AMES – It's James Neal's senior year of high school at Grayson High School in Grayson, Ga., when the school's football coach Matt Park stopped him in the hallway with a wager.
The bet? A one-on-one game of basketball. If Neal won, he wouldn't be bothered any longer about playing football. But if he lost, he'd be snapping the buttons on a helmet and strapping his first pair of shoulder pads into place.
It wasn't the first time Neal had been pushed to play football. At his size, he always looked more like an offensive lineman than he did a center on the basketball team. Often he sacrificed six inches to opposing big men in the paint.
So, without much thought, and a Division I dream, Neal agreed to join the football team without playing Park in a game of one-on-one.
"Basketball was cool," Neal said. "But I was 6'5 playing center and I'm seeing guys who are 6'11 in the same spot. So, obviously, didn't see a point. And I was like, 'I'll try football.'"
A 2021 high school graduate, Neal helped Grayson to a 7A Georgia state championship and a 14-0 record on the season. In one of the last practices of the season, a coach from Independence Community College in Independence, Kan., observed him and was impressed. He pushed for Neal to go the junior college football route, and sold him on it being a stepping stone to his DI aspirations.
Neal accepted the opportunity to be a Pirate – joining one of the most famous junior college football programs in the country.
Independence – commonly referred to as Indy – was featured on seasons three and four of the Netflix hit show "Last Chance U," when head coach Jason Browntook over the program and ignited the small-town Kansas college with a bolt of brash, outspoken energy.
Brown eventually resigned following 3.5 seasons at Independence following racially insensitive comments toward a German player via text message regarding a disciplinary exchange with the player.
"I didn't watch the show until I was at Indy, funny enough," Neal said with a chuckle. "I mean, it's somewhat accurate. The coaches aren't completely crazy, insane people. But it was different than the show. The show showed more bad than good, but it was a good experience. But still JUCO, though."
After an 8-2 season and a trip to the playoffs with Indy, Neal accepted a scholarship offer to Iowa State over opportunities from Georgia Tech and Florida Atlantic. Now a psychology major in Ames, Neal is preparing to enter his third season with the Cyclones in 2024.
"It was a dream come true," Neal said remembering his recruitment to play at Iowa State. "I wanted to play D1, whether basketball or football. But seeing football was going to be the way for me to accomplish that, I was ecstatic."
Neal started all 13 games for Iowa State in 2023 at left tackle following a redshirt season with ISU in 2022 when he played in just two games. Using PFF numbers, Neal's first season as a starter for the Cyclones was mostly a struggle.
His overall offensive grade was 39.3 last season, though he proved to be better in pass blocking (51.) than run blocking (34.2). Neal played exceptionally as a pass blocker in games vs. Iowa, Oklahoma State, TCU, Baylor, Texas and Kansas State. In each of those games, he earned a pass-blocking grade of at least 70 from PFF.
"What I'm working with James with is when you're a basketball player," Iowa State offensive line coach Ryan Clanton said, "Those fluid, lateral movements that are really fast, he's one of the fastest. He can bend his body, he, at times, can cross over and run laterally, but as an offensive lineman, you need to really keep your feet in the ground.
So, he can, at times, get overextended at times. That's what we're working through. He's so athletic that you have to kind of get him back a little bit."
After starting every game for Iowa State at left tackle a season ago, Neal doesn't seem as likely to play left tackle for ISU this season. Not all because of his struggles last season, but because Iowa State added Princeton transfer left tackle Jalen Travis, who seems most likely to start at left tackle for the Cyclones this season.
With Travis joining the Cyclones in June – he wanted to finish his degree requirements at Princeton before enrolling at Iowa State – Travis began practicing more on the interior of the Cyclone offensive line in the spring.
Clanton, who enters his season year with the program in 2024, desires to cross-train Iowa State's offensive linemen. The goal is to increase positional versatility, which should help Iowa State get its five best offensive linemen on the field at one time.
"It's huge because then you can play the best five players across the board at multiple positions," Clanton said. "You can strengthen certain spots. As you're looking at the offensive line as a whole, you're trying to identify, down the road, playing in these types of games, where are our weaknesses, where are our strengths? And then you can attack that with keeping a player at a position for a long period of time, or you can try to mix and match to find that right combination."
Entering the 2024 season, Neal has only played four previous seasons of football in his career, so the fundamental struggles he experienced in 2023 as a first-time starter make more sense. After a second offseason with Clanton, Neal believes there is potential for his technique to improve.
"He just really pounds technique, fundamentals," Neal said of Clanton. "Which is important, especially as an o-lineman.
"It takes a lot of refining because offensive line isn't an easy position to play at all. Technique is what you fall on at the end of the day. As long as you have that right, you'll be good."
Neal's football career didn't actually start with a bet back in high school. But in some ways, his entire career has been a bet on himself. After never playing the sport for the first 16-17 years of his life, Neal has managed to reach a starting role in the Big 12 as he enters his redshirt junior season this fall.
"I had great coaches, JUCO, here, people who were willing to work with me," Neal said of how he's learned to this point. "I wanted it bad enough, so I just worked."
