Breaking Football's Color Barrier

Texas A&M scholar/athlete Dat Nguyen faces his next big test this month, getting drafted into the pros. Meanwhile, he's keeping an eye on the big picture by pursuing a master's degree.

Ask collegiate football All-American Dat Nguyen (pronounced "win") how he will be remembered in the [record books of college sports. He hesitates. Its tough to separate his own feats from those of his former Texas A&M University Aggies, who posted an 11-3 season last year and charged past previously-unbeaten Kansas State to win the Big 12's 1998 conference championship. As a senior linebacker, Nguyen helped lead the Aggies to the Sugar Bowl this past New Year's Day. Now he's entering this month's National Football League (NFL) draft.

But Nguyen knows his skin color is just as much a curiosity as the 517 career tackles that made him one of the country's top college players. His status as one of only a handful of Asians who have starred in college football and as the son of Vietnamese refugees has drawn as much attention as his winning the Rotary Lombardi and Chuck Bednarik trophies. The Lombardi honors the country's top college lineman or linebacker. The Bednarik goes to the most outstanding defensive player.

"Asians are still rare on the field," sums up Nguyen. "But hopefully there will be others behind me because football is definitely catching on with this generation of Asians."

A U.S.-born Vietnamese American, 23-year-old Nguyen enjoys rap music, pizza, hanging out with his friends, and playing video games -- just like most students his age. He grew up in the coastal town of Rockport, Texas.

In the world of highly promoted, televised pastimes like football and basketball, Nguyen has blitzed his way to the top of a contact sport still dominated by African Americans and Whites. He debunks the stereo-type of Asians only as super students and otherwise athletic duds. He insists that weight training and high protein diets of red meat can help a player yield results on the playing field. It is no wonder, then, that his immediate plans differ from those of most college graduates -- particularly Asian American graduates. Nguyen hopes to turn professional in this month's NFL draft.

If chosen -- and he is expected to be chosen early in the draft -- he will be as much a rarity in professional sports as he was in collegiate sports. In football, for example, in 1996-97, about 51 percent of Division I athletes were African American, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Most of the others were White. Only 1 percent were Asian American. Throughout his college career Nguyen never played against another Asian American. That doesn't faze him, however, and he counts his African American teammates among his college buddies.

The number of Asian American players is similarly miniscule in men's college basketball. In the '96-'97 season, there were only nine among the more than 3,500 players competing.

At the professional level, the NFL is so dominated by African Americans and Caucasians that a league spokesman lacked an Asian head count. In fact, the only Asian American draft pick who he could recall was Eugene Chung from 1992. Chung, who attended Virginia Tech, is currently a member of the Indianapolis Colts.

Why have Asians been so underrepresented in big-time football? People usually rule them out because of their often-smaller physiques. At 5-foot-11, 230 pounds, Nguyen is considered small among linebackers, even though he's bigger than a significant percentage of Asian American males.

Additionally, American football is not ingrained in Asian cultures as it is in that of the United States. In fact, football's physical gusto is still often mistaken for gratuitous violence among Asian immigrants. And with few Asian Americans playing college or pro football, there are few role models for Asian kids to emulate. Except for Nguyen.

Flight to Freedom

His face and family saga have donned the pages of Sports Illustrated and newspapers across the country. Ethnic media have quizzed him about whether Asians can truly play football and what it's like being a Vietnamese Jackie Robinson. Nguyen's success has been such a novelty that some people have asked his former A&M classmates whether he even speaks English on the field.

Some sports experts view the hype over Nguyen's heritage as an indication of the stereo-types that persist in athletics.

"It says a lot about our culture," says Dr. Lee McElroy, athletic director at American University. "Sometimes we obsess so much on speed and agility that we forget persistence and internal grit sometimes can overcome the other things."

In the case of Nguyen and his family, it is these qualities, and more, that have created a formula for success.

Just a few days before Saigon fell to the Communists as the Vietnam War wound down in April 1975, Ho and Tammy Nguyen fled Vietnam in the middle of the night while their village, Ben Da, was being bombed. Tammy Nguyen was four months pregnant at the time. Nevertheless, the couple and their five pajama-clad children packed onto a refugee boat. No one in the family spoke English.

The boat reached Thailand and the family eventually gained sponsorship to the United States. Dat was born at a relocation camp in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas.

The Nguyens eventually moved to Rockport, along Texas' Gulf Coast. Rockport is the English translation of the Vietnamese phrase, Ben Da. The older family members took up shrimping, which was their livelihood in their native country.

But in the 1970s, racism against Vietnamese shrimpers was common. White Americans resented the competition and the Vietnamese were often beaten and their fishing boats burned. Fearful for their youngster's safety, the Nguyens told their children to play only with other Vietnamese. The family eventually left shrimping to run a restaurant called Hu-Dat, named for two of their sons.

As a teen, Nguyen was hanging out with his friends until well past midnight. Media reports say he was involved with gangs, but Nguyen denies any such mischief. Nonetheless, his disapproving mother told him to shape up or she would ship him off to boarding school. So Nguyen took up sports.

He played basketball and baseball. In football, he doubled as linebacker and fullback, playing so intensely that he reportedly cracked helmets. His surname sparked the cheer, "Go, fight, Nguyen." His high school was small enough that several other Vietnamese teens made it onto the football team, but Nguyen was the only one who broke into college ranks.

A Shining Yet Humble Star

Texas A&M head football coach R.C. Slocum first learned about the Vietnamese youth who was one of the top defensive players in South Texas from A&M's recruiting scouts. Initially, the coach balked at recruiting Nguyen. The young man ran slower and was several inches shorter than his counterparts. But Slocum changed his mind after watching Nguyen play basketball. Nguyen was able to jump high enough from a flat-footed stance to still dunk the ball.

"The more I looked into it, the more I saw what a dominant player he was," Slocum says.

At A&M, coaches redshirted Nguyen his first year, meaning he could practice with the team but sat out of games to save a year of eligibility. During that time, his playing skills improved. Still, Nguyen became disillusioned and fumbled academically. At one point, he was so disenchanted that he considered changing schools. But by his second year, he was among the team's starters.

Nguyen went on to become one of the top ten tackle leaders in NCAA history. He led the Aggies in tackles for four years and set school records. He anchored the Aggies' "Wrecking Crew" defense, which ranked among the top ten nationally in fewest points and yards surrendered.

Before long, Nguyen became the "Big Man on Campus" at A&M, a predominantly White university of 43,000 students who worship football so much that a designated student "yell leader" wields the same clout as the student body president. Even Nguyen's father and other relatives grew so excited about football that they flocked to the Sugar Bowl last New Year's Day, a far cry from falling asleep during televised games early in Nguyen's career because they didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

Meanwhile, Nguyen earned a bachelor's degree last spring in agriculture development, finishing with a cumulative GPA of 2.5. His brother and roommate, Hung Nguyen, credited Dat's graduation within four years to his enlisting tutors and hitting the books as hard as he tackled his on-field opponents.

"Dat likes having his fun, but he's very disciplined," Hung Nguyen says. "He was at home by 10 o'clock almost every night. His life was football and studying."

Even Dat had completed his degree in four years, the redshirting of his freshman year left him with one more year of playing eligibility. Not one to waste time, he juggled his football schedule with graduate courses in marketing. He aspires to eventually resume his graduate studies and perhaps run his own business.

Not only did Nguyen set records on the field during college, he also distinguished himself as a role model for young Asians. He visited children at schools and hospitals. After meeting him, one Vietnamese boy began parting his hair bluntly down the middle of his head just like Nguyen. Slocum says he believes Nguyen's dedication comes from his gratitude over receiving a full-ride scholarship. Nguyen's older siblings had to pay for college using loans and grants.

"Dat is a star who doesn't act like a star," Slocum said. "[He] is grateful for the opportunity to go to college, while some athletes think they're doing the school a favor by showing up on the field. Football gave Data mechanism to get a college education because of the scholarship."

Nguyen combines the work ethic of a coal miner with the manners of a gentleman. On the field, his tackles were explosive enough to immediately bring down opponents without need to drag them down, but he regularly helped opponents back up after the play. And the word "ma'am" came up repeatedly during a recent Black Issues interview. Throughout his college playing days, he patiently signed every autograph requested and showed up at events where A&M coaches wanted him to appear. Stardom also has meant fans often interrupt his dates or restaurant outings to talk about football. Nguyen figures it is all part of being a trailblazer and he says he has gotten used to it.

Meanwhile, he dreams of playing pro ball, but his eyes are wide open to the realities of life.

"Football isn't going to last in my life until I'm 40," Nguyen says. "I would give it five years or so. I want to open other people's doors to football. In five or 10 years, you might not hear of me, but you might hear of other Asian players, other Vietnamese players.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Cox, Matthews & Associates
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