By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Sometimes you can’t tell the winners from the losers.
It’s that way in this world of ours, where we often base success or failure on all the wrong values, on a moment in time that is as meaningless in the overall scheme of things as the click of a second off the clock.
Take Jason Colson.
You ask any fan of Mountaineer football to give you a one-word response to his name and that response inevitably will be “fumble.”
Indeed, Colson was given the chance to start at running back for West Virginia University on opening day, 2005, back home before friends and family in Syracuse, against a Syracuse team that would go 1-10.
But Colson fumbled his chance that day – three times. West Virginia was lucky to escape with the 15-7 victory.
He lost the football and his starting job, setting in motion events that eventually would lead to Steve Slaton taking over and becoming an All-American and an NFL star while Colson faded into the background.
But success is not to be measured by that one moment in time.
Instead, it is to be measure by one’s reaction to his failures, and Jason Colson proved himself to be far from a loser in a game far bigger than football.
Jason Colson is winning at the game of life.
Sometime this afternoon, in the West Virginia Coliseum, Jason Colson will walk upon the stage and receiver a master’s degree in business, his second degree earned at WVU. He will then, on Wednesday, get into his car and drive to Charlotte, where he will begin a career as an account manager with a information management company named AGDATA, owned and run by a WVU graduate, Verl Purdy, a member of the school’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni.
While that torturous moment back in 2005 remains vivid in his mind, he realizes that it was the day his entire outlook on life changed.
“It was,” he said Thursday evening, “a defining moment in my life.”
Until right now, Colson had kept bottled up inside himself the events of that weekend, a weekend in horror that left him with far more on his mind than the football game he played that day.
“On Saturday night before the (Sunday) game my biggest supporter in high school committed suicide,” he revealed.
Colson had just gotten her tickets to the game. Literally hours before the game he received a call from his high school athletic director, informing him of the tragedy.
Then came the fumbles.
Then came word that a good friend from high school had been killed.
And, to top it off, he broke up with his girl friend.
Talk about hitting rock bottom.
“That was the first game I ever cried after,” he admitted.
Still, he came out and faced the media after the game, a gut-wrenching experience.
“I wanted to do it with class even though it was a rough game on national TV,” he said. “I needed to get my respect back.”
Colson was devastated. Coach Rich Rodriguez and running backs coach Calvin Magee came to him after the game and told he’d have a second chance, but things never were the same from that moment on.
“My relationship with all the coaches changed,” he said.
There came a time not much later when they moved Colson to slot receiver. He would play some, but the coaches were pushing him out the door.
“They were trying to break me so I would transfer,” he said.
But transferring wasn’t in Jason Colson’s plans.
“My team needed me. My teammates needed me,” he said.
This was a young team with young running backs, the likes of Slaton and Pernell Williams.
Colson became in his own mind a “player-coach.” He became close with Slaton, helped him when he could, helped Williams when he need advice.
His playing time had shrunk to almost nothing, but he stayed with it.
“I couldn’t control my playing time. I had to focus on things I could control and the only thing I really could control was my academics,” he said. “Really, without that game, I wouldn’t be here now, getting my second degree, leaving for a good job.”
He stayed after the academics and graduated, went to graduate school and worked for AIG.
He’s learned a lesson that he wants all recruits to learn.
“College football is a business,” he said. “Recruits have to know that. They will use you, so you have to use them and take advantage of the education you are getting. It’s a ‘what have you done for me lately’ kind of thing. Kids have to realize they are students.”
Colson now possesses is master’s degree and is heading off into the unknown, but he thinks back on everything and to the day he and his roommate, linebacker Mortty Ivy, were talking in their apartment.
“I told him the proudest day in his life will be the day when he walks on stage to get his degree, not from any moment on the football field,” Colson said. “That’s what you came to school for.”
Oh, one more thing. Back to that Syracuse game where Colson’s life changed, where it seemed as if he had become a failure. Well, the offensive hero that day was a freshman running back who was being heralded as a future star.
His name is Jason, too. Jason Gwaltney.
Which one is the real success?
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
