Friday: Drew Kelson talks football, life after football
I remember the first time I saw Drew Kelson, the former Longhorn linebacker and safety, play football.
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He was a high school junior, it was the very first game of the season. His Houston Lamar squad was playing over at Butler Stadium in Houston and he was the team’s running back.
He was smooth. An excellent athlete with a great frame and you could see he had not only the requisite football skills but also played with some toughness.
He had a senior teammate, John Williams, a defensive end who had just committed to Oklahoma. And there was another defensive end on that Lamar team you might remember, a junior named Brian Orakpo, who was only 6-2, 190 pounds, literally all arms and legs, who was clearly better and quicker than Williams who played the same position.
I saw Kelson and Orakpo a few more times in their high school careers, the last one in Rice Stadium.
Drew went on to have a good career at Texas. He made two key plays in the Texas national championship run, a pass break-up covering Reggie Bush against USC that was an almost interception, and he also caused a fumble against Ohio State that sealed the comeback win in Columbus earlier that season. And then there’s the hit on then-Colorado quarterback Joel Klatt in the Big 12 championship that gets replayed countless times and Klatt still does remember it.
So when I spoke over Zoom with Drew Kelson earlier this week, it was fun to see just who he has become after football, some 20 years later, to learn about him. What he’s doing in life, what he remembers about those moments, and whether or not he still cares about and follows the Longhorns.
While I don’t want to give the entire interview away, Drew is clearly a class act, and someone any and all Longhorns fans would like representing the university. What a great guy who has made a great life for himself after football.
Here’s my interview with Drew.
