At 6’7″ and 360 pounds, James Carmon is hard to miss, even on the football field. The junior defensive tackle, now in his first year at Mississippi State University, realized he had the size to be a football player when he had to sit out a few seasons of pee wee football because the other kids’ moms thought he was too big. However, despite his natural size and talent, ‘Big James’ had to fight hard to find himself on a football team in the toughest conference in the nation – the SEC.
Carmon grew up in Baltimore, Md., the son of a single mother and a father who was never a part of his life. Carmon said his older brother (and lone sibling) Michael Johnson was the closest thing he had to a father figure growing up.
“My brother has always been a mentor to me,” Carmon said. “That’s been my father. I never really had a father . So my brother was always there through everything I went through. Every baseball game, football game, basketball game, my brother was there, everything I did, so that was like my father.”
He did, indeed, play every sport he could in Baltimore, but he said he knew he was meant to be a football player in middle school, “When I got to about 250 [pounds]. Football was all me then.”
That size helped Carmon garner national attention as a high school football player, and he and his brother went all over the country to find the perfect school for him. He eventually settled on the University of Tennessee under then head coach Philip Fulmer.
However, he never made it to Tennessee. Carmon did not score high enough on the ACT and had to go to community college for two years.
“Next thing I know, I hear this country voice calling me, and it’s coach [Steve] Campbell from [Mississippi] Gulf Coast [Community College] saying, ‘We got a spot for you,'” Carmon said. “I just went on down.”
Knowing he would have to be impressive in JUCO if he still wanted to be a big time football player, Carmon said he was plenty motivated to work hard at MGCCC. In his first season he recorded 18 tackles and three sacks. In 2009, his second season, he burst onto the national scene with 38 tackles, five tackles for loss and three sacks as a defensive tackle, despite missing time at the beginning of the season due to minor knee surgery.
Not only a full-time football player, Carmon took extra classes in his final season on the coast so that he could graduate in December and be ready to enroll in a four-year university in January. But choosing that four-year university proved to be the hardest part. His original choice, Tennessee, now had a new head coach in Lane Kiffin, and Carmon said they were not paying much attention to him and seemed to think they had him wrapped up, so the Volunteers were out. At one point Carmon considered Ole Miss to be his leader, and he also had offers from Alabama and Auburn in the SEC.
Ultimately, Carmon settled on MSU, which he thought was the right place for him all along.
“I could have went anywhere, but MSU was just the best place for me,” he said. “They needed some big beef in the middle. They didn’t have none. I got a big opportunity to play and be an All-American and go on to the next level. Plus, all these boys are my brothers. I respect these boys like that. I just want to help these boys win. That’s it.”
Of ‘these boys,’ Carmon said defensive back Nickoe Whitley and senior defensive end Pernell McPhee, also a former JUCO transfer, have become like brothers to him.
McPhee said he took Carmon in under his wing almost immediately when he arrived in Starkville.
“When he first came in, man, I told him, ‘It ain’t gotta be me, but you gotta find one of these guys that goes hard, and don’t make any excuses, and go hard behind him.’ So I guess he took that in, and he started coming in behind me and seeing how hard I go. It doesn’t matter if he gets tired or lazy, I say a couple words to him and he gets back up.”
McPhee said one of the most important things he told Carmon was to value his short time. He said that while freshmen come in and have four or even five years to work, guys like him and Carmon only have two years to make a name for themselves, and they have to work overtime to do it.
“When you come in, you can’t come in acting lazy and playing lazy,” McPhee said. “You gotta come in, want to play and take somebody’s spot. That’s his focus right now, and we’ve got some good guys. He’s finding that motivation, but he’s steady talking about how he wants to go the NFL. I said, ‘You ain’t gonna go to the NFL if you’re out of shape, man. You gotta get in shape and go hard every play, man, even if you’re tired.’ So I think he’s found that motivation.”
McPhee and Carmon’s defensive line coach is Chris Wilson, who knows a thing or two about what it takes for players to get to the NFL. In 2009, Wilson was the defensive line coach at the University of Oklahoma, and his star defensive tackle Gerald McCoy was taken with the third pick in the NFL draft in April, while Nebraska All-American defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh was taken first overall. Wilson said he hopes Carmon can emulate those players over the next two years.
“What we’re hoping for is a guy like James Carmon who can be a vertical guy. A Gerald McCoy type, Ndamukong Suh type, who can attack the line of scrimmage and play vertical. Like they say, styles make fights. That’s kind of how we look at Big James.”
Carmon said the NFL is the ultimate goal and that it is the means to an end for the single mother that raised him in Baltimore.
“That’s definitely my dream, just make my mama happy,” he said. “As long as I’m making her happy, that’s my dream. If I don’t make it to the NFL, I’m gonna get a good job so she doesn’t have to work anymore. That’s all I want to do.”