“I didn’t think I was that special and that many people cared about me, but it feels great,” James said. “It feels wonderful.”
James, a 6-foot-3, 230-pound linebacker for the Wildcats, planned to visit two-time defending national champion Alabama last month. But the tug of West Virginia was too much. He never made the trip.
“I picked West Virginia because of the family environment,” James said. “When I went there they treated me just like their son. It was a great place to be, and everybody expressed that they really wanted me there.”
James’ mother Aundria James is happy about the football opportunity and even more so about the academic opportunity her son has in engineering.
“Excited, blessed and very, very happy for him,” she said. “I’m glad that he’s going to play football, but I want him to stay straight and narrow when it comes to education.”
James is not the first member of his family to play college football. His grandfather played at Bluffton College. His brother, Darius, a former Wildcat, was a freshman starter at defensive end at Notre Dame College in Cleveland last fall. His dad, Dana James, played at Springfield South and was recruited as a defensive back by Michigan State, Miami and Ohio University among others. But a broken ankle his senior year ended his college dream.
Dana James, who was a coach on his son’s eighth-grade team, remembers his son playing pee-wee football and tackling kids two or three years older.
“Ever since he was a little kid I saw that he had that football gene in him,” Dana James said. “I said, ‘I’m really going to take the time to work with him if he wants to do it.’”
Gillespie said he knew Friday morning that James would choose West Virginia.
“West Virginia was the school that recruited him the hardest,” Gillespie said. “They’re the ones that wanted him from Day 1 and never wavered. Whenever he was ready to commit they were ready to have him.”
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