Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — In the summers in Petal, Mississippi, father and son would take the grass together, no matter the triple-digit heat.

DeCarlos Nicholson was just a junior at Mississippi State when his boy arrived. Life changed. His dream never did. When De’Mauri was six months old, Nicholson would wheel him out in a baby carriage to a practice field and park him on the sidelines, and De’Mauri would watch his father go through cornerback workouts.

After a few months, he grew, and De’Mauri grew tired of simply watching. So he’d totter out alongside his father, a 1-year-old and a college kid running the same cornerback drills with trainer CJ Bailey, running backpedals until De’Mauri’s little legs tired. He’d pause and lay down, smack in the middle of a drill. Bailey and Nicholson would just shift to the opposite end of the field. They were used to this.

There wasn’t one session, Bailey remembered, when Nicholson didn’t bring his son, the little boy only seeing a hero.

“He know who his dad is,” Bailey said, of young De’Mauri. “But he don’t know who his dad can become. And don’t understand, like, what he can accomplish.”

It’s taken De’Mauri’s birth, and a strange path through football before a transfer to USC this winter, for Nicholson to figure that out himself.

Coaches see a bona-fide NFL athlete buried within Nicholson’s frame. He stands 6-foot-3, with spindly legs and a wingspan that could stretch from Los Angeles to Petal. As a JUCO prospect at Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2021, he once drove eight hours to Texas for a Baylor camp, clocked a 4.40-second 40-yard dash, and was offered a scholarship while ambling back to the stopwatch.

But that talent, for years, stayed docked in Mississippi. For years, Nicholson would talk constantly about getting out of his hometown. He never did. He went to Petal High, and then to Gulf Coast, and then to Mississippi State. He was a family man.

He was also, simply, scared.

“Once he came out,” Nicholson said Wednesday of De’Mauri, “everything became … like, bigger than me.”

Bigger than 11,000-population Petal, certainly. After USC head coach Lincoln Riley flew out there to visit him in the winter, Nicholson took a gamble on the Trojans, the first time he’s ever lived away from home. And come the start of his season, De’Mauri will be with him and girlfriend Rakeya Travis in Southern California, likely watching his father start at outside corner on Saturdays at the Coliseum.

During fall camp, though, Nicholson’s son has been back visiting Petal, staying with extended family. Before every practice, as Nicholson leaves his apartment, he walks past De’Mauri’s empty room.

The same thought flashes.

We can’t go back. 

“I got him used to this,” Nicholson said of his son Wednesday. “He’s two years old, from Mississippi, country town, living out here, seeing this.”

“So there’s no way that I could do him that disservice,” he continued, “and take him back.”

JUCO beginnings

A few years ago, when Bailey’s son was enrolling at Petal, he saw a lanky kid working out on the school’s football field. The frame caught Bailey’s eye: such broad shoulders and such tiny hips, Bailey remembered, that dimensionally, he was built like a triangle.

Man, Bailey thought, that kid looks like a basketball player.

DeCarlos Nicholson had been a quarterback, actually, for most of his young life. He was fresh off a position switch when Bailey saw him, a raw bundle of Mr. Fantastic-limbs who had little idea of the cornerback he could become.

“Just thinking he knew how to do it naturally,” Bailey reflected, “was the most difficult part.”

Life in Petal was built on a handful of things, as Nicholson’s high school coach Marcus Boyles put it: Petal High, its kids, and Petal’s churches. And growing up, Nicholson was at the center of it, goofy and gangly and the starting quarterback at Petal High.

But after arriving at Gulf Coast, he received just spots of playing time as a freshman, dangerous off a quarterback keeper but challenged in his throwing accuracy. Head coach Jack Wright would glance over at his bench, stare at the 6-3 kid who could run sub-4.40, and scratch his head.

“Like, ‘Why do I have one of the greatest athletes on the planet sitting over here with me?’” Wright remembered.

In staff meetings, cornerbacks coach Clarence McDougal advocated for Nicholson to work at cornerback. It was drastic. But during one practice in training camp, entering his second year at Gulf Coast, Richardson took his stance across the line of scrimmage from a 5-10 receiver.

Wright took one look at Richardson’s limbs, and one look at his receiver’s height, and realized his quarterback simply couldn’t throw there.

DeCarlos, Wright thought, is going to have a chance. 

He spent a year at cornerback at Gulf Coast. He spent much of it, too, cheering in the stands at Gulf Coast’s softball games, after meeting girlfriend Travis. The two were inseparable, McDougal remembered.

After entering the JUCO portal, Nicholson was recruited heavily by Kentucky. He was committed, for a while. His family, mother Mamie Henry said, wanted him to go to Kentucky.

But Mississippi State was three hours down the road. And Rakeya was pregnant.

Wanting more for his son

Nicholson didn’t want to tell his mom.

One day, he came home, Mamie remembered, and dropped the news he was going to be a father. It was a long two weeks after that, she chuckled.

She was hurt. She had raised Nicholson young, herself, determined against all youth to be present for her son. She knew the investment it took, and would tell Nicholson as a teenager: if he ever had a child, he had to do right by them.

“It’s no mama that’s around here – they teenage son come home from JUCO and let you know they got a kid on the way – that’s going to be jumping up and down and praising the Lord,” Mamie said.

“I should’ve been praising the Lord,” she continued, “because a child is a blessing. But I’m still a mother.”

Her son, Mamie knew, was a good kid. But he was a kid. He still is, in many ways. At Mississippi State, he gave himself the nickname “D-Dawg.” On Wednesday, he beamed with pride, telling reporters his son got to eat steak and lobster from USC’s cafeteria, sometimes. No more grilled cheese and hot dogs every night.

“But, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Nicholson said, cutting himself off. “I had eight hot dogs last night.”

Sure, her son, Mamie says, hasn’t gotten it right every time. But he’s gotten most right. He has raised his son, Mamie said, more gently than she ever raised him. His first year at MSU, preparing for De’Mauri’s imminent birth, Nicholson would walk into cornerbacks coach Darcel McBath’s office and pepper him with questions about being a father. What should I expect? How is it going to be? 

After De’Mauri was born, McBath said, Nicholson returned to MSU with purpose. At that point, McBath reflected, he started to understand what the game could do for his family.

“I think, first, he was happy to be coming from Mississippi Gulf Coast, to be playing SEC football … and then once he had his kid,” McBath said, “I think it transitioned quite a bit to being the best player he could possibly be. To get the most out of football.”

He played two years in Starkville, and started seven games as a senior last season, still raw and developing when he turned to the portal. Boyles, for one, expected him to land at another SEC program. Recruits from Mississippi, after all, rarely ventured far beyond state lines.

The staff at Petal was “shocked,” Boyles said, when Nicholson told them he was interested in USC.

His mother didn’t want him to go, this time, not with that 26-hour drive. And Nicholson mulled the distance, certainly, the fear that kept him home all his life. If it was a younger him, he told McBath at one point, he might not have done it.

But the older him saw the value. He wanted more, for De’Mauri.

Mamie’s son was being a father, and so she gave him her blessing.

“He can go to the moon,” Mamie said, “and I’m going to be right there, standing on the sun, asking the Lord, ‘Can you turn it down?’”

Trusting his upside

When Nicholson took his official visit to USC in December, he left De’Mauri at home with family. He didn’t need to, looking back, he smiled Wednesday.

When he walked into his hotel room, a baby crib was sitting next to his bed.

At times, he’ll hop on an electric scooter, wheel around campus, and it will hit him. I’m really in L.A. It still hasn’t quite hit the folks back home, a vague air of surprise floating among his former schools that a kid from Petal has wound up in Southern California.

“I think everybody in Mississippi,” Wright said, “was a little surprised that a Mississippi kid went to USC.”

His growth, considering the room left for improvement, has been as good as anybody’s, USC secondary coach Doug Belk said Wednesday. All these years later, and he’s still a unique prospect, entering his redshirt senior season with the same number of years of true cornerback experience as the freshmen on the Trojans’ roster.

In the past, Bailey said, Nicholson didn’t play to his strengths as a corner. He was so long, Bailey emphasized, that a quarterback would have to throw a ball above 10 to 12 feet simply to place it over his arms. He used to chase receivers down, Bailey said, and never play the ball.

“Dude,” Bailey would tell him, “the ball just literally almost hit you in the back.”

In the spring, though, Nicholson sent clips of his reps to Bailey. The coach saw a different corner at USC, a prospective starter on the outside moving with authority. He wasn’t playing small, anymore. He was knocking away passes from receivers that had a step on him.

“He’s finally starting to trust his ability, upside, and using it to his advantage,” Bailey said, in the spring.

Most of the elite cornerbacks in the NFL, Bailey emphasized, were built like Nicholson. Take the New York Jets’ Sauce Gardner, who stands 6-3 and is listed at 190 pounds; Nicholson is 6-3 and weighs 195.

“He’s only writing his ticket,” Bailey said. “Right now, I think, only thing he gotta do is just figure out who he is, and go from there.”

In the spring, when his son was staying with him and Rakeya in Los Angeles, Nicholson would stop by his apartment after morning weightlifting to see his son. There were good days. There were hard days.

But De’Mauri would flash him a smile, and all would become clear again.

“It’s really made it easy,” Nicholson said, “for me to realize my reason for why I’m doing what I do, and being an example for him.”

ocregister.com

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