After his USC dream died, Joe Blue lost a love for football. Now he’s thriving again

After 30 tackles in two games, Joe Blue wasn’t practicing on this day. His white Adidas cleats were tied tight — double-knotted — but it was coach’s orders to have Newberry College’s banged-up star linebacker sit this one out.

Except it’s hard to get Blue to sit. Sitting brings back bad memories of a time when Blue, as he tells it, “got fat” and lost his love of football. Sitting brings Blue back to a couch in Dillon and wondering if he had already missed his opportunity to leave his hometown.

So, yeah, tell Blue to take a practice off, but he’s still going to stand at the back of one end zone and toss a football to himself. He’s still going to wear a bright red shirt with “NO EXCUSES” printed proudly across the back.

There are three eras to Blue’s life, one more riveting than the other. He was first the high school hero with the cool name that boomed through Dillon Memorial Stadium speakers. He was then the coveted South Carolina signee destined to be an SEC terror — until he was denied admission to USC altogether and led down an unwanted path. Now, he’s an emerging Division II All-American with a potential NFL future. He’s also the father to a 1-year-old boy named Josiah and, come May, will be the owner of a degree in sports management.

“I was laying in my bed the other night, talking to my roommate,” Blue said earlier this month, “I was like, ‘I can’t believe this. It feels like a fairy tale I’m living in.’

“I once had a route going to USC, and then it broke off and I went to Newberry. USC or Newberry? Everybody’s going to choose USC. But it was part of God’s plan to go to Newberry. It’s all worked out.”

The Gamecock that never was

When Todd Knight came to Dillon games during the early 2010s, the Newberry coach was watching Joe Blue for entertainment purposes only.

Knight was there to recruit another Wildcat, the kind of player who better fits a D2 profile. Any mention of courting Blue, a three-star prospect, was soon followed with a laugh.

“We didn’t think we actually had a shot at Joe because LSU and Carolina and everybody in the country was recruiting the kid,” Knight said. “We were concentrated on the linebacker beside him.

“But Joe was playing linebacker and his cousin, Anthony, was playing corner. And then on offense, Joe was playing fullback and his cousin was playing tailback. So every play, it was, ‘Blue on the tackle’ or ‘Blue on the interception’ or ‘Blue on the carry.’ It was the Blue show. It was all we heard all night long.

“And we’re sitting in the stands saying, ‘How cool would it be to hear that at Newberry? Blue on this, Blue on that.’ ”

It’s really cool to Knight now because both Blues start on his defense. Anthony Blue wears No. 9. He came here after a stint at Hutchinson (Kansas) Community College.

Joe Blue wears No. 8. His arrival here was a little more complicated.

On Aug. 7, 2014, nine months after he recorded 95 tackles for Dillon’s 2A state championship team, Blue was told he wouldn’t be wearing garnet and black. The first member of South Carolina’s 2014 recruiting class — he committed in January 2013 — wasn’t getting into the school.

Blue passed the NCAA Clearinghouse but didn’t pass USC’s admissions board. Blue said he was alerted of this by then-Carolina coach Steve Spurrier and recruiting staffer Robbie Liles.

“I didn’t understand,” Blue said. “The whole time I was told, ‘You’ve just got to get cleared through the NCAA Clearinghouse.’ I get cleared and I don’t know what happened from there.”

Spurrier told reporters at the time, “The university doesn’t tell us how to run the football program, and that’s their decision — who gets into school and who doesn’t. We honor their decision and move on.”

Dillon coach Jackie Hayes gets just as fired up reacting to the situation now as he did back then.

“I still look back and I think he was done extremely wrong,” Hayes said last month. “It was a numbers game. He’d be an All-SEC player if he was there right now.”

Pick any conspiracy theory you want, the bottom line was that Blue, an 18-year-old once sold on playing at Williams-Brice Stadium, was without a football home a couple weeks before the start of a season.

A few Division I programs called, but nothing came to fruition. Blue’s best option became Georgia Prep Academy in Atlanta. That experience lasted four games.

“The environment we were in, it was terrible,” he said. “Some days, we didn’t eat. I had to get out.”

So he came to a place where he did plenty of eating. Maybe too much eating. Without school and football, Blue came home to Dillon. A listed 235-pounder in high school, he ballooned to 254.

“I got fat,” he said, “I got fat!”

Weight gain can happen when a desire for something evaporates. Football was always going to be Blue’s way to get out of a town that rates as one of the most dangerous in the state. Instead of being in Columbia and playing for the Gamecocks, he was back home and not inspired to play for anyone.

“I started playing football, backyard football, like 5 years old,” Blue said. “Started playing tackle when I was like 10 or 11. So it was the majority of my whole life. But then my love changed.

“I wasn’t really me. It was like so much depression. I had to dig deep. It was really hard. I didn’t think I’d ever lose my love for football.”

Search for an old flame

“Trust, Care and Commitment” is Newberry football’s version of a group ice-breaker. A player stands in front of his teammates and tells something about himself as a way to help strengthen the locker room bond.

“Once you get to know somebody personally,” said Wolves defensive coordinator Stephen Flynn, “it’s easier for the man beside you to go to war with you and play and put everything on the line.”

Getting to know Joe Blue is hearing him open up about everything — a rough upbringing, the failed USC dream, Newberry’s rescue. Blue’s TCC session, Knight said, left people in tears.

“He talks about when he grew up and there were times when they didn’t have any power,” Knight said. “He talks about when they would live in the basement of the church because they didn’t have anywhere to live, and that they would live in abandoned homes. They would find a place in Dillon that nobody lived in, an old house.

“Could you imagine that as a kid coming up, and your momma moved you into an abandoned house?”

Anthony Blue doesn’t imagine it because he lived it. He, Joe and some 13 others — moms, cousins, uncles, brothers, grandma — were always together.

“We grew up poor,” Anthony Blue said. “Our only way to escape all the tragedy and everything that was going on back home was football. Our whole family, there were four of us on the Dillon High team. So we all strived to be better than what we were.

“So when that happened to him at USC, it did break his heart a little bit. And it was hard for him to trust people.”

Contrary to a couple years earlier, Knight didn’t have high-level competition when he tried recruiting Joe Blue for Newberry’s 2015 class. But that didn’t make it easy, either. How do you convince a kid to play for you when he’s contemplating giving up the game all together?

“I understood the kid’s mental makeup,” Knight said. “I just honestly thought if we could get him here, then everything would fall into place. So we hounded him. (Former Newberry assistant coach Hunter) Spivey stayed on him, I called him and texted him all the time and just tried to encourage him. ‘Come on, you’re thinking about today. I’m thinking about three or four years down the road.’ ”

Blue finally got off his momma’s couch.

“I couldn’t be a product of my environment,” Blue said. “I couldn’t be the same as everybody else. I couldn’t let my family down, myself down. So I thought I’d give it another shot.”

A deeper purpose

Blue made first-team All-South Atlantic Conference as both a sophomore and junior. He made history with 20 tackles — the most ever recorded by a Newberry player — in Game 1 of his senior season.

Knight, who has four former Wolves on active NFL rosters, wouldn’t be shocked if Blue is the next to make it.

“I think Joe Blue can play linebacker at any level,” Knight said. “You hear coaches use the phrase all the time, ‘This kid was born to play football.’ Well, the day he popped out, Joe tackled the damn doctor.”

Blue said he had mixed emotions when he first arrived at Newberry. Part of him was happy to be on a football field again, but the other part couldn’t get over the reality that the field failed to feature a Block C in the middle.

“Man,” he recalled thinking then, “I don’t want to be here. I could be somewhere else.”

Expect he couldn’t. South Carolina had long gone away as an option. Newberry’s Setzler Field — capacity 4,000 — was his new home. When he accepted a downsize in scenery, Blue excelled.

“I would say the end of my first semester here, I was good,” Blue said. “I was like, ‘What’s the reason I’m angry? I’m blessed to even be here. Most people don’t get this opportunity, so I’ve got to learn to take advantage of that.’ ”

Blue’s playing style at Dillon was compared to that of a locomotive. It was a relentless drive that only stopped because a whistle blew or time expired. That’s now fully transitioned to Newberry — both on and off the field.

Knight had a conversation with Blue last year around the time his son was born. Blue was again considering quitting football, dropping out of school and going to find work to help provide for Josiah and Blue’s girlfriend.

“We talked about the big picture,” Knight said. “I said, ‘We’re not talking about today, we’re thinking about the rest of your life with your son. What’s a better outcome for him? For you to stop and get a minimal wage job without a degree? Or let’s tough it out, part-time jobs here and there. Let’s make it happen. Let’s get that degree. We have a chance to change you and your son’s life because your life is changed.’

“He got that. He understood that.”

Anthony Blue said his cousin has turned into a better father than a football player.

“He FaceTimes his son every day when he goes home,” Anthony Blue said. “He teaches him how to walk. He’s just a great father. He’s just a very genuine person.”

Joe Blue is striving to be the dad he never had.

“Everything I do is for my son,” Joe Blue said. “I don’t want him to not have a father, so everything is for him.”

A grin, a renewed love

Joe Blue holds no hard feelings toward South Carolina or Spurrier. It’s bittersweet when he does it, but he watches the Gamecocks play and roots for guys like receiver Deebo Samuel and tight end K.C. Crosby, a pair he bonded with during the recruiting process.

He’s teammates now with guys like Anthony Blue and Anfernee Moffett. Moffett, a fellow linebacker, is also injured and wasn’t participating during this September afternoon practice. He stood at the back of the end zone and listened to Blue talk.

Blue relived his official visit to USC. He recalled seeing Cocky revealed, hearing “2001” played and watching the student section rock to “Sandstorm.”

“Man,” Blue said to Moffett, “it was live. It was crazy.”

But it wasn’t meant to be. Soon, a whistle blew and the day-dreaming stopped. Practice was over. Blue had to hustle in for Knight’s final words.

No excuses.

“I’m truly blessed to even be here,” Blue said with a grin. “Like the coaching staff, the teammates I got, I’m actually having fun. And when I first got here, I didn’t have fun. I was kind of bitter. But I’m actually having fun. Can’t complain.”

He grinned again.

“There’s not many days when you don’t run into Joe Blue when he doesn’t have a great attitude or a smile on his face,” Flynn said. “I look back to four years ago and think, South Carolina’s loss was our gain. Truly, truly our gain.

“Because he would have had success down there too.”

This story was originally published September 21, 2018 at 9:35 AM.