Why Thibodeaux Picked the UO By Damian Foley For the nation’s No. 1 recruit, Allen Hall was just as important as Autzen Stadium

UO defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux—pronouned TIB-uh-doh—is a Renaissance man. He’s done his own laundry since he was 15. The 23rd-highest ranked prospect in history, and the consensus No. 1-ranked player in the 2019 recruiting class, is all over YouTube… challenging strangers to chess matches at Venice Beach. His campus visits included football powerhouses Alabama, USC, and Florida State. Also on the list? Florida A&M, one of the nation’s more than 100 historically black colleges and universities, giving him the opportunity to draw national attention to educational institutions with proud academic and athletic histories that nevertheless don’t typically attract elite football prospects. As for the UO, when asked what attracted him to Eugene over Tuscaloosa, Tallahassee, and his own hometown of Los Angeles, he begins by namedropping professors. “[On my campus tour] I saw every building, every classroom, everything,” he said. “But it wasn’t about the facilities; it was about meeting the people. Like Deb Morrison, she’s a great person. I connected with her when I first got here, and she’s been helping me ever since.” Morrison, the Carolyn Silva Chambers Distinguished Professor of Advertising at the UO’s School of Journalism and Communication, was just as taken with Thibodeaux as he was with her. “Once he got here in January, he wrote to me and asked for an appointment,” said Morrison. “Those skills are not ones that a lot of freshmen bring in. He wrote, and he said, ‘I’d like to take half an hour to an hour and really talk about what I see as my dreams and my mission.’ And he sat here and gave me his outlook on life. ‘I know football is going to take me to a new place, but I want to have the tools for afterwards.’ School of Journalism and Communication “I have a book about creative confidence. He said, ‘I think I have that, but I need to know how to use it. What do I do with that?’ I want all of my students to be successful, but I love the fact that this student, with his privilege and his pulpit with so many followers on Twitter, is still able to beautifully talk about what his mission is, and ask the right questions.”

“A lot of schools have great programs, great this-and-that. But for me, I realized connections are a thing that really matter. Opportunity is the biggest thing. I was looking at, ‘Where can I go that will give me the best opportunity for the future?’ And Oregon has it.” —Kayvon Thibodeaux

On the football field, Thibodeaux’s mission is to be as much of a wrecking ball as possible. As an eighth grader, he was once kicked out of a Pop Warner All-Star game because his opponents couldn’t physically handle the force of his tackles. He played two years at Dorsey High School in LA before transferring to Oaks Christian School, 45 miles away. He drove himself to and from school in a Ford Mustang five years older than he is, then drove over opposing quarterbacks on the football field, registering sacks in 16 of the 27 games he played for Oaks Christian—including four sacks in the state championship game. Vice magazine referred to him as the best player in the class of 2019 and potentially “the best pass rusher to come out of the West Coast this millennium”—while he was still a sophomore in high school. On his official UO football profile page, the list of schools interested in signing him stretches to 25 before helpfully adding “and others.”

Kayvon Thibodeaux and his family while he was in high school

But for all of his physical gifts on the field, Thibodeaux is just as big a force to be reckoned with off it. By the end of his second year at Dorsey High he’d decided he wanted to become a lawyer, rebuild Dorsey, and help uplift his entire community in South Central LA. He graduated from Oaks Christian with a 3.8 GPA, but with a change to one of his stated career goals: he now wants to be a broadcast journalist. That meant, while he was visiting the likes of South Bend, Baton Rouge, Ann Arbor, Norman, and College Station on recruiting trips, he was checking out journalism schools just as much as he was checking out the football facilities. And when he arrived in Eugene, he fell in love. “I was looking at, ‘How can I be helped? How can I achieve my goals?’” Thibodeaux said. “A lot of schools have great programs, great this-and-that. But for me, I realized connections are a thing that really matter. Opportunity is the biggest thing. I was looking at, ‘Where can I go that will give me the best opportunity for the future?’ And Oregon has it. “I’ve met a lot of people, been a lot of places. A lot of people tried to sell me a used car, but it doesn’t really work. I know what I want. I know what I want to do. And I feel like Oregon gives me the best platform and the best tools to reach my goals.”

“He wrote, and he said, ‘I’d like to take half an hour to an hour and really talk about what I see as my dreams and my mission.’ And he sat here and gave me his outlook on life. ‘I know football is going to take me to a new place, but I want to have the tools for afterwards.’” —Deb Morrison, Carolyn Silva Chambers Distinguished Professor of Advertising