For DaJuan and DeAndre Morgan, the college life brings a lot less stress. Following a hot Wednesday afternoon practice, DaJuan, a redshirt junior, walks under a tent, finds shade and flashes a big smile.
“Man, this is great,” he says.
Four years ago, the Morgans had a different outlook on life. The carefree, laid-back brothers were involved in a serious car accident which left DaJuan in the hospital. Many scholarships remained, but the school he committed to pulled his scholarship less than two weeks before signing day. He and his brother were far from all smiles in January and February of 2004.
The scholarship
After his official visit to Ohio State, DaJuan knew where he wanted to go. He had liked Florida, but Ohio State received his first official visit and left him with little doubt.
Despite a serious car accident that forced him to sit out his senior season, some schools kept their offer while others “were apprehensive and backed off.”
The trip to Ohio State was one he still remembers vividly. Morgan was there for a November game in Columbus against Purdue. Not only that, College GameDay was there, and he met Lee Corso.
“I went up, met him and shook his hand,” he said. “I knew I wanted to be there. I committed to them as soon as I got home.”
Immediately after, he called his recruiting coach, Bill Conley, and made the announcement. He told other colleges he was done with visits and he “didn’t want them to waste their time.”
DaJuan was happy. His decision was over, and he was looking forward to college – that is until less than two weeks before signing day when Conley called DaJuan.
Conley told him that he and Ohio State coach Jim Tressel were going to come and see DaJuan, sometime between 8:30 and 9 a.m.
That morning, DaJuan was waiting in a gym class when a few of his friends came up to him around 8:40 a.m. One friend told him he just saw the coaches heading to the parking lot and leaving.
“Everyone in the school and community knew where I was going, so when they saw Ohio State coaches, they thought of me,” he said.
Quickly, DaJuan found his high school football coach, Jimmie Bell. The Ohio State coaches had talked with Bell.
Bell looked at him and asked if he knew why they came to the school.
Morgan didn’t. He believed the coaches wanted to talk about the scholarship and to swing by his house and talk with his parents.
Since DaJuan had a free class during the next period, his coach asked him to stop by. When DaJuan got to the office, his coach took him to a “designated area” and closed the door behind him.
“When he did that, I knew something was wrong,” Morgan said.
As the two settled in, the coach took a deep breath.
The message caused Morgan’s heart to sink immediately. Bell told him Ohio State had supposedly switched to an Ivy League school with its academic standards and that Morgan had to be at 50 percent of his graduating class to get a scholarship.
“Coach, give it to me straight,” Morgan told his coach.
Bell told him his scholarship had been “put on hold due to admission fees.”
DaJuan broke down and cried. For the next 30 minutes, he sat there in his coach’s office in tears.
“I had my mind set on Ohio State – everyone behind me knew I was going there, and a week and a half before signing day they go and do this to me,” Morgan said.
A 3.2 core GPA. A weighted GPA just less than 3.6. And he had been cleared by the NCAA clearinghouse since his sophomore year in high school. But Ohio State couldn’t admit him, Tressel and Conley had told his coach.
“I knew it was a cop-out,” DaJuan said. “I knew in the back of my mind that they got another receiver or another athlete. And he was going to be able to play, and everyone was unsure about me.”
The wreck
As DaJuan and DeAndre jumped into the backseat of a PT Cruiser with teammate Melvin Simmons and his father, Melvin Simmons Sr., DaJuan said he “had a weird feeling.”
During the ride home after a Suncoast High School football practice in Riviera Beach, Fla., Simmons Sr. noticed someone driving from “one side of the lane and then flying back to the other side.”
Simmons Sr. metioned something to his son and the Morgans. As the Morgans leaned to the middle of the back seat to see what happened, seconds later the driver, who was drunk, hit them and caused a serious accident.
DaJuan doesn’t know how long it was until he woke up, but he heard his brother and opened his eyes.
“The reason I woke up was because I heard my brother crying,” DaJuan said. “He was crying, and the driver was telling his son to stay up because he was slouched over – the car was in on his legs and his mouth was pouring like a faucet.”
While DeAndre, who doesn’t talk about the wreck because he had a concussion and “doesn’t remember much about it,” had gotten out of the car, DaJuan was shut in because the impact was on his side of the vehicle.
DaJuan tried to move, get out of the car – something. As he did, he felt pain.
“My hip popped and it started burning,” DaJuan said. “I sat back in the seat – I’ve never felt pain like that.”
As DaJuan was stuck in the car, he started smelling fumes. Someone walked past DaJuan and said “the car is leaking; it might set on fire.” Immediately, DaJuan looked for help. He saw someone walking close to the car, and DaJuan yelled out.
The man helped DaJuan out of the car and pulled him alongside the road – away from the car.
“If it blew up, I’d be OK,” DaJuan said as DeAndre listened along with tears in his eyes. “My brother, he was down the street with the paramedics, and he was crying and saying, ‘Look at my brother, look at my brother. Is he all right? He’s dead, isn’t he?’ I heard him, and I looked up at him to let him know I was still alive. He still had his mind made up that I was dead.”
DaJuan gave another motion to his brother before noticing his own injuries.
“I saw my left thumb, and it was dislocated – my bone sticking out. I was bleeding down my hand, down my arm. I didn’t feel the pain, so I thought don’t panic, don’t worry about it,” DaJuan said.
DaJuan then put his head back down. As he lay there, he heard a chopper flying above. He heard his teammate, Simmons, get drilled out of the passenger side. And then he listened on as Simmons “flatlined twice at the scene,” where they revived him.
When the paramedics arrived, it took nearly four people to put him on the stretcher, where he was strapped to a hard board with a brace on his neck. At this point DaJuan’s mom was at the scene. She jumped on the ambulance with him.
“She rubbed my arm, and I looked up into her eyes. And she was so strong, she wasn’t crying,” DaJuan said.
The four-minute ride to the hospital seemed like an eternity, he said. The ambulance went over train tracks and with every bump, DaJuan felt it in his hip. They stuck IVs in him, and he struggled to breathe – taking the oxygen mask off “a couple of times.”
“I thought I was going to die,” he said.
As they got to the hospital, the paramedics rushed DaJuan in. When he arrived in the emergency room, the doctors started cutting off his clothes and asking if he remembered everything.
“Kind of like you see in the movies,” DaJuan said.
It was just after 7 p.m. For the next seven hours, DaJuan was in the operating room.
DeAndre would get to visit his brother after he left the operating room. He said it was hard to look at his brother and even listen to him. But at that moment, he learned something about DaJuan.
“With everything my brother had been through, I realized at that point he was the strongest person I’d ever know,” DeAndre said as tears ran down DaJuan’s face.
The aftermath
DaJuan made it through the wreck, but a whole lot changed after the accident. He never saw the field his senior year, and his scholarship was pulled for reasons which are still questioned.
Shortly after Conley and Tressel had come to visit with DaJuan’s coach, Conley resigned from his position as recruiting coordinator. The reason? While never public, DaJuan believes it was because of his situation.
“He knew that it was wrong and he didn’t want to be a part of it,” DaJuan said. “I think it had a lot to do with it.”
Conley declined to comment for this story.
That day in Bell’s office after DaJuan learned about his Ohio State scholarship, he started looking into other schools. State and Florida topped his list, and the process started again.
DaJuan visited Raleigh, and soon after schools from all over the country learned that the athlete was no longer committed to Ohio State. Late one night, schools were calling DaJuan at 1 a.m.
“I was trying to get some sleep,” DaJuan said. “I had several phone calls coming my way from Duke and other schools – they were all over me – calling me asking why I didn’t tell them what happened.”
As he sat in his room, he decided to call the State coaches and commit to them – at 1 a.m.
After committing, the Morgan family quickly looked past the Ohio State situation. One day when the family was watching television together, a local news station started to do its weekly segment – the ‘Weenie of the Week.’
“If an athlete messes up or does something crazy, then you’re the ‘Weenie of the Week,'” DeAndre said. “Well they had a special for my brother, and they said this week’s ‘Weenie of the Week’ is Ohio State for saying DaJuan Morgan is ineligible to come up and play due to his grades. The people in the news, they knew what Ohio State did was a lie because they said something about his GPA.”
And DeAndre said when Ohio State took away DaJuan’s scholarship, they didn’t just hurt his brother.
“You do something like that now, everyone in the nation sees what you did to a great athlete,” DeAndre said. “You look at him now. He’s been more productive now than the receiver they took – he still hasn’t got on the field yet. He’s from Belle Glades, Fla., which is right down the street from us.”
The receiver from Belle Glades, Fla., is Albert Dukes. Dukes finished last season with two catches for 11 yards and was a member of the Buckeyes scout team.
During DaJuan’s freshman season, the Buckeyes were slated for a game against the Wolfpack in Raleigh. DaJuan would receive a medical redshirt after the season because of his injuries from the car accident, but he did play sparingly in the opener against Richmond, and he would get time at special teams against Ohio State – a game he knew was on State’s schedule when he committed to the Pack.
When the game ended, Tressel found DaJuan.
“He came up to me, and I shook his hand,” DaJuan said. “Just a little past history.”
