The foreman of the wrecking crew

Sporting News, The, August 31, 1998 by Kevin Sherrington

Texas A&M's Dat Nguyen has overcome physical and cultural barriers to become one of the nation's premier inside linebackers

Dat Nguyen understands when he hears he's too small to play in the NFL. He figures as much, too. After all, at 6-1, 213 pounds, the Texas A&M linebacker never believed he would play college football, either.

Nguyen (pronounced win) is not big, and he's not exceedingly fast. He runs a 4.67 in the 40-yard dash, which won't win any ribbons. Nguyen knows that, too. In fact, he was so uncertain of his potential as a collegian that he figured the only reason the Aggies wanted him in the first place was because he would be the first player of Vietnamese descent in school history. "Just to look good," is how Nguyen had it figured.

So when did you realize you could play, Dat?

"Just recently, I guess," he says, smiling.

Maybe one of the 370 tackles he made the past three seasons for the "Wrecking Crew" convinced him. Maybe it was winning defensive MVP honors in the Cotton Bowl after last season. Maybe it was the testimonials. Iowa State coach Dan McCarney calls him "as fine a linebacker as I've seen." UCLA coach Bob Toledo says Nguyen is "a great football player." Or maybe it was former NFL and college coach Jack Pardee's observation: "In today's game, you have so many measuring sticks--40-yard dashes, height, weight, agility. But the thing people often overlook is the most important of all--the ability to make plays. That's where Dat Nguyen excels."

Still, Nguyen found it difficult to believe when the Aggies came looking at him four years ago at Rockport-Fulton High School on Texas' Gulf Coast. Then-Aggies assistant Shawn Slocum alerted his father, A&M coach R.C. Slocum, who told his son Nguyen sounded small for a linebacker. Maybe, Shawn said, but he can stand flat-footed and jump to dunk a basketball.

None of this interest impressed Nguyen, whose senior season begins Monday when the Aggies play Florida State in the Kickoff Classic in East Rutherford, NJ. He figured the Aggies recruited him mostly as a novelty, something the coaches could brag about at their annual convention: Generic coach.' "We signed a kid who's bigger than a Subaru and twice as fast." Aggies coach: "Yeah? Well, we got a kid who's Vietnamesee!"

Nguyen already has a degree in agricultural development--he'll take graduate courses this fall in marketing--and Aggies coaches say he may be their smartest, most instinctive player since All-American Ed Simonini roamed Kyle Field a quarter-century ago, sticking anything attached to a football.

The A&M staff couldn't care less if Nguyen is the university's first Asian-American football player. It is out to win games, not Nobel Prizes. Then again, as good as Nguyen is--he is 86 tackles from breaking Johnny Holland's school record--he has a poor grasp of his own skills.

"I didn't think I'd ever play at A&M," Nguyen says. "Maybe special teams. The speed here was just phenomenal. Everyone was bigger and so much faster. You didn't run over linemen like you did in high school."

He weighed 235 pounds when he got to A&M, But he didn't think he could keep up at that size. So, on his own, he decided to lose 20 pounds, and by the spring of his freshman year he weighed 215. And still he didn't think he would be good enough, which is only natural.

His parents didn't believe he would play, either. How could life be that good?

Tammy Nguyen was pregnant when she and her husband, Ho, fled Vietnam with their four children during the fall of Saigon in 1975. The family had been successful shrimpers, with a good marine supply business. But they couldn't remain in their homeland when the Communists overran the country. "My sister says she can remember sitting in her pajamas at night, hearing the bombs go off," Dar says. "You never felt safe."

Still, Vietnam was their home. His parents didn't speak English. They knew nothing of America. Where would they go in such a big country? How would they make a new life? How could they leave? "That's the biggest risk you could take," Dar says. "Just wanting to be free."

So they left. Dat was born in September of that year, in an Arkansas refugee camp. The family lived briefly in Michigan, where members of a Catholic church took up a donation to buy them a car. The Nguyens drove that car to the Texas Gulf Coast to be near relatives. They settled in Rockport, which is the English translation of Ben Da, their home in Vietnam.

But Rockport was nothing like Ben Da. Some Anglo shrimpers called in the Ku Klux Klan. A few Vietnamese on the Gulf Coast were beaten, others had their boats burned, and a home was firebombed. "There was a lot of tension, but we did the best thing: We just ignored it," Dat says. "I was always wondering why my parents would say to choose my friends carefully, to just stay with relatives. They couldn't trust anyone. People wanted to run us out of town."

But Ho and Tummy Nguyen wouldn't leave, not when they had to sell one of their shrimping boats, not even when their first restaurant failed. Ho, who also had a marine supply shop, took up carpentry on the side. His oldest son ran the remaining boat, and the Nguyens sent their children through college on that. Dat was the next in line.