his food at the drive-through in the Sonic parking lot when his phone rang.
It was Les Miles, then the head coach at Kansas, calling to offer Terry his first scholarship to play Division I college football. Flustered but elated, Terry tossed his food outside of the car.
“I was just shocked,” Terry said after practice this week. “It was amazing.”
A few months earlier as a senior, he started his first season playing football in high school after his mother told him he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a nurse without a scholarship. His coach at Meridian High School in Mississippi told the 6-foot-3, 321-pounder he had an idea of how he could punch his ticket to college.
“It’s crazy. I wanted to be a nurse when I was growing up,” Terry said. “But my 12th-grade year, my coach came up to me — we weren’t very fortunate when I was younger. My mom said if I didn’t get a scholarship, I wouldn’t be able to go to college. My coach said this is a way to get a scholarship here. ‘If you’re good at it, you can take it a long way.’ I gave it a try and after that day, I went home and talked to my mom. She said if you want to try it, try it.”
When No. 6 Oklahoma (7-0, 4-0 Big 12) faces Kansas (5-2, 2-2) Saturday in Lawrence, Terry will return to the place where he spent his first two seasons after signing with Miles and the Jayhawks back in 2018.
Having played just one year of high school football, Terry had to adjust fast to life in the Power 5.
“(Those two years) helped me grow as a player because when I first got in, they taught me just small things about the game of football,” Terry said. “I didn't know a lot about that so it helped me slow the game down to a slower pace and it helped me grow as a man. Every college I've been to they’ve always tried to help me grow as a man and that was the first one that I had been to.”
Redshirt senior defensive lineman Da'Jon Terry on Aug. 1.
After appearing in 11 total games and recording 16 tackles and two sacks in two seasons at Kansas, Terry transferred to Tennessee. In two years with the Vols, Terry shined, collecting 35 tackles and three sacks, which caught Sooners head coach Brent Venables attention
“I fell in love with him the first time I spoke to him, and then every conversation (after that) it was more of the same,” Venables said this summer. “Every conversation I had and every question, well beyond the field, I just wanted to find out who he was as a human being, as a leader, as a young person chasing his dreams, as a teammate, that was important to me as well and to us. We haven't done a whole lot yet on the field with him but he got all the other stuff right from a transition standpoint.
“Being a summer guy, he doesn't have a resume with us yet when it comes to the playing and the improvement and all that kind of stuff but he's all those things I just said. And that fits the mold of what we want. His focus and his toughness and his ambition will make that group better.”
Terry is starting to build his resume at OU as he’s appeared in each of its first seven games and compiled 11 tackles, including 2.5 for loss and a sack in Oklahoma’s 34-30 win over Texas.
When he strolls into a sold-out David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium at 11 a.m. on Fox, Terry, now pursuing his master’s degree in human relations at Oklahoma, will be reminded how far he’s come and how grateful he is for that phone call he received from Miles.
“I feel like I’ve come a long way,” Terry said. “With my fundamentals and my just knowledge of the game, because when I went to Kansas I had only played one year of high school football, so I really didn't know that much about football. Through my years, I've learned a lot about the game of football. … It’s crazy (how far I’ve come).”
