Bama nose tackle more than just a big man

TUSCALOOSA | Terrence Cody has always made a lasting first impression.

The University of Alabama’s 6-foot-5, 354-pound man-mountain of a senior nose guard remembers the first time he set foot on the football field for a game at Riverdale High School in Fort Myers, Fla.

“It was pretty much, ‘He’s too big, I can’t block him, I need help,’ all that stuff,” Cody said. “There were a lot of good players, but I was always the biggest on the field.”

That much hasn’t changed.

Hear the words of Kevin Helms, now a tight end at South Alabama, as he recalls the first time he set eyes on Cody when they were teammates at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, where Cody played for two years before coming to Alabama:

“I didn’t think he was real. He’s a monster. I thought he was a figment of my imagination,” Helms said.

Some 15 months ago, Cody waded onto the practice field at Alabama for the first time to take part in summer workouts, at the time weighing somewhere north of 375 pounds.

“That’s a big ol’ boy, that’s a big ol’ boy,” UA receiver Mike McCoy said. “I’d heard about him, but when I first saw him, that’s a big ol’ boy. That’s what everybody was saying. It was just like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”

Since he shot up to 6-4 and 285 pounds as a high school freshman, Cody has always been a gargantuan presence, but there is more to his story. Cody’s athletic feats are also bigger than life, as is his personality.

Those who have been around him at every stage of his development have been constantly amazed.

“The kid can dunk a basketball,” said Steve Campbell, Cody’s coach in junior college. “He’s very athletic. First time we saw him do the boxes and hopping the boxes and running the ropes (in football drills) that first summer, we knew we had something special.

“Guys his size aren’t supposed to be that athletic.”

Hoop dreams

Tell that to Herb Brown, basketball coach at Riverdale High School. He had Cody on the varsity team for one season.

“He could do a lot of things, a lot of things,” Brown said. “He was something else playing basketball. He was about 400 pounds when he was playing basketball. He couldn’t be stopped when he got it down low.

“I was afraid when he went up what would happen when he came down.”

Cody played center, mostly, but swears he also suited up in the backcourt.

“I played a little point guard, too,” he said. “I’m dead serious. They were surprised because I can dribble the ball and I was pretty quick.”

Brown can’t quite confirm that story, but said it’s close to the truth.

“He’ll lobby his way into things,” the coach said. “He would try to convince me he could play point guard.

“I’d tell him, ‘I’ll give you the ball out front a couple of times,’ or get him on the wing with the ball. We’d tell him he was the point forward. He could handle the ball. Nobody would get in his way when he came charging in toward the basket.”

Well, there was that one kid.

“I’ve got this picture of him,” Brown said. “He was trying to dunk and the guy took a charge. It’s a picture for the ages, I tell you, a picture for the ages.”

Said Cody, “A little bit nasty, but I still got a charge called on me.”

Cody has been known to jump up and touch the crossbar on the goal post after Alabama games, but McCoy isn’t convinced his teammate can get hang time on the basketball court.

“Don’t let T.C. lie to y’all,” McCoy said. “He can’t dunk, but he’s an athlete, a heck of an athlete. Just the way he’s changed from when he first got here to now, he’s lost the weight, faster — he’s a man, he’s a man.

“We thought he was going to be out of shape but he’s so fast and quick, it’s just God-given talent.”

Cody just laughs at his teammate’s doubts: “He hasn’t seen me play basketball.”

Collateral damage

Scott Jones, Cody’s head football coach in high school, recalls the player’s first practice.

“He was excited,” Jones said. “He weighed about 400 pounds. He made a tackle and the poor kid weighed about 140 pounds. He laid on top of him and all you could see was the kid’s hands and feet — it was like a cartoon.”

Fearing serious injuries, Brown immediately instituted a rule barring Cody from tackling his teammates to the ground in practice.

On the last play of that practice, a 240-pound fullback tried to run up the middle and Cody wrapped him up. He hoisted the fullback over his shoulder and carried him over to the coach.

“Is this OK?” Cody asked.

“Yes, Terrence, that’s fine,” Jones replied. “You can put him down now.”

A similar thing happened in a game against Punta Gorda (Fla.) Charlotte High.

“They let Terrence run on fourth-and-three,” Brown recalled. “The guy run up and grabbed him. He was a linebacker, a Division I prospect. Terrence fell on him and crushed the guy’s collarbone.”

Then there was the game against North Fort Meyers High and its heralded running back Noel Devine, now a starter at West Virginia.

“The coaches were yelling when we were on defense, ‘Where is Devine, where is Devine, where is Devine?’” Brown said, “and some players said he was on the sideline throwing up after being hit by Cody.”

Not only did Cody serve as a short-yardage running back in high school, bullying his way for touchdowns and first downs, he also had other skills.

“He can throw a ball about 70 yards,” Jones said. “He caught two or three passes, little tight end dumps. Every pass we ever threw to him he caught, even in practice. If you ever shake his hand, it will engulf yours.”

Under high school rules, Cody had to change jerseys into an eligible-receiver number to catch a pass.

“He had to wear No. 85,” Jones said. “We didn’t have one big enough. It was only a 2X. He told me, ‘It’s too tight.’ I told him, ‘Nobody’s going to be able to grab you now.’”

Candy man

Cody got recruiting attention from Florida, Miami, Florida State, South Florida and other schools out of high school, but ended up going the junior college route because of his grades. When Cody wasn’t eligible his sophomore or junior seasons at Riverdale High, Jones intervened. He called a meeting with Cody and his mother, informing them that the player could make millions of dollars in the National Football League if he got serious about school so he could play in college.

“My freshman year, just hanging around with the wrong crowd I let my grades go down,” Cody said. “My teachers had been trying to help me for two years. Around the end of my junior year, that’s when it really hit me. I decided I was going to get my grades up so I could play.”

Mississippi Gulf Coast coaches had been inquiring about a running back at Riverdale High when Jones turned their attention to Cody.

“He was a man amongst boys in high school,” said Campbell, the junior college coach. “He was a big, big young man with a strong physical presence. He made a great impact.”

Like Cody’s high school coach, Campbell had to create some new practice rules for Cody. Campbell coaches offensive linemen, and was accustomed to working double-team drills where two linemen would keep blocking a defender until they had knocked him to the ground.

“Normally we’re going to go until we knock that defensive lineman out,” Campbell said. “I had to adopt a new mentality with him. When he makes his mind up, you ain’t going to block him. We’d have been out there all night.”

Campbell also discovered that Cody’s endurance was nearly superhuman.

“Normally guys that are that big you find during two-a-days under a tent with an IV, cramping up or they can’t practice,” the coach said. “Never once did he cramp up or dehydrate or say it’s too hot.

“He was a special kid all the way around.”

Cody’s teammates found he was special in other ways.

“He ate a lot of candy,” said Helms.

One time Helms bought a huge bag of Sour Patch Kids candy.

“He ate a whole gallon bag of them in like an hour,” Helms said. “It would take me a whole week. He’d just laugh, ‘Ha ha.’”

Campbell didn’t want Cody to slim down. He was an unblockable force on the defensive line and an effective short-yardage ball carrier or blocker.

“He eats a good bunch,” the coach said. “I liked him big. There aren’t many 400-pounders that can move the way he can move. We had him 390 to 400, right in there, and you couldn’t block him.”

Cody also liked to play off the field. Helms remembers Cody coming to his dorm room to harass Helms’ brother, another player on the team.

“We had some big beds and he’d pick up the whole bed with my brother on it, and my brother is a big guy, like 325 pounds, and then he’s just slam the bed and my brother and jump on him and suffocate him.

“Nobody else could do that. He was just a big kid.”

An instant celebrity

Cody arrived at Alabama as a nearly instant celebrity. He made an impact in his very first collegiate game, helping hold Clemson to zero rushing yards by clogging up the trenches and occupying blockers. Nicknamed “Mount Cody” by his teammates, he earned first-team All-America honors and quickly became one of the most popular players on the team.

“I’ve signed over probably 2,000 autographs,” he said.

What’s the strangest thing he’s signed?

“I can’t talk about that one,” he said. “The second strangest is some girl told me to sign her forehead.”

Cody could have made himself eligible for the NFL draft after his first season at Alabama, but decided against it. Not only did he want the chance to play his way into bigger money and make himself a first-round selection, he wanted to stay because, quite frankly, he’s having fun being Cody at UA.

“Once you leave college and go to the next level it’s not going to be anything like that,” he said. “It’s all about business at the next level. You really don’t have any time to make friends.

“I have a lot of fun, get that a lot, still, every time I go out. It can be the movies, it can be a restaurant or I can just be out walking around and stuff and I get the same reaction, just like, ‘Hey, there’s’s Mount Cody,’ and stuff, give autographs and taking pictures and everything.”

Cody enjoys his celebrity most of the time, but there are times when he’d rather be left alone.

“It’s funny. In junior college we didn’t have that,” he said, “but it’s also hard. You’ve got a lot of responsibilities and stuff. You can’t stay comfortable. You’ve always got to do better and be better than the next person.”

Saban’s best buddy

Lately, Cody has been working on Alabama head coach Nick Saban the way he worked on his high school basketball coach to get the chance to play point guard. Saban has said that Cody can stay on the field in third-down passing situations if he gets down to 349 pounds, five less than he weighs now.

Cody is spending extra time on conditioning after practice and trying to watch what he eats, but he’s also lobbying Alabama’s decision-maker.

“He’s sitting with me on the bus now everywhere we go, whether it was the movie last (Friday) night or wherever I am,” Saban said. “I used to have the whole front seat to myself, and according to him he would not fit in that seat last year, but he’s done a little begging while he’s there, too, so he’s really nice to me.”

There’s nothing bashful about Cody.

“I just keep asking him, ‘When y’all going to put me in? Am I going to get in on third downs?’ Just regular questions,” Cody said. “He just smiles at me and I just start laughing, just bugging him, having a good time.

“I think it is (working) a little bit. It’s coming along good.”

There was no telling when Cody came into the world that he would grow into the hulk that he is today. He weighed less than 10 pounds at birth, “Nine pounds and something ounces. I wasn’t that big.”

Now he’s maybe the biggest player in college football and one of the most high-profile players on the nation’s fourth-ranked team.

The reactions on the field, however, haven’t changed from his first game at Riverdale High.

“It was like, ‘Man, this guy is big and strong and quick,’” he said. “Today, pretty much the same thing.”

Reach Tommy Deas at tommy.deas@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0224.