A DREAM NOT JUST HIS OWN

Growing up in St. Louis, Oklahoma senior wide receiver Durron Neal didn't like football. Hated it, in fact. “The sport didn't excite me whatsoever,” Neal explained.

Baseball was Neal's true love and his best position was behind home plate. There's no time for football when you're on your way to becoming the next Yadier Molina.

“He threw everybody out,” said Keith Little, Neal's stepfather. “Nobody ever could steal second on him. He was like (St. Louis Cardinals All-Star catcher) Yadier Molina. He could throw them out from his knees. Durron could play everywhere on the baseball field – catcher, pitcher, shortstop, centerfield, everywhere.”

While his six older cousins played football in a lot next to the house, Neal would be off to the side, practicing his baseball swing by taking whacks at a ball on a string that was attached to a tree. “They would always give me a hard time. 'Oh, you're soft. You can't handle the sport. It's a big-boy game and you can't handle it,'” Neal recalled.

A young Durron Neal and his mother, Sharon.

Unable to find a suitable team in his age group, Neal's baseball career ended at age 13.

When Neal was 9, Little convinced him to play football. The tryout lasted one day. Neal quit so he could go to his cousin's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's. Little was not pleased.

The following year, Neal gave football another try and joined his cousins one day on the lot. “He was better than all of them. They were 15 and 16, and he was 10 years old,” Little recalled. “He was just running all over them. When his cousins finally caught him, they were so frustrated they hit him, so I'm thinking that's why Durron didn't like football much at first.”

Neal and his mother, Sharon, have always been extremely close. They were perhaps too close because it was Sharon who refused to let her only child travel abroad throughout the summer as a member of an elite youth baseball team.

“She's my best friend,” Neal said of his mother. “She was like the only person I had. It was one of those relationships that could never be broken just because of all the things we went through together, all the things we'd seen together with me growing up. It's a relationship I'm just blessed to have because that's one person that I can always count on to talk to, that's always going to be there for me, that's always going to pick up the phone any time of the night that I call.”

Neal's father was in and out of prison and Neal was 8 when Little entered his life.

A former baseball and football coach, Little said he saw tremendous athleticism in Neal and spent years training his stepson in both sports.

Neal initially played everywhere in football – quarterback, running back, receiver, corner, safety – but he preferred defensive end because the position allowed him to take out his frustrations that he was playing football in the first place.

"That's the part I always look back on. How did this happen when I hated this sport? I love doing it now."
Durron Neal

The more success Neal experienced in football, the more he grew to love the sport. “I was just out there playing, really with no technique, no pass routes,” Neal said. “Just get the ball, don't get tackled and score a touchdown. That's all I did until I got to my freshman year in high school.”

At De Smet Jesuit, a private high school in St. Louis, Neal became only the second freshman in school history to start and score for the varsity. By the time he left high school, Neal was considered to be the state's second-best wide receiver prospect behind uber recruit Dorial Green-Beckham, a 6-foot-5, 235-pound phenom from Hillcrest High School in Springfield, who transferred from Missouri and redshirted last season in an effort to gain eligibility with the Sooners prior to joining the 2015 NFL Draft.

Meanwhile, the kid who hated football is now excelling at one of the nation's elite college programs. “That's the weird part about it,' said the 5-foot-11, 199-pound Neal. “That's the part I always look back on. How did this happen when I hated this sport? I love doing it now. That's the cool part about it.”

Neal knows he has his mother and stepfather to thank and they never leave his thoughts. “I know this is a blessing for all of us,” Neal said. “This is like a dream come true for all three of us. I really care about what those two think of me. When I sleep, I want to make sure they know I'm doing the right thing and all that time invested in me, and all that money spent on me, that it didn't go to waste. I'm just extremely proud of myself that I didn't get distracted or let anything steer me off into the wrong path, because there were situations where if I would have taken the (wrong) way, it would have ended bad for me.”

Neal's steady improvement at OU, in part, has come thanks to roommate and fellow senior receiver Sterling Shepard.

“Sterling has been amazing,” Sharon said. “I'm so grateful that Sterling and his mom (Cheri) have been there. His mom has been just like a mom to Durron because I'm so far away, and Sterling has been like a big brother.”

“We feed off each other,” Neal said of Shepard. “That's what we've tried to do since we got here. We just try to keep that edge, but try to stay calm when things are going bad and always keep the energy going. There were times in my freshman and sophomore years when I was frustrated about not getting that much playing time. He would say, 'Stay with it. Keep having that hunger.' We were there for each other. That's why he's like my best friend to this day.”

In addition to Shepard, Neal also has received substantial support from former OU standout receiver Kenny Stills, now with the Miami Dolphins.

With St. Louis less than 300 miles from Lawrence, Neal will have plenty of family and friends on hand for Saturday's 2:30 p.m. game at Kansas. Neal enters with 83 career receptions for 1,149 yards (13.8 per catch) and five touchdowns. He also has averaged 26.5 yards on two kickoff returns this season.

In the stands will be one proud momma.

“I would have never thought he would make it this far because Durron was a momma's baby. Yes, he was,” Sharon said, making no apologies. “He's my only child, my baby. I didn't want him to go off and leave me. The young man that he has turned out to be, I am so proud of him. I think he's doing really well. I thank God every day. I really do.”

Football eventually became a field of dreams for this former baseball player who quit football after one day to head to Chuck E. Cheese's.

“I'm very thankful,” Neal said, “but that day at Chuck E. Cheese's was fun.”