Oden perseveres, chases dream at CSU

Jasen Oden Jr. was working at Walmart, in the dairy department, his dreams of playing major college football dashed.

He was back home, living with his mother and five siblings — an older sister and four younger brothers — in a public housing project in the East Ferry neighborhood of Buffalo, New York — his hometown. He needed to do what he could to support the family.

“It was just really heart-breaking,” Oden said. “I was going to be one of those guys who had the talent, could have went D-I, could possibly have persevered and done better.

“…I was ready to give up...I was ready to just settle in and live like everybody else around my neighborhood.”

Then the phone call came. Not from one of the coaches at the University of Buffalo or Syracuse that had been scared off by academic concerns. But from the NCAA Clearinghouse, acknowledging that it had made a mistake in determining he was a half-credit short of meeting the initial eligibility requirements to enroll in a four-year college and play football.

That was more than four years ago.

Saturday night, Oden wasn’t just playing major-college football. He was leading his CSU team to victory, running for a career-high 143 yards and a touchdown on 30 carries in a 33-31 win at Texas-San Antonio.

Oden was carrying far more than just a football, though. He was carrying hopes of making it to the next level, to the NFL. To make enough money to move his mother out of the projects and give his little brothers and everyone else in his old neighborhood hope for a brighter future.

“I’m trying to show them that anything’s possible,” Oden said. “Everything I do is really for the kids that grow up in my city, to let them know you can go anywhere.”

Even to Colorado, a state Oden admitted he couldn’t pick out on a map when he graduated from high school in 2011.

“It was a long road getting here,” he said.

With every step bringing a new, seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

There was the 1.8 grade-point average his junior year at East High School in Buffalo that scared away the only college that was actively recruiting him, the University of Buffalo. Coaches there didn’t believe he would be able to get the straight A’s his senior year that raised his GPA to a 2.4.

There was an error made by the NCAA Clearinghouse, Oden said, that left him a half-credit shy of the coursework required for initial eligibility. An error that led him to what he called “a scam prep school,” North Carolina Tech Preparatory Christian Academy, where Oden intercepted a school-record seven passes, returning four for touchdowns, in 2011. He never took a class but did study for and retake the ACT, improving his score from 16 to 19.

An investigative report by ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that came out that fall seemed to back Oden’s claims, suggesting the prep was taking advantage of athletes like him from disadvantaged backgrounds, charging up to $8,200 in tuition while overstating the number of students who had gone on to earn scholarships to Football Bowl Subdivision programs.

Syracuse, after learning Oden hadn’t taken any classes at the prep one of their coaches recommended, no longer was interested in signing Oden. Neither were the coached he had talked to at Kentucky, Minnesota and Toledo.

Just about the time he had finally come to grips with the realization that he might never again play football, he received a call from the NCAA Clearinghouse, acknowledging their mistake. He got in touch the next day with somebody he knew at Streetlight Recruiting, who sent out video and an updated profile. Billy Napier, CSU’s recruiting coordinator at the time, liked what he saw of the hard-hitting defensive back. So did Jim McElwain, then in his first year as the Rams’ coach and still armed with a scholarship or two to offer for a player who could come in right away and play.

Oden played in 25 of the Rams’ 26 games over the next two seasons, starting two. He was a rising star in the defensive secondary, a potential starter going into his junior year.

That’s when McElwain asked him to switch positions, to running back, where the Rams had lost their top two players – Kapri Bibbs, to early entry in the NFL draft, and Donnell Alexander, who transferred to Akron. When Dee Hart and Treyous Jarrells transferred in that summer, from Alabama and a California junior college, respectively, Oden found himself buried behind both on the depth chart. He had just 46 carries last season, averaging an impressive 6.0 yards, and scored two touchdowns.

He started this season as part of a three-man rotation at running back under new coach Mike Bobo, sharing carries with Purdue transfer Dalyn Dawkins and Jarrells.

Until last Saturday. Dawkins was held out with a hamstring injury, and Jarrells had left the program after not playing in the previous week’s game against Colorado.

Oden finally got a chance to show the kind of workhorse back he can be, pounding away at the UTSA defense for an average of 4.8 yards a pop.

“I waited 31/2 years for this opportunity,” Oden said. “I never gave up. I stayed with the program. I stayed through everything.

“… Buffalo’s definitely a dangerous city, if you ask me, and I’d like one day to get my mother out of there. That’s why I’m going to continue to chase my dream and continue, every time I’m out there, to put her on my back.”

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news