Chris Murray

RGJ

While Don Jackson, then a ninth-grader at Valley High School in Sacramento, was busy getting into one of his many fights during his youth, his girlfriend was sitting in on-campus suspension.

Don was supposed to be in suspension, too, but he was too busy getting in a fight. That was typical Don back then. So, somebody ran to on-campus suspension to let Don's girlfriend know he'd be late. When that message was delivered, the teacher who oversaw the suspended kids was aghast.

"Don Jackson is your boyfriend?" he asked Don's girlfriend, the rest of the class hearing the message, too. "You know he has a 0.1 GPA, right? Don't waste your time. He'll be dead or in jail before he's 17."

When Don heard what the teacher said, he did what he usually did: He got in his face. Don was a hothead. He was headed down a bad path. And while it was harsh to hear his teacher's criticism in the moment — that Don was basically a waste of space — the truth was the teacher was telling the truth.

Gangbanging. Drugs. Alcohol. Guns. A complete disregard for school or his life. Jackson embraced it all.

"I liked the thrill of danger," Jackson said. "I had a big thrill for danger. I'd go to a party knowing it was going to get shot up and I still went. The guns came out and I'd move closer. That's just how I was."

More than anything, Jackson wanted a street name. Growing up in South Sacramento, a place so ripe with pitfalls and violence Jackson calls it "South Sac Iraq," Jackson wanted to be just like his brother, one of four in his family who have served jail time (his brother is in prison for vehicular manslaughter, a sentenced extended for attempted escape, and his mother served a couple of years shortly after Jackson was born).

A prison sentence seemed inevitable for Jackson, too, so much so his mom enlisted him in a scared-straight visit to county jail at age 11 so he could see what would happened if he kept getting in trouble. The only problem was when Jackson visited the jail, he actually liked what he saw, especially when one of the inmates realized who he was (Jackson's older brother, nicknamed Whitey, was well known).

"I went in there and one of the dudes was knocking on the glass when they let us walk by the cells and he was yelling, 'You're Whitey's little brother! You're Whitey's little brother!'" Jackson said. "I loved that."

Prison didn't scare Jackson. Death didn't even scare him. On a few occasions Jackson was in a situation where his life was at risk — "That's normal where I'm from," he said — and plenty of times he saw life taken away from his friends. He counts five close friends, including a cousin and godbrother, who have been murdered in gang fighting or money missions. That would make most people pause. Jackson didn't.

"When people close to me started getting murdered, it's eye-opening," Jackson said. "But even then, I still couldn't really take the concept. I still couldn't make the change in my life that was needed."

Eventually, he did. Be it divine intervention, a support system that wouldn't let him quit, the game of football or a combination of each, Jackson finally made the change. He finally decided to save his life.

Today, he's the star running back for the Nevada Wolf Pack and a nominee for two national awards, including one given to the athlete who best combines community service with athletic and academic achievement. Jackson, a man who went to four high schools and was kicked out of two of them, is already a college graduate with a degree in communications. He's working on his Master's degree.

And at 21 yards old, he beat the projection of his former on-campus suspension teacher who told the class Jackson would be dead or in jail by age 17. When he first arrived at Nevada in 2013, Jackson sent that teacher a Facebook message. He wanted to update him on his current whereabouts.

"I just wanted to let you know that somewhere along the line I figured it out," Jackson wrote.

Turning his life around

The first thing you notice about Jackson is his smile.

"He has this awesome smile," said Mark Nill, the man most responsible for Jackson's turnaround. "He has this grin from ear to ear. When he smiles, you know he's in a good place."

Nill, a teacher and coach, first met Jackson when he was a sophomore at Laguna Creek High. Jackson had already been kicked out of Valley High — "They told my mom, 'It's either an expulsion on my record or I could leave on my own,' but I had to go." — but Nill's initial impression was a positive one. Although Jackson had more than his fair share of issues, Nill noticed something different.

"He was always a happy kid," Nill said. "He was always full of energy and wore his emotions on his sleeve. It was actually real easy to try to guide him in the right direction. A lot of times, teachers will push kids away because they don't want to deal with their (stuff). With Don, everybody really wanted to help him because they believed that he wanted help. That doesn't mean he didn't fall down. He did. He'd go through up and downs and bad patches, but he wanted to push through. He wanted to do well."

Jackson just didn't know how to do well. He'd never left the Sacramento city limits. All he'd seen in life was gangbanging and violence, drug abuse and fighting. He usually skipped class, and when he did attend, he didn't pay attention. A naturally smart and well-spoken kid, Jackson had never applied himself or been held to standards. In Nill, an English teacher and football coach, Jackson found the perfect mentor.

"Coach Nill said, 'The gang-banging, the thug thing, you're not playing on my football team with that. This tough-boy act, I'm not going to feed into it. If you want to be that person, you can be that person off my football team,'" Jackson said. "I really wanted to play football at that point. That's when I started making the decision that if I want to play football, if I want to go to college, I had to cut that stuff out."

For Nill, it was about more than football. It was about getting Jackson on the right track. It was about giving him the tools necessary to survive. It was about holding him accountable. It was about pushing him to reach his vast potential. It was about ensuring he didn't waste his life.

"He was in my English class," Nill said. "There were times I stood there, gave him an assignment and told him, 'I'm standing here until you do it.' He was going to figure out a way not to do it or copy it. It wasn't because he couldn't do it. It was just that he never cared. He didn't want to do it, and if he didn't know how to do it, he didn't want you to know that. Once he figured out that he could do it and was capable, it was a whole new chapter. Being in the classroom was no longer a fearful thing for him."

The building blocks started to stack up. Once so credit-deficient it looked like he'd never graduate — and he'd certainly never be eligible to actually be on the football team — Jackson started piling up credits. He stopped ditching classes and started doing his classwork. By his junior season, he was a full-time member of the football team. By his senior season, he was the best player in Sacramento.

Jackson, who never wanted to play football as a kid because of the physicality of the game, rushed for 2,305 yards, 9.7 yards per carry and 23 touchdowns as a senior for Laguna Creek in 2010. He exceeded 290 yards in five of the team's 10 games, including one 444-yard, five-touchdown game.

"That kid was the most violent runner I've ever seen in my life," said Ryan Nill, Mark's son and an assistant coach at Laguna who was a mentor for Jackson. "You could see how powerful he was. Don ran with something extra. Given his past and things that happened in his life, he used that on the field."

As well as Jackson did on the field, he exceeded it in class. But, after punting his first two academic years of high school, Jackson was still credit-deficient. He could come back and be a fifth-year senior, but that would all but end his hopes of playing college football. He could get a GED, but he didn't usually score well on tests. Instead, he went to a continuation school and took extra credits to get his degree on time.

At age 17, Jackson graduated high school, becoming the second in his six-person family to do so (his mom graduated high school at age 40, Jackson said, and his dad and three siblings never got a diploma).

"I've never seen a kid work as hard as he did to graduate on time," Ryan Nill said. "He had to go to the continuation school, but he was taking a ridiculous amount of credits to try and catch up and graduate. His counselor at his continuation school even told me that she's never seen a kid work that hard."

Head (Mid)West, young man

When Jackson arrived in Denver, he knew he had made a big mistake.

"I called Ryan when I got to Denver and I was like, 'What am I doing?'" Jackson recalled. "He said, 'You're getting on a train to Iowa.' Then I called Mark and he said, 'This is going to be the worst time for you, but when you get there you can't quit.' I was ready to go back home. It was just a culture shock."

After high school, Jackson had heavy interest from Division I football programs, but his grades weren't good enough to get admitted, thanks to his poor freshman and sophomore years. So, he accepted an offer to go to Iowa Western Community College, a junior-college powerhouse in Council Bluffs.

Jackson had literally never left Sacramento in his life, not even for a vacation — "We didn't have money for vacations," he said. He had never seen snow. He'd never lived in a nearly all-white society, like he experienced at Iowa. At first, he didn't feel like he fit in. Immediately, he wanted to go back home.

"We had to talk him into going to Iowa," Ryan Nill said. "If he stayed in Sacramento, the demons and temptations would be there. I got phone calls every other day with him saying, 'It's freezing out here.' I told him, 'You have to stick it out, and he did.' It was a phenomenal learning experience. He was learning about life in a totally different environment. Honestly, it's the best thing that happened to him."

Jackson had a tunnel vision of what life was, and although uncomfortable in Iowa, he needed that experience to grow. He could have gone back to Sacramento and fallen into bad habits. He could have returned to the streets. That would have been the easiest thing to do. That's what he did all those years as a youth. But Jackson couldn't go back home and fall into that pattern. Too many people were counting on him now.

"I had that support system that did not quit on me, so I couldn't quit on me," Jackson said. "Somewhere along the line, I learned that I didn't want to let these people down. The only thing that kept me going was my support system. I didn't care about the noise and the outside people trying to pull me into bad things. I wanted make sure that these people who helped me out when I was down were proud of me."

Jackson stuck it out. He got his associates degree in three semesters (it takes most people four). He won a national championship. And he had Division I scholarship offers rolling in. He eventually picked the one from Nevada. At Laguna Creek, Jackson learned how to survive. In Iowa, he began to blossom.

"I always felt that Don was somebody who, if he didn't explode and quit, if he just kept grinding, he'd figure it out," Mark Nill said. "We all had that feeling. Underneath all the garbage was somebody who was really good, who if he could stay with it and push through it, he was going to be OK.'"

Said Ryan Nill: "I love his passion. I love his passion for life. I love his passion for football. The No. 1 thing I think of when I think of Don is how passionate he is about everything. He's just a passionate kid. He's passionate about helping others. He's passionate about family, football and everything he does in life."

Leader of the Pack

Wolf Pack linebacker Bryan Lane Jr. has known Jackson longer than anybody on Nevada's roster.

The two grew up five minutes apart in Sacramento. Lane always knew Jackson was a spectacular athlete. He also knew you'd be smart to stay away from him when he got mad.

"He was a hothead in his younger days; he didn't think before he acted," Lane said. "But he was a guy who's taken in all of the knowledge that older people, people with experience, were telling him and he put it to use. He didn't just let it go in one ear and out the other. He took it to heart, and look at him now. Everybody on the team look ups to him. I look up to him. I'm proud of him and the strides he's taken in life. A lot of guys in that situation, they don't make it out. You see that story all the time."

Jackson is the leader of the Wolf Pack, or, as coach Brian Polian puts it, "the heartbeat" of the team. Nobody denies that. Of the 100-plus players on the team's roster, nobody is more important than Jackson.

The 5-foot-10, 210-pound bowling ball had a rough first season at Nevada, when injuries limited him to 332 yards. He was far better last year, rushing 957 yards and getting back to the violent running style he's known for. As good as he was on the field, he was more impressive off it, his coaches said. Instead of feeling threatened by talented true freshman James Butler last year, Jackson became his best friend.

"That's extremely rare, especially at the running back position, a skill position," running backs coach Lester Erb said. "It's not uncommon to see those guys be selfish. But Don took JB right under his wing. At no point have I ever heard any negativity about splitting time. Those two compete against each other every day and there's no animosity. If JB scores, Don is the first one down there to congratulate him."

Butler said Jackson sets the tone for the running backs corps, but in reality, Jackson sets the tone for the entire team. He's a non-stop talker and motivator. Polian, in his 19th year as a college coach, said he's never seen a frontline back practice harder than Jackson. With Nevada planning to have a shove-it-down-your-throat running offense in 2015, Jackson will be the tip of the arrow in the Wolf Pack's attack.

"He's incredibly important," Polian said. "Not only with his production as a tailback but also the emotion and the leadership that he brings and frankly just the pure energy. There are days we lack a little bit of energy and he feels it and he creates some. As a player, he's got very good vision. His feet have improved. He's a good-sized back. But his best attribute is his passion for the game. He loves to play."

Jackson's come a long way from being the "gangbanger, tough boy" who wanted street cred in South Sacramento. Now, he's the guy the Wolf Pack sends in front of the Nevada Board of Regents when the department needs somebody to talk about the importance of college athletics. Last spring, Jackson, dressed in a suit and tie, spoke to the Regents and 100 others on campus. He told them his life story.

Jackson spoke about his troubled past and his bright future. He spoke about second chances and taking advantage of opportunities. He had only been given one day to prepare his speech, but when Jackson finished he got a standing ovation. And one of the first things he did was call his old coach at Laguna.

"The sound and tone in his voice when he called me that day, I've never been more proud of anybody," Mark Nill said. "He was just so excited he had earned their respect. You could hear how happy he was."

In July, Jackson was named to the Doak Walker Award watch list as one of the nation's top running backs. More important to him, Jackson also was named to the Wuerffel Trophy watch list, the premier award for community service in college football. Not only is Jackson active at the Boys and Girls Club and Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), he's also read at elementary schools and spoken to classes in California and Nevada about the rocky road he took and the redemption he's found in life. It's especially important for him to go back to Sacramento and help the kids who have struggled just like him.

Jackson admits it's a long shot he wins the award. But that doesn't really matter. All he has to do is look back to the person he was a decade ago and see the person he is today to know he's a winner.

"I'm proud of the progression and how much I've grown," Jackson said. "For a while, I was trying to stay in the shade about it. But I'm proud of it. I'm trying to be a good person. At the end of the day, I can score a bunch of touchdowns, but at some point my career is going to end and life is so much bigger than football. For me to grow, I had to learn that. There were points where I used the streets as my life. Then football was my life. Now, I know life is about helping people, relationships, love, stuff like that."

Columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. Contact him at cmurray@rgj.com or follow him on Twitter @MurrayRGJ.