Peterson: Meet Evrett Edwards, Iowa State's deep-thinking, Duke graduate likely starter

Randy Peterson | The Des Moines Register

AMES, Ia. — James Comey’s morning testimony was being televised live. Evrett Edwards already had finished his Iowa State football conditioning for June 8, and it wasn’t even 10 o’clock.

A political enthusiast, he’d normally be watching the former FBI director’s grilling — except that he gladly agreed to this sweeping conversation that ranged from "is the Earth flat" to, oh, his place on the Cyclones' football team.

“Really, that’s OK,” he said after going through the football players’ brunch line. “I can watch Mr. Comey later. I can watch it on Twitter.”

Edwards is a potential starter at the hybrid linebacker/defensive back position in Iowa State’s defense. He played all 12 games in his first Cyclones season in 2016, starting five.

He knows the position. He knows the Big 12 Conference. He knows football.

Possibly the most interesting — at least the most intriguing — athlete walking Iowa State’s campus is well-versed on almost everything else, too. Few can find a college football player with the background of this 22-year-old who prefers being intellectual to being smart, chess to checkers and C-SPAN to ESPN.

He speaks multiple languages. He’s lived in multiple cities and countries. He’s a political aspirant. He once had presidential dreams; he’ll now settle for an ambassadorship.

He plans on attending law school. He kicked off his college life by graduating from Duke, an academic powerhouse, in three years, while enduring the time restraints that accompany being part of a Power Five football program.

“What makes him truly distinctive is his pursuit of advanced language learning and graduating in three years, which meant consistently overloading,” Lee Baker, professor of cultural anthropology and director of Duke’s International Comparative Studies Program, wrote The Register in an email.

“Routinely, athletes come to Duke and transfer to another school to get more playing time, or because they don’t get along with the coaches. Others will extend their eligibility by doing a redshirt year, (and) in each case they give up a year of competing.

“Everett is super-strategic, because he was able to use his eligibility — and get his BA and MA paid for in the process. He is a smart kid in more ways than one.”

Who is this guy, who came to Iowa State via the graduate transfer route before the 2016 season?

Who is this guy, who earned his black belt in taekwondo at age 6?

“I’m a guy with a passion for a lot of things,” Edwards said. “I’m a linguist. I’m an intellect, and I’m a person that’s always looking to continue to learn.”

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EVRETT-ISM NO. 1: I don’t think I’m smart; I think I’m intelligent. Intellect is the ability to think your way through things. Being smart, I believe, is being able to retain what you’re being told. It doesn’t take a lot of work to be intellectual. There’s some common sense, and then there’s also some questioning and figuring things out by yourself — whereas smart is "This Is What I Was Told, This Is What I Remember, This Is How It is." Intellect is more pushing boundaries and asking questions. I’d rather be an intellectual. Yes sir, an intellectual.

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Why Ames? Why the Cyclones?

Duke to Iowa State is a nontraditional route to travel, but in this case, it made sense.

Among the reasons Edwards chose Duke was because it was close to his Washington, D.C.-area home. His parents could easily travel to watch games.

“I wasn’t happy with where I was in my football situation, but I had the opportunity to obtain an education at Duke University — for free — and that’s not something you should and/or could pass up,” Edwards said.

Essentially, he didn’t play as much as he wanted to play. He qualified as a graduate transfer. ISU defensive coordinator Jon Heacock, who recruited players from Edwards’ Woodbridge (Va.) High School back when he was coaching at Youngstown State, invited him to a spring game.

“I saw more people in the stands — cheering on a program that hadn’t lived up to its potential — for a spring game than I saw in my entire career,” Edwards said during our 50-minute interview. “As I talked to coach Heacock, I trusted him. I was familiar with him, because he recruited at my high school when he was a head coach.

“There are a handful of guys that I still talk to at Duke; we’re really good friends, but here at Iowa State, I don’t think there’s a single person (where) I would say, 'I don’t like that person.'”

One of Iowa State's most interesting players explains why he chose ISU Iowa State defensive back, Evrett Edwards, talks about why he transferred to Iowa State as a graduate student after completing his undergraduate degree at Duke University.

Edwards played 12 games last season, starting five. He had one of the Cyclones’ nine interceptions. He had a season-best 13 tackles against Baylor.

“Coming to Iowa State, working out with these guys, eating with these guys, hanging out with these guys every day — I’m like a pig in mud,” Edwards said.

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The Duke experience

Playing football and successfully handling college life academically is one thing, but doing it at No. 8 on U.S. News and World Report’s list of top American universities?

“There were some long nights on the phone with my mom and dad,” Edwards said.

He needed reassurance that he could do it. He occasionally needed a family-friendly voice, someone who knew what he was all about.

“Sometimes, I stayed up very late on the phone with him,” said Beth Edwards, Everett’s mom. “Sometimes he’d fall asleep; I’d have to wake him up.”

Evrett took six classes a semester instead of four while hustling through Duke academia. He lived a regimented existence.

“I managed to place most of my classes on the back end of the day — in the afternoon and evening,” Edwards said. “We were a morning-practice team. I’d get out of practice around 11, then I’d sleep — or nap — sometimes all the way until class.

“I did my homework in class, after class or while I was eating. I’d be up to 1 or 2, or sometimes even 3, in the morning.

“I’d sleep for a few hours ... and then be at the football building by 6 or 6:30 in the morning for meetings and weightlifting.”

Iowa State football player calls himself intelligent, not smart Iowa State defensive back, Evrett Edwards explains why he considers himself an intellectual.

He majored in international comparative studies and western European relations, post-World War II. He minored in cultural anthropology.

“Basically, it’s an understanding on how the world works — broken down into two parts, where you have global requirements and then regional requirements,” Edwards said. “You’re defining things like transnationalism and nationalism. You’re developing an understanding — a very deep understanding — for the different types of governments and independent-acting agencies.”

He read Marx. He read Freud. He read Leviathan. He read the football playbook.

“When he told me he wanted to graduate from Duke in three years, I said, 'I can make that happen,'” Edwards’ mother said. “He told me that he’s going to be travelling with the football team — that he might even be starting — and I asked him, 'What’s a full (class) load at Duke?'

“He said 'Four,' and I told him he’s going to take five or six.

“I asked him: 'Has your position coach changed?' And he said, 'No.' I asked if play-calling schemes have changed, and he said, 'No.'

“I asked if he knew the playbook, and my son said, 'Of course I know the playbook.'

"Then I said: 'What’s the damn problem? There’s nothing new in your life.'”

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EVRETT-ISM NO. 2: Politics is nothing more than a game of chess. You have people that you’re representing, but the way that you get things done is very interesting. I understand why a lot of politicians have a bad reputation — because it is such a complicated give-and-take system, but as I grow older, I’ve learned that it’s just a microcosm to everything else in life.

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'I figured it out'

Edwards’ parents — his mother is a high school educator and his father does something for the U.S. government that Evrett hasn’t ever asked about — believed in their children being self-sufficient.

This included Evrett being dropped off in Salamanca, Spain, at age 13.

“I woke up the first day of ninth grade, and my dad told me go back to sleep,” he said. “The next day, my dad woke me up, and we went to Dulles International Airport (in D.C.) The first ticket said we were going to Paris. The second ticket said we’re going to Madrid.

“From Madrid to Salamanca, we rode the bus. My dad stayed with me for a few days, then one day he said, 'Figure it out.' He gave me a Blackberry and a debit card and said, 'Figure it out.'”

Unbeknownst to Evrett, his father had already lined up people to keep an eye on his son.

“I stayed with a host family for a few weeks,” Edwards said. “I moved in with some college students after that. That experience was the best thing that ever happened to me.

“I figured it out.”

He returned to Virginia after just more than a year on his own. He made the high school football team. He became a Rivals.com three-star cornerback — so good that Duke, Boston College, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Northwestern, Penn State and Purdue offered scholarships.

Evrett Edwards: Politician?

Like a lot of us, he had a childhood dream of being president of the United States.

“In second grade, I had a project to do — I did it on becoming president.,” Edwards recalled.

Have you been to the White House?

Silly question.

“Yes, sir. Absolutely,” he said. “My mother has been to the White House. My dad has been to the White House. My grandfather used to be able to walk in unannounced way back in the day — he was the first African-American in the narcotics division of the FBI.”

Last spring, Edwards hung out in the Iowa State Capitol with state Sen. Jack Whitver, a former Cyclones football player.

“Evrett’s a very interesting, very smart guy,” Whitver said. “He’s interested in politics; very interested.”

Edwards eventually wants to attend law school. He wants to be an elected official.

Have another plan for 30 or so years?

“An ambassador,” he said. “Hopefully a United States ambassador to somewhere in Latin America.”

This Iowa State football player wants to become a politician Iowa State defensive back, Evrett Edwards talks about his aspirations after playing college football.

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EVRETT-ISM NO. 3: At the end of the day, the president’s power is very limited. The power resides in the legislative body and the judicial body. There are very few things a president can do over a period of time that don’t have to go through either one of those bodies.

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A deep (over)thinker

Heacock, Iowa State’s defensive coordinator, and Edwards were discussing the playbook one recent day when suddenly it happened:

Edwards morphed into overthinking mode.

“I ask 'why' too much. Sometimes I tend to overcomplicate things,” Edwards said. “We’ll sit down in meetings, and coach Heacock is always telling me not to over-overcomplicate it:

“He says, 'This is the play; this is the way you do it.' He says I don’t have to do everything fast, because everything is coming to me.”

It’s second nature for this chess-playing football player to ask questions, to wonder.

“Everything is based on interpretation,” Edwards said. “If you believe it’s real, then it’s real. If you believe it’s fake, then it’s fake — just like this whole the-Earth-is-flat theory going around now.”

The football fields on which Edwards plays are flat, but the earth on which he exists being flat, too? That conversation actually happened, of all places, in the Cyclones' football locker room.

“It goes back to a comment that (NBA star) Kyrie Irving once made about the earth being flat,” Edwards said about the former Duke basketball player and current Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star. “Guys in our locker room are like, 'You went to Duke, too. Do you think the world is circular — sphere-like — or flat?'

“My response to that is if you stand in the middle of the South Pole and point to the ground, are you pointing up or are you pointing down?”

So ... which is it?

“Up and down is relative,” he said. “We have bigger things to focus on than whether the world is a sphere or whether it’s flat.”

Good point.

Right now, the focus is on football.

“It’s true, that sometimes he is an overthinker,” Heacock said. “In everything that he’s doing, he’s analyzing and thinking. He tries to sort out everything, so that he can do it perfectly, and that’s sometimes not how it rolls.

“We’ve had that conversation — that you have to trust what you’re doing. We need him to have a great senior year. All our seniors must play the best football of their lives.

“Evrett has been at two schools. This experience has to be the best he’s ever had.”

Mom: Anything is possible

“We were sitting in the gym when our son was taking the final test before getting his black belt,” Beth Edwards said. “He was 6. His (instructor) was testing him more than the others, it seemed.”

Suddenly, Edwards lost his mouth piece.

“I thought it was all over for me,” Evrett said. “I thought I’d failed.”

He didn’t.

“The instructor bowed to Evrett,” Beth said. “He presented Evrett to the crowd. He passed.

“When it was all over, I looked at my son, grabbed his little face, and said: 'Don’t ever come home and tell your mom that there’s something you can’t do.' I told him he can do anything. I told him he can be anything.”

Iowa State columnist Randy Peterson has been with the Register for parts of five decades. Randy writes opinion and analysis of Iowa State football and basketball. You can reach Randy at rpeterson@dmreg.com or on Twitter at @RandyPete