Kansas Jayhawks running back Devin Neal remembers a time when college football success was a far-fetched concept for the people of Lawrence. Now, the hometown team is nationally ranked, nationally recognized, and receiving regular national attention, bolstered by a local hero who is helping drive change both on and off the field with his performances and his actions.
Devin Neal Dreamt of Delivering Change With the Kansas Jayhawks
“I always had that dream of changing the program around,” Neal explains during an exclusive one-on-one interview with College Football Network. “People called me crazy, especially when I committed. It’s really special to be a part of this and turn it around and be one of the top teams in the country.”
When Neal committed to his hometown Jayhawks as a three-star recruit in the 2021 recruiting class, the Kansas football program was as low as it had ever been. The team hadn’t had a winning season since 2008 and had won no more than three games in a single season since 2010. The season prior to his arrival, Kansas had won zero games, not for the first time in recent years.
Since the arrival of that 2021 recruiting class and head coach Lance Leipold, the winds of change have swept through Lawrence. Once “kind of dormant” on fall Saturdays, there is encouragement, enthusiasm, and excitement about Kansas football in the local area. Neal has been at the forefront of a football resurgence that has helped change a community.
“It’s obviously really important to me, being from Lawrence, to give back to this community any way I can,” Neal explains.
“With our success, it’s brightened up the city itself. That’s what I love the most. I love the interaction with the community. I think football has a funny way of connecting people and the amount of connection we’ve built, and to be able to outreach to the community, means a lot to me.”
While Neal has been at the forefront of the football success that has ignited a community, his impact goes much deeper than the 3,189 career rushing yards and 35 touchdowns that place him near the top of Kansas football records books. Football has allowed him to connect to the Lawrence community that raised the Jayhawks’ running back at a human level.
Neal’s Charitable Endeavors Connect Him To the Lawrence Community
Neal was in his sophomore season at Kansas when he first got involved with the Family Promise of Lawrence. The organization is a non-profit interfaith program working to transform the lives of homeless children and their families. As NIL became more prevalent in college football, it helped community-minded student-athletes — like the Kansas RB — to drive local initiatives.
“I feel like a lot of my purpose is giving back in any shape or form,” Neal explains. “I have such a positive response with the community that I felt like I had to give back in some way. Whether that’s with kids, with adults, anyone who needs help, I feel like I have to give back and that was just the first part of it. It meant a lot to me, I felt pure joy that I never felt before.”
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His presence at the 5K Home Run event organized by Family Promise of Lawrence was just the start of Neal’s involvement in community projects. He’s organized coat drives to get coats, gloves, and toys to those in need in the Lawrence area, helped with food parcels for hungry locals, and most recently gave away free school supplies to 200 needy students.
Future plans include events to help people at Thanksgiving, a return of the coat drive, and even the possibility of an “adopt a family” at Christmas campaign to make sure people less fortunate get a holiday season they couldn’t otherwise have and so desperately deserve.
When we talk about accolades, there is one that Neal values above all others. The Walter Payton Man of the Year recognizes NFL players who have the greatest impact on their community. When it comes time for him to make the leap from the college level to the pros, his impact on his hometown of Lawrence tells a story as great as any other that you would hear.
While he’s still in college, Neal recognizes the importance of utilizing changes in Name, Image, and Likeness legislation for the greater good. Although NIL gets a negative reception from some stuck-in-the-mud types across the college football landscape, the Kansas running back is quick to point out the benefits and how it’s enabling people like him to give back to others.
“There’s plenty of stories about people giving back with the money they’ve made,” Neal emphasizes.
“Recently, I came across an OU player giving money to the walk-on players on his team. You see all these special stories about people giving back and I think that’s what it’s all about, the wide range of what you’re able to do with NIL, the connections you build with NIL.”
Unique Connections
Neal has never had a problem building connections. Born and raised in Lawrence, he is uniquely connected to the area in a way that few others are. Furthermore, his parents, Freda and Ryan, raised their son to build and foster relationships.
“My parents are my rock. I talk to them about serious stuff, non-serious stuff. They’re the people I lean on for advice, and personally, they helped me become the man that I’ve become today, and in every relationship that I have, I owe a lot to them.”
With relationships like those with running back room partner Daniel Hishaw Jr., Kansas boasts one of the best one-two punches at the position in college football. The nature of their friendship drives the success of that unit and, subsequently, the entire football team.
“We’re really tight,” Neal explains. “We’re always looking to get better, always trying to push one another. We have different perspectives that allow us to work on different parts of our game. We continue to get better off each other. He’s truly special and it’s one of those relationships that you’ll never forget and you’ll always have contact with for the rest of your life.”
Relationships like those with quarterback Jalon Daniels, who missed a good chunk of playing time for Kansas last fall but is back to full health and ready to continue to build Jayhawks football into a consistently relevant national football brand.
“He’s one of my best friends, truly,” Neal opens up on his bond with the Kansas QB1. “It’s unique, man. It’s not too often you can grow with someone since you were a freshman on the field. We’ve seen everything together on the field. We’ve seen every front, every defensive structure, and the way we communicate on the field is unique.”
“Off the field, we hang out almost every day, talking, chilling,” Neal continues. “It’s important to build those kind of relationships. He’s a guy who’s probably gonna be at my wedding one day. We just have a really special bond, for sure.”
While Neal and Daniels have built a special bond on and off the field, their relationship is further helping connect the Jayhawks football program to the Kansas fan base in Lawrence. In an age where players are more accessible than ever before due to multiple social media platforms, the duo has leaned on the podcast arena to bring them closer to fans than ever before.
“In the Mix With 4 and 6” launched on May 29, 2024. The podcast name references the numbers that the two players wear with pride for the Jayhawks program — Neal is 4, Daniels is 6 — and is a safe space for the two leaders of the program to open up on a range of topics that showcase the human side of being a college football player. After all, they’re more than a helmet.
“Honestly, it was more of one of those things where we wanted fans and the people to know more about us in a fun way,” Neal explains. “There’s a lot of things that we go through that we talk about and want to bring to light. We argue about silly stuff all the time so we thought it would be a fun idea to do.”
What started off as a fun idea has seen the pair discuss serious societal issues in a public forum. In Episode 3, Neal and Daniels open up about life as black men in America, with the Kansas QB detailing an interaction with the police in Los Angeles.
Neal believes it’s important to use their platform as student-athletes to bring to light issues that impact people no matter who they are.
“For us, it’s really important because a lot of times, if you’re an athlete, people think you can’t talk about certain things or you’re not supposed to talk about certain things. Or you can’t experience those things because you’re not a ‘typical’ person. But, that’s far from the truth, and to press on these issues, it takes people who are in the limelight a lot to talk about them.”
“I think those are important because, as you’ve heard on the podcast, me and him, who are popular in our city and his city, have gone through these things. So, for us to press on these issues might bring about change, it might not, but we felt it was important enough to bring to light for sure.”
A Leap of Faith
Everything about Neal’s story reads like a fairytale. The hometown kid who shone at the local high school before getting recruited to play for the college he watched as a boy growing up, it’s the sort of thing that they make movies about. However, the transformation of a program was more complex than all that. It took a leap of faith to make a splash on the national stage.
“Obviously, I wasn’t recruited by Coach Leipold originally,” Neal explains. “I was committed to Coach Miles’ staff. Honestly, when that whole situation came about, I wasn’t confident in the route KU was going. Eventually, I had a sit-down meeting with Coach Leipold and Coach Sleeve (Matt Gildersleeve), and from the get-go then, I knew that they were real about what they were about and they really wanted to bring about change, and I thought they were going to bring in the guys to bring about that change.”
“They built confidence in me to stay here and hold faith to the program. That means a lot to me, that relationship, and they were a real driving factor in me staying.”
That leap of faith paid immediate dividends for both player and program. Neal got his feet wet early against the likes of South Dakota and Coastal Carolina, but by late October of his freshman season, he was putting up 100 yards against an Oklahoma Sooners team that he’d watched alongside his father as a kid growing up and he was doing it for the hometown team.
A sign of things to come, Neal became the first Kansas player to win a Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week award as a true freshman and finished his first season with the program with 707 yards and eight touchdowns. Something special had begun.
“I thought I was going to play, but I didn’t expect to be the pivotal back,” Neal shares some thoughts on his freshman campaign. “It was special, really special. It meant a lot to me to play for my hometown school early, and make a lasting impact and keep growing from there on.”
That growth has looked like consecutive 1,000+ yard seasons. That growth has looked like consecutive seasons with double-digit touchdowns. That growth has included getting running back advice from former LSU star Leonard Fournette combined with the experience that slows the game down. That growth has culminated in Neal being named a team captain for his final year.
“Everyone thinks that when you get that “C” on your jersey, then you’re an automatic leader. But being a leader is not always fun. You have to hold people accountable. You have to be the spark when things aren’t going well. When things are flat, you have to bring energy.”
“I take that challenge head-on because I know what this team can be, and I want to lead us to a national championship. I think we have a fantastic group of captains who lead this team each and every day, who wear their emotions on their sleeve and give their all to this program.”
People might call Neal crazy for thinking that he can help guide Kansas, once a whipping boy and laughingstock of the Big 12, into a national champion. A self-confessed video game nut, he’s already achieved the feat multiple times on EA Sports College Football 25 since the game launched in July. Just because it’s doable there doesn’t make it doable in real life, right?
People called Neal crazy once before, and since then, all he’s done is help guide Kansas football to national relevance, a consistent place in the AP Poll, and transform the fortunes of a once beleaguered program. More than that, the hometown hero has galvanized and given back to the community of Lawrence with his performances on the field and actions away from it.
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