Xavier Turner, a standout of some note at Birdville High School, will be playing in what he hopes is one of three games left in a history-making season at Tarleton State.
The Texans – once long ago the Plowboys – will play Minnesota State of Mankato on Saturday in an NCAA Division II Region 4 championship game at the confluence of the Minnesota and Blue Earth rivers.
Tarleton are the first 12-0 team in history and are vying for a place in the national semifinals against the top-rated team in the country.
This edition of Tarleton, No. 6 in the Division II rankings, is the first 12-0 team in school history and this week is vying for a place in the national semifinals against the top-ranked team in the country.
“The university is excited,” Turner said. “We’ve never really accomplished something like this. Tarleton is doing really good things, and the campus is behind us. It’s exciting to be here.”
This is what a college football tournament looks like. It’s not a secret how they do this, FBS. There was never any reinventing the wheel for Division II and to make this happen in 1973, going from poll-based national champions to a playoff tournament. Twenty-eight teams split into four brackets with the top seed in each division receiving a bye into the second round.
The final eight are vying for one of two berths in the final to be played here, at the new royal McKinney ISD Stadium on Dec. 15, wrapping up a playoff that began Nov. 17.
Turner, a senior kinesiology major, who will graduate in May, rushed for 1,391 yards and 22 touchdowns this season.
Ending his winding college career near where it all began would seem a fitting conclusion to a five-year journey marked with potholes and more than a little perseverance, helped along by his friend Ricky Williams, that Ricky Williams.
The two are more than a little alike.
Williams played at 5-foot-10, 226 pounds. Turner is at 5-10, 225 pounds.
Over the phone, Turner sounds just like the former Heisman Trophy winner from Texas. Turner, by the way, was a nominee for FCS’s equivalent, the Harlon Hill Award.
It’s hard to imagine anyone rivaling Williams’ insouciance, his casual lack of concern, but Turner admittedly is laid-back.
It’s a good trait in dealing with the curveballs he has faced, starting with Ricky Williams.
As a high school recruit in the Class of 2014, Turner and Oklahoma had mutual interest in one another. TCU, Texas and Texas Tech also took a long look at him. Butler and Indiana were two others.
His numbers were striking, 2,987 yards rushing and 55 touchdowns as a senior, the final of three years on the varsity under coach Jim Skinner.
He had another school, Incarnate Word, after him, too. Williams, then Incarnate Word’s running backs coach, scouted Turner’s third-round playoff game, a game in which he rushed for more than 300 yards and four touchdowns.
“He said he had seen enough and got back in his helicopter and left,” Turner remembered.
Turner, however, hit a snag.
He didn’t meet the deadline on test scores until later in the year.
By the time he had gotten his scores in order, the bigger schools had moved on.
Williams and head coach Larry Kennan, though, told him there was a spot for him in San Antonio. Incarnate Word opened its program in 2009 and moved to FBS in 2013.
Turner signed.
Then another snag.
Williams texted Turner and told him he was leaving to join the Longhorn Network.
“He said he was retiring as a coach to do the Longhorn Network,” Turner said. “That was a huge part of why I wanted to be there … to learn from the best.”
Turner went to Kennan seeking a release, but the coach told him he really didn’t want to do that.
His choice was to leave and lose a year of eligibility.
“I talked it over with my parents and we decided I had to go the JUCO route,” Turner said.
To Navarro College in Corsicana he decided to go in the fall of 2014. It was no small undertaking. Navarro has traditionally been a good football junior college.
“Everyone there is good,” Turner said. “They’re there for academic reasons, or they got in trouble or something like that.”
He played that season, and then, of course, another snag.
Turner and his girlfriend were expecting parents. That’s more than a snag. That’s life-changing.
Ayden Turner was born in 2015. Turner’s position coach at Birdville, Cooper Mitchell, was there with him at the hospital.
The new dad decided he had more pressing matters to attend to.
He left school and moved back to Dallas-Fort Worth to work and be a father, a decision that did not sit well with his parents, who didn’t want him to give up school.
“I knew it was time to hang it up at that point to be there for her and be a father,” Turner said. “For a while my parents and I didn’t get along. But I said, ‘no, it’s my responsibility. I did what I was supposed to do … what I had to do.
But for a year he worked at Dick’s Sporting Goods and Verizon wireless selling phones and plans.
From the experience that comes with living, Turner’s parents knew what most parents do. Once you leave school, it’s hard to go back. You being a new life and get into a routine of living.
“But obviously, I wasn’t done with it.”
“It” being football.
Williams, though he had unintentionally started this winding trail, never left Turner. He stayed in touch, being a friend and offering advice where he could.
He encouraged Turner, once he had gotten his personal affairs in order, to give football and school another chance.
“He stayed up with me. Just a friend, just told me he was proud of me,” Turner said. “We’re still friends to this day. He said we related well together as a person. I reminded him of himself. We still talk every now and then. I wish he could have been my coach, but things happen.”
Navarro coach Cody Crill was pleased to give him a second chance a year later, if it was what he really wanted to do.
Turner, as well-mannered and genteel as a man can be, told the coach “yes, sir,” returning to Navarro for the 2016 season.
In 18 games over the 2014 and ’16 seasons, Turner rushed for 1,118 yards, plenty enough of a sample size for Tarleton State coach Todd Whitten, who dialed Turner while he was in math class. But what the coach wanted was better than math.
He wanted to set up an official visit.
“I went down that weekend and fell in love and been at Tarleton ever since,” Turner said.
Turner eventually wants to coach and teach, follow in the footsteps of his mentors Skinner, Mitchell and Whitten.
He won’t do it, though, until he satisfies his curiosity with the NFL. It’s his dream, so he will play it out.
Why not? He has come this far.
Scouts from the Rams, Packers and Cowboys have all come back campus and taken measurements. He seems a natural for the day the Cowboys set aside to work out guys from local high schools.
The most immediate concern is this game on Saturday in Minnesota.
The Texans’ most successful span was a five-year run from 1986-90. Tarleton sent 45-11-1 and advanced to the NAIA quarterfinals in 1987, ’89 and ’90. That 1990 team was the first to go unbeaten and untied.
This is Tarleton’s best season in FCS.
There are a lot of pieces to Tarleton’s operation, including one of its biggest fans, Ayden Turner, who is sometimes seen on the sideline.
One of the key components on the field is the running back from Birdville High. He is having one of the best seasons in school history.
None of this is what he had planned, and that’s probably why it’s all the sweeter.
Turner is right, “things happen.”
Another victory and another would be a real big thing.
