re: Najee Harris opens up on Alabama Struggles, Culture Shock and No Regrets - AL.com

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Just that there seems to be some maturity issues and a disconnect between what he views as hard and what he actually experienced.

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You're projecting how you would feel if you'd had his experiences in Tuscaloosa.

I'm 53 years old. I live in a 50 year old house in rural Alabama that's 15 miles from a Wal-Mart and 7 miles from a grocery store. If you gave me a 7 figure annual salary job and dropped me in a Manhattan penthouse overlooking Central Park I'D BE FREAKING MISERABLE and a lot of people would think I was crazy.

His environment to Tuscaloosa was certainly even more of a culture shock that that move would be to me. IMO, the fact that he stuck it out even to the point of coming back for another year says that his "maturity issue" is that he's mature for his age. He didn't quit because he felt like a fish out of water and he didn't take the first easy out. Those choices are the mark of an immature person.

As far as the "not a leader" and "avoided signing autographs", again, he's clearly a really introverted person. The, by nature, are going to avoid those situation like the plague. They have to really challenge themselves to come out of that shell and show themselves to the world - which he did with these interviews. I loved them. Nothing canned or scripted, just a real person being himself.

So why don't you tell us what your experience was like at Alabama?

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I'm wondering how he's going to respond if goes to a team like the Bears or Giants and he doesn't like the cold weather (because he's, ya know, from California and it's hard to adjust to different environments), he's getting knocked around, fumbles a couple of times, and one of the world's largest media markets jumps on him about it.

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How is any of this relevant to anything that was said in the article?

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Najee could go slap some of your mamas and you'd still make excuses for him lol.

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my Mama ain't never won one damn game for Alabama

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he way he behaves leads me to question his ability to handle real adversity

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He points to the walls of this standard office breakroom, cutting the space into a third to leave six by eight feet of space. Najee then points to the corner: “There was a bed, a bed and then that’s the door.”

At one time, he can’t remember exactly when, that area held his dad, sister and two of his brothers. It takes a minute, but he recalls the building was called “The Soup Kitchen” in Richmond, California.

“The food was downstairs,” Najee said. “There’s like ants crawling over the food and hella homeless people. … We stayed there for almost like a year, probably. But I stayed in hella shelters before. When that didn’t work we stayed at a family member’s house. We stayed in the car.

“Staying in a house is the best thing.”

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Tianna Hicks doesn’t know either. When asked what she considers Najee's hometown, she can only reply “he was raised in the West Coast.” Born in Martinez, California – a place Najee never actually lived – he bounced around with his family throughout childhood.

Ping-ponging within the Bay Area, to Seattle and back, Najee was a child raised in upheaval.

“Sh**, I’m about to move again,” Najee said when asked if he’s ever felt steady. “Yeah … Fu**. It’s not steady. You’ve got to be ready for anything.”

Najee is the youngest of five children of Tianna and Curt Harris – Najee also has four half-siblings from Curt’s side.

Jamal Gregory, Najee’s uncle and Curt’s brother, remembers Najee as quiet, yet competitive, in his younger years. A standard family activity for the clan would be watching movies and eating a special dinner, normally pizza.

The traces of ordinary ended there.

Tianna had her children young and hadn’t earned her high school diploma early in Najee's life. Curt never held a steady job and Tianna said he abused drugs and went through numerous addictions. That caused issues and financial strains that resulted in frequent moves. Najee can’t remember staying in one place for more than a year when he was younger as the family bounced from apartments, to homes of family friends, to shelters.

Even in the rare comfortable housing situation, home life provided little safe harbor.

Both Tianna and Jamal said Curt was verbally abusive toward his children and Tianna. Tianna said the abuse went further than vocal barrages. She said Curt's whoopings of the kids would be “bad beatings.” Tianna would then step in, leading to fights between the pair.

“Najee didn’t see me with bruises as much as my older children had, but it was still a lot,” Tianna told 247Sports. “They witnessed a lot of stuff.”

Curt, who currently lives in Seattle and hasn’t spoken to Najee “in a while,” admits he cursed at his kids and said he had a lot of “frustration” that would lead to fights with Tianna and those whoopings. “I regret that today,” he told 247Sports. He also said there were times Tianna got mad and started slapping him, but he’d “never” hit back.

“I came from banging, straight up,” Curt said. “My mentality was a fire lighter – one minute I could be this, one minute I could be that. I was very aggressive until I was like 21, 22, 23. … I didn’t give a fu** back then. It takes a while to give a fu**.

“It was truly a freaking nightmare, and I wish it didn’t happen.”

Najee has grown into a happy, polite young adult. While in New York he insisted a pregnant woman on the subway take his seat. He may have kept reporters guessing at the Army All-American bowl in San Antonio, but he stopped and smiled for every picture request he received, especially when kids scurried up to meet the one of the nation’s top players.

But the Najee of a decade ago, in only the way Najee can describe him, “was a little a**hole.”

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Curt, a Seattle native, often took the family north to Washington in order to find safe haven for a few months, weeks or year at a time. In this case, shortly after Najee's kindergarten escapades, the family headed north again. There they stayed in a special assisted living shelter that provided housing, help to obtain jobs and a school for the kids.

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But the family still moved in and out of homelessness. They had a Section 8 voucher, but Tianna said she and the kids kept following Curt, which left the family teetering from situation to situation. Curt said he was never gone for long – “the drug thing was on me” – and he’d drop food off in the days he went to the streets.

Hicks still remembers Christmas in shelters, sharing the holiday with six other families around a haggard tree. Other times the family slept in a van. A few times in a spacious Sierra, equipped with a TV and a roll-out bed, another time in a much smaller van and a few other times in a Dodge Durango.

Those occasions in the Durango came much later in life. Tianna didn’t want the kids to sleep there – she hated the nights in vans more than anything – and sent them to stay with friends leaving just her and Curt. But Najee refused. “If my mom is sleeping in the car, I’m sleeping in the car with her,” Najee said.

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I'd consider moving yearly from town to town, being beaten by your drugged up father, living in a Dodge Durango and being homeless is pretty real adversity.

But what do I know.

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Oh so you're just a hypocritical a-hole then. Congrats on being a miserable count.

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I'm quite happy in my life, and I'm proud to have worn the crimson and white. Few people have.

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dang. poor kid. I didn't know he'd had it that rough. That he made if out of that environment and actually thrived, when most do not, is testament to his character in my opinion.

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Plenty of sob stories out there among major college football players. I don't normally hear as much whining, though.

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I don't normally hear as much whining

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speaking of whining, you are doing a lot of it

After reading that story, I have a new found respect for him. I think his attitude is refreshing and honest. He is a young man and entitled to his opinion.

Globe, you sound like the “fans” that went after D. Harris when he started making political statements. He was told to shut up and play football. Some of these guys don’t grow up an Alabama fan, and instead see it as a spring board to the next level.

Good on him for stating his unabashed opinion when he was asked questions about Alabama.