Every year Alabama has an influx of talent and stories as to how each student-athlete ended up in Tuscaloosa. Each player’s story is unique, even down to the players walking onto the team.
Walk-on wide receiver Chris Herren Jr.’s journey definitely fits the description of unique.
Herren is a former division one basketball player who is using his final two seasons of eligibility to transition from the court to the gridiron of the Crimson Tide. His collegiate athletics career first began at Boston College where played two seasons before transferring to San Diego.
He appeared in a total of 53 games across his three seasons before he had a call for football. What makes Herren’s story that much more unique is that the 2021 fall camp is the first time he has played football in his life.
“I actually have never played football,” Herren Jr. said on the Unqualified Sports Talk podcast. “When I first started thinking about it, it kind of felt like a crazy idea and it is a crazy idea.
“But I was just kind of like, I’ve got these last two years (of eligibility) left to play a sport and like, this is what I really want to do. So why would I just give it up because I just think it’s too crazy an idea. I plan on playing wide receiver.”
Although he doesn’t have any football background, athletics runs in the family has his father Chris Herren Sr. is a legendary Massachusetts basketball player who attended Boston College and later for the Boston Celtics.
The learning curve from basketball to football will be large especially when joining the top college football program in the country. But Herren does have his believers.
Brad Kelly, a former Portsmouth High School wide receiver who went on the to play in college at Salve Regina University worked with Herren numerous times to prepare him for the tryout.
“We ran into each other, and he told me he was thinking about playing football and I was like, ‘When you need help, shoot me a text,'” Kelly said to the Newport Daily News on Monday. “I think within a few days we were on the filed getting workouts in.”
The work Herren put in with Kelly payed off as he was able to make a believer out of Nick Saban that he’d contribute to the team.
Whether he becomes the next DeVonta Smith or rides out his last two seasons of eligibility are yet to be seen.
But Herren’s already got one heck of a story, and he’d probably argue it’s only beginning.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
