KAPPAS IN SPORTS
said, while those men are great suc- cesses now, they were college students then and they wanted to do college-guy type things. "Derrick was the responsible and more mature one back then. He was the father of that group," said Sevillian, president and CEO Of McLaren Bay Region Hospital and president of six hospitals in the system's north region. "He would always pretty much keep us in line." If they needed advice, it was Gragg they would go to. His advice was always solid. Gragg says his success comes from many things, but among the biggest is the guidance from his parents. They never focused on race; they talked only about possibilities. "They would tell me 'You are going to be a great man,'" said Gragg. "And I was going to be able to do anything I wanted to." Gragg started playing football, bas- ketball and T-ball at age 7. His father Phillip Turner, not his biological father but the man who raised him, instilled that love of sports. "The man who raised me is the strongest man I've ever known," said Gragg. "He was the one who really loved sports." When Gragg was a sophomore in high school, his dad's kidneys began fail- ing; Turner was told he had six months to live. He would live 17 more years, never once missing any of Gragg's home college football games. Gragg's Start He'd been heavily recruited as a wide receiver, one of the top 25 high school players in Alabama, by prime SEC schools. Auburn and Alabama were knocking at his door. But an animated talking to, a stern word and a foot put down by Malone and he'd chosen Vanderbilt, where academics would come first and football second. On his recruiting trips, his mom would take him to the airport and let him go to the schools alone. When he
Gragg is married to Sanya and they have four children ages 7, 20, 24 and 27.
went to Vanderbilt, Malone drove him up there, stayed the whole time and even sidled her way into the coach's of- fice when he offered Gragg the scholar- ship. "He said I picked up the man's pen and handed it to him," Malone says, chuckling. "I don't really remember do- ing that, but I bet I did. Because he was an athlete who, to me, was a student first." A student who would land on that Nashville campus in the late 1980s and realize his Mustang was overshadowed by BMWs and Corvettes. An athlete who would navigate a college career on a predominantly white, wealthy campus, sticking with a core group of Black play- ers on Vanderbilt's football team. Together, they called themselves "DaFellaz." They were, Gragg says, "defeated gladiators, African American males who survived" on that campus. "Vanderbilt, it was a culture shock for a lot of us. I call our class guinea pigs, the 12 of us were the biggest class of African Americans," said Gragg, the NCAA's new chief diversity and inclu- sion officer. "We called ourselves the grand experiment." Vanderbilt football had never had a dozen Black players on its team. After
those 12 men went through, Vanderbilt and other schools in the SEC started recruiting more Black players. Gragg and those fellow players were pioneers. Young men who together would make their way in a world of Black among white. Those men would go on to great success; among the group are an NFL player who won a Super Bowl ring, a hospital CEO, a dentist, a colonel in the Army. Life quote: "It's easier to reach the stars when you stand on the shoulders of giants." Fun fact: Gragg was in a singing group in college named Menage. It was an R&B group, along the lines of New Edition mixed with The Temptations. He was the choreographer of Menage. "So I could dance really well back then. I couldn't sing as well, but I could dance." He's an author: Gragg has written a book about his time at Vanderbilt and those players he bonded with. It is titled "40 Days of Direction: Life Lessons from the Talented Ten."
Supplemented by published reports.
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