Three Special Seasons
Jan 03, 2023 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
There is a young man. He is 18 years old. He stands inside the Round Rock Multipurpose Complex at the Texas Youth Football All-Star Showcase. It is February 14, 2020. He is decked out in Kansas State gear. His name is Chris "Deuce" Vaughn. He sounds more like a coach than a Cedar Ridge High School student months away from his senior prom. He stands in front of kids. All eyes focus on Vaughn. And Vaughn's words begin to flow.
"I can talk to you about the recruiting process and everything, but what I want to talk with you about is your work ethic," Vaughn says. "For you young guys coming out, everything that you do Monday through Sunday is a process.
"Everybody knows you come out and play games, all in front of the lights, but what you do between Sunday and Thursday for Friday, that's going to be what makes you great."
Vaughn shares more wisdom with the youngsters. Months later, he reports to K-State as a 5-foot-5, 168-pound freshman running back under K-State head coach Chris Klieman and running backs coach Brian Anderson.
"When I was growing up, I'd go to camps, or even now, I go to camps, and schools would come over like, 'Yeah, you're small and all, we'll see if you're able to play," Vaughn says during a phone conversation in February 2020. "Really, I always wanted to be a 'wow' guy, just be a guy who comes in and everybody is like, 'wow, he can play ball.' I want to be a 'wow' guy and people will be like, 'wow, that kid can play.' That's always stuck with me.
"I want everybody to believe that with my size and my height that I can do it. I have faith in my abilities, without a doubt."
On December 31, 2022, Vaughn hands his gloves to a young boy in the stands at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana after K-State's remarkable season ends against No. 5 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. The young boy wears a purple K-State t-shirt. The young boy begins to cry. Vaughn politely waves goodbye and walks into the tunnel in his white No. 22 jersey. He holds his helmet in his left hand. His eyes are glassy. He disappears from sight.
After the Sugar Bowl postgame news conference, Klieman and Vaughn, still in his jersey, embrace for several seconds outside the K-State locker room.
Vaughn completes his junior season as just the second player in K-State history to earn Consensus All-American honors in multiple seasons. In 2021, he became the 11th player in K-State history to earn the distinction and the first since Tyler Lockett in 2014. He joins an elite group that also includes Jordy Nelson, Terence Newman, Mark Simoneau, David Allen, Martin Gramatica, Jaime Mendez, Sean Snyder and Gary Spani.
He is the second all-time leading rusher in K-State history, trailing only College Football Hall-of-Famer Darren Sproles. He ranks top-10 in many other game, season and career statistical categories at K-State. His 5,029 all-purpose yards are the most in the nation by an active junior, as are his 3,604 rushing yards. He is one of just five FBS players since 1996 to reach 3,600 rushing yards and 1,250 receiving yards in a career. He did so in his 37th career game, seven games faster than the next player on the list.
Two days after the Sugar Bowl, Vaughn announces on Twitter that he will forego his senior season at K-State and enter his name into the 2023 NFL Draft. It is a lifelong dream for the native of Round Rock, Texas, and brings an end to a truly remarkable three-year K-State career destined for the football Ring of Honor at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
"To all of my teammates over the years, y'all are my brothers and have impacted my life in a way that I will never forget. I am not the person I am today without y'all. We have a bond that will last a lifetime.
"To my coaches and support staff, you believed in an undersized kid coming out of high school and for that I am forever grateful. Not only have I learned so much about this game but also what it means to be a man. I am blessed to have been a part of a culture that will win championships for years to come.
"To the best fans in the country, I can't thank you enough for the support throughout my journey here at K-State. The love y'all give to not only myself but this program does not go unnoticed. The impact you all have had on my life is hard to put into words. All I can say is I am so thankful.
"With that being said, after much thought and consideration, I have decided to forego my senior season and declare for the 2023 NFL Draft. I am excited to embark on this next chapter of my career and chase my lifelong dream."
Reared in humility and bearing a team-first approach while amassing his incredible success, Vaughn was always quick to credit everybody around him.
"It's my support system behind me," Vaughn said so many times over the years. "The guys in the locker room, everybody in this building from coaches to the people the help on a day-to-day basis, help me be the person that I'm trying to be, you can't put into words the impact those people have on every single one of us as a team.
"I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now without them."
He offered a similar response after he rushed 22 times for 133 yards and one touchdown against Alabama, including an 88-yard jaunt that marked the longest rush in a Sugar Bowl since 1958.
Truth is, for as much as Vaughn was quick to acknowledge his teammates, over the course of his career he was one of the most dangerous players in college football.
"Nothing that Deuce Vaughn does surprises me and probably shouldn't surprise anybody who's around the kid as much as we are on a daily basis because he just checks every box," Klieman said in November 2021. "It's fun to be around him and to have our young players see what hard work does and what preparation does and what taking care of your body does to lead to success."
Added K-State offensive coordinator Collin Klein earlier this season: "He's the player you lay your head down at night and think of all the different ways you can get him the football. He's off the chart in football IQ."
There's a story Chris Vaughn likes to share about his son, so let him share it.
Two framed photos rest on the desk in Chris Vaughn's home office. In one, Chris is holding Deuce in his arms after Arkansas beat No. 18 LSU 21-20 on November 29, 2002, in Little Rock, giving the Razorbacks their sixth-straight victory in a successful 9-5 campaign. Deuce is wearing a "Vaughn" Arkansas jersey. In the other photo, father and son are doing the Landshark sign together at an Ole Miss football event prior to a Cotton Bowl.
In all, Chris estimates that Deuce accompanied him into the locker room 30 times while he served as an assistant coach at Arkansas (2000-2007), Ole Miss (2008-11), Memphis (2012-13) and Texas (2014-15). Deuce heard locker room speeches from Houston Nutt, Charlie Strong and Justin Fuente. He also watched players such as Darren McFadden, Felix Jones and Dexter McCluster in practice.
"Deuce has a lot of the same intangibles those guys have," said Chris Vaughn, a Dallas Cowboys scout since 2017. "Darren McFadden, Felix Jones and Dexter McCluster, those guys loved to practice, big smile, came to work every day, and were smart players. Their teammates loved them. Teammates gravitated to them. I've heard the same about Deuce. The work ethic, the personality, big smile, outgoing, jovial — that's how those guys were too, and then they turned on the switch when it was time to play. He has a lot of the same intangibles."
South Florida was the first FBS school to offer Vaughn a scholarship. Missouri, Arkansas and Air Force followed. However, things changed when Deuce checked his direct messages one day in late January 2019. That's when he read a note from new K-State running backs coach Brian Anderson, whom Chris Vaughn had known for nearly 20 years.
"When I was coaching at Arkansas, Brian was coaching at Coffeyville Junior College and one of our best players had played for Brian there," Vaughn says. "Coffeyville is only an hour and a half away from Fayetteville. When BA was the coach and he wanted to get away, he came to Fayetteville. Here I am, 22 or 23, and we were both young coaches, so he'd come to town, and we'd hang out. We always kept in contact, as coaches do, over the years. I'd seen him at conventions. I'd see him on the road, and I always had his phone number."
Deuce Vaughn said that Anderson informed him that he had passed along his highlight footage to new K-State head coach Chris Klieman, whose record-setting offense at North Dakota State expertly utilized a myriad of running back, reaping outstanding results. Things took an exciting twist on February 26, 2019.
"Coach Anderson text me, 'Coach Klieman is going to give you a call in 10 minutes,'" Deuce recalled in 2021. "I was like, 'Oh my goodness, this is the head man at Kansas State giving me a call.' He called and offered me. That had never happened. No head coach had ever called me and offered me. To hear it from Coach Klieman, I knew Kansas State wanted the best for me."
Klieman adored Vaughn and his family.
"You could see a kid on film that loved to play the game," Klieman said in 2021. "He was a guy who did everything right on and off the field. You could see he was a competitor, and that's what so impressed us right away was how he played the game. Then when you get on the phone with him and then he and his mother came up on the visit and you could see an energy in the young man and how his personality could be contagious with people, and it has been ever since he arrived on campus."
Chris Vaughn had a surprise for his son while attending the 2020 NFL Combine. That's when Chris introduced himself to Sproles and told him about Deuce committing to K-State. Sproles stopped and FaceTimed with Deuce.
It was a brief meeting between the legend and the prodigy, linked together by their size, drive and K-State football, yet at the time a world apart.
It was after a K-State practice on October 3, 2021 that the 5-foot-6, 190-pound Sproles met 5-foot-6, 172-pound sophomore running back Deuce Vaughn face-to-face for the first time. Sproles, who finished fifth in the voting for the 2003 Heisman Trophy, was in Manhattan for his induction into the Kansas State Athletics Hall of Fame.
"One-hundred percent, that was one of the coolest moments of my life," Vaughn said. "That's somebody I've idolized. To have a conversation with him and to pick his brain and ask him questions, just to see him and meet this person that I've been looking up to, and who is the blueprint for the greatest undersized running back to ever play this football game, it was ridiculous.
"It was fantastic."
Vaughn asked Sproles about his preparation, watching film, and how he took care of his body over a 15-year NFL career. He asked Sproles, who ended his NFL career sixth in history with 19,696 all-purpose yards, about his time at K-State and in the NFL.
"I picked his brain about anything I could think of," Vaughn says. "Whenever you get compared to a great player like that, it's something you definitely take to heart. You're like, 'Man, this is someone who has done it for a very, very long time at the highest level.' To be compared with him is humbling. It's no undo pressure. There's no pressure except playing the game that I love. I'm honored to be in the same conversation or sentence with him."
Now Vaughn's career at K-State will forever be etched in stone as one of the best alongside K-State's all-time rushing leader.
There is a boy. He is out there. He is an undersized football player who has followed the career of Vaughn from afar. He has goals. He has dreams. He wears the No. 22 jersey to honor his idol.
He hopes to one day meet Deuce.
One day, he hopes to be like Deuce Vaughn.
There is a young man. He is 18 years old. He stands inside the Round Rock Multipurpose Complex at the Texas Youth Football All-Star Showcase. It is February 14, 2020. He is decked out in Kansas State gear. His name is Chris "Deuce" Vaughn. He sounds more like a coach than a Cedar Ridge High School student months away from his senior prom. He stands in front of kids. All eyes focus on Vaughn. And Vaughn's words begin to flow.
"I can talk to you about the recruiting process and everything, but what I want to talk with you about is your work ethic," Vaughn says. "For you young guys coming out, everything that you do Monday through Sunday is a process.
"Everybody knows you come out and play games, all in front of the lights, but what you do between Sunday and Thursday for Friday, that's going to be what makes you great."
Vaughn shares more wisdom with the youngsters. Months later, he reports to K-State as a 5-foot-5, 168-pound freshman running back under K-State head coach Chris Klieman and running backs coach Brian Anderson.
"When I was growing up, I'd go to camps, or even now, I go to camps, and schools would come over like, 'Yeah, you're small and all, we'll see if you're able to play," Vaughn says during a phone conversation in February 2020. "Really, I always wanted to be a 'wow' guy, just be a guy who comes in and everybody is like, 'wow, he can play ball.' I want to be a 'wow' guy and people will be like, 'wow, that kid can play.' That's always stuck with me.
"I want everybody to believe that with my size and my height that I can do it. I have faith in my abilities, without a doubt."
On December 31, 2022, Vaughn hands his gloves to a young boy in the stands at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana after K-State's remarkable season ends against No. 5 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. The young boy wears a purple K-State t-shirt. The young boy begins to cry. Vaughn politely waves goodbye and walks into the tunnel in his white No. 22 jersey. He holds his helmet in his left hand. His eyes are glassy. He disappears from sight.
After the Sugar Bowl postgame news conference, Klieman and Vaughn, still in his jersey, embrace for several seconds outside the K-State locker room.
Vaughn completes his junior season as just the second player in K-State history to earn Consensus All-American honors in multiple seasons. In 2021, he became the 11th player in K-State history to earn the distinction and the first since Tyler Lockett in 2014. He joins an elite group that also includes Jordy Nelson, Terence Newman, Mark Simoneau, David Allen, Martin Gramatica, Jaime Mendez, Sean Snyder and Gary Spani.
He is the second all-time leading rusher in K-State history, trailing only College Football Hall-of-Famer Darren Sproles. He ranks top-10 in many other game, season and career statistical categories at K-State. His 5,029 all-purpose yards are the most in the nation by an active junior, as are his 3,604 rushing yards. He is one of just five FBS players since 1996 to reach 3,600 rushing yards and 1,250 receiving yards in a career. He did so in his 37th career game, seven games faster than the next player on the list.
Two days after the Sugar Bowl, Vaughn announces on Twitter that he will forego his senior season at K-State and enter his name into the 2023 NFL Draft. It is a lifelong dream for the native of Round Rock, Texas, and brings an end to a truly remarkable three-year K-State career destined for the football Ring of Honor at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
His announcement on Twitter reads: "First and foremost, I want to thank God for blessing me with the ability to play this game and the platform to inspire. Kansas State University is a special place and I am honored to have represented the Powercat over these past three years.Forever a Wildcat!💜
— Deuce Vaughn (@C_Vaughn22) January 3, 2023
Thank you @KStateFB pic.twitter.com/dWLWs1QDZd
"To all of my teammates over the years, y'all are my brothers and have impacted my life in a way that I will never forget. I am not the person I am today without y'all. We have a bond that will last a lifetime.
"To my coaches and support staff, you believed in an undersized kid coming out of high school and for that I am forever grateful. Not only have I learned so much about this game but also what it means to be a man. I am blessed to have been a part of a culture that will win championships for years to come.
"To the best fans in the country, I can't thank you enough for the support throughout my journey here at K-State. The love y'all give to not only myself but this program does not go unnoticed. The impact you all have had on my life is hard to put into words. All I can say is I am so thankful.
"With that being said, after much thought and consideration, I have decided to forego my senior season and declare for the 2023 NFL Draft. I am excited to embark on this next chapter of my career and chase my lifelong dream."
Reared in humility and bearing a team-first approach while amassing his incredible success, Vaughn was always quick to credit everybody around him.
"It's my support system behind me," Vaughn said so many times over the years. "The guys in the locker room, everybody in this building from coaches to the people the help on a day-to-day basis, help me be the person that I'm trying to be, you can't put into words the impact those people have on every single one of us as a team.
"I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now without them."
He offered a similar response after he rushed 22 times for 133 yards and one touchdown against Alabama, including an 88-yard jaunt that marked the longest rush in a Sugar Bowl since 1958.
Truth is, for as much as Vaughn was quick to acknowledge his teammates, over the course of his career he was one of the most dangerous players in college football.
"Nothing that Deuce Vaughn does surprises me and probably shouldn't surprise anybody who's around the kid as much as we are on a daily basis because he just checks every box," Klieman said in November 2021. "It's fun to be around him and to have our young players see what hard work does and what preparation does and what taking care of your body does to lead to success."
Added K-State offensive coordinator Collin Klein earlier this season: "He's the player you lay your head down at night and think of all the different ways you can get him the football. He's off the chart in football IQ."
There's a story Chris Vaughn likes to share about his son, so let him share it.
Two framed photos rest on the desk in Chris Vaughn's home office. In one, Chris is holding Deuce in his arms after Arkansas beat No. 18 LSU 21-20 on November 29, 2002, in Little Rock, giving the Razorbacks their sixth-straight victory in a successful 9-5 campaign. Deuce is wearing a "Vaughn" Arkansas jersey. In the other photo, father and son are doing the Landshark sign together at an Ole Miss football event prior to a Cotton Bowl.
In all, Chris estimates that Deuce accompanied him into the locker room 30 times while he served as an assistant coach at Arkansas (2000-2007), Ole Miss (2008-11), Memphis (2012-13) and Texas (2014-15). Deuce heard locker room speeches from Houston Nutt, Charlie Strong and Justin Fuente. He also watched players such as Darren McFadden, Felix Jones and Dexter McCluster in practice.
"Deuce has a lot of the same intangibles those guys have," said Chris Vaughn, a Dallas Cowboys scout since 2017. "Darren McFadden, Felix Jones and Dexter McCluster, those guys loved to practice, big smile, came to work every day, and were smart players. Their teammates loved them. Teammates gravitated to them. I've heard the same about Deuce. The work ethic, the personality, big smile, outgoing, jovial — that's how those guys were too, and then they turned on the switch when it was time to play. He has a lot of the same intangibles."
South Florida was the first FBS school to offer Vaughn a scholarship. Missouri, Arkansas and Air Force followed. However, things changed when Deuce checked his direct messages one day in late January 2019. That's when he read a note from new K-State running backs coach Brian Anderson, whom Chris Vaughn had known for nearly 20 years.
"When I was coaching at Arkansas, Brian was coaching at Coffeyville Junior College and one of our best players had played for Brian there," Vaughn says. "Coffeyville is only an hour and a half away from Fayetteville. When BA was the coach and he wanted to get away, he came to Fayetteville. Here I am, 22 or 23, and we were both young coaches, so he'd come to town, and we'd hang out. We always kept in contact, as coaches do, over the years. I'd seen him at conventions. I'd see him on the road, and I always had his phone number."
Deuce Vaughn said that Anderson informed him that he had passed along his highlight footage to new K-State head coach Chris Klieman, whose record-setting offense at North Dakota State expertly utilized a myriad of running back, reaping outstanding results. Things took an exciting twist on February 26, 2019.
"Coach Anderson text me, 'Coach Klieman is going to give you a call in 10 minutes,'" Deuce recalled in 2021. "I was like, 'Oh my goodness, this is the head man at Kansas State giving me a call.' He called and offered me. That had never happened. No head coach had ever called me and offered me. To hear it from Coach Klieman, I knew Kansas State wanted the best for me."
Klieman adored Vaughn and his family.
"You could see a kid on film that loved to play the game," Klieman said in 2021. "He was a guy who did everything right on and off the field. You could see he was a competitor, and that's what so impressed us right away was how he played the game. Then when you get on the phone with him and then he and his mother came up on the visit and you could see an energy in the young man and how his personality could be contagious with people, and it has been ever since he arrived on campus."
Chris Vaughn had a surprise for his son while attending the 2020 NFL Combine. That's when Chris introduced himself to Sproles and told him about Deuce committing to K-State. Sproles stopped and FaceTimed with Deuce.
It was a brief meeting between the legend and the prodigy, linked together by their size, drive and K-State football, yet at the time a world apart.
It was after a K-State practice on October 3, 2021 that the 5-foot-6, 190-pound Sproles met 5-foot-6, 172-pound sophomore running back Deuce Vaughn face-to-face for the first time. Sproles, who finished fifth in the voting for the 2003 Heisman Trophy, was in Manhattan for his induction into the Kansas State Athletics Hall of Fame.
"One-hundred percent, that was one of the coolest moments of my life," Vaughn said. "That's somebody I've idolized. To have a conversation with him and to pick his brain and ask him questions, just to see him and meet this person that I've been looking up to, and who is the blueprint for the greatest undersized running back to ever play this football game, it was ridiculous.
"It was fantastic."
Vaughn asked Sproles about his preparation, watching film, and how he took care of his body over a 15-year NFL career. He asked Sproles, who ended his NFL career sixth in history with 19,696 all-purpose yards, about his time at K-State and in the NFL.
"I picked his brain about anything I could think of," Vaughn says. "Whenever you get compared to a great player like that, it's something you definitely take to heart. You're like, 'Man, this is someone who has done it for a very, very long time at the highest level.' To be compared with him is humbling. It's no undo pressure. There's no pressure except playing the game that I love. I'm honored to be in the same conversation or sentence with him."
Now Vaughn's career at K-State will forever be etched in stone as one of the best alongside K-State's all-time rushing leader.
There is a boy. He is out there. He is an undersized football player who has followed the career of Vaughn from afar. He has goals. He has dreams. He wears the No. 22 jersey to honor his idol.
He hopes to one day meet Deuce.
One day, he hopes to be like Deuce Vaughn.
Players Mentioned
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