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Jalin Conyers finds his happy place with Texas Tech football
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- Jalin Conyers finds his happy place with Texas Tech football
In February 2019, a young, relatively slender version of Jalin Conyers posted on social media about the Texas Tech football staff offering him a scholarship. Conyers posed alongside then-Tech coach Matt Wells , each flashing the Guns Up hand sign. In another picture, Conyers was decked out in a full Red Raiders uniform, wearing No. 12.
Two months earlier, Conyers had played a central role in helping Gruver reach the Class 2A Division II football state championship game, playing receiver on a 14-2 team. A month later, he was helping the Greyhounds to the Class 2A state title game in basketball.
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By being the first to offer Conyers a scholarship, Texas Tech was getting in on the ground floor with a small-town sensation about as far as one can get from the state's major population centers.
If only Matt Wells had been looking out for his best interests and not Conyers' ...
Texas Tech football landed Jalin Conyers, eventually
"I remember sitting in coach Wells' office and he offered Jalin a scholarship," Kimberly Conyers, Jalin's mother, said this week, "and of course he's young and energetic and excited.
"And coach Wells told him, 'But I don't want you to make a decision right now because you're about to embark on a journey that is going to be very exciting, and I don't want you to commit and then regret it or change your mind, because you're about to' — his words, I think, were 'blow up; you're about to blow up' — and he was right. He got numerous offers after that and of course, ended up pursuing something different."
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This past January, Jalin Conyers finally joined the Red Raiders, playing tight end for his third college team in five years. Wells' prediction proved spot on. Ohio State and Georgia offered scholarships to Conyers, then listed at 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds. So did LSU and Michigan, Oregon and Penn State, Texas and Texas A&M.
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Ultimately, Conyers signed with Oklahoma and, after one year with the Sooners, spent the next three with Arizona State. He left there last winter, dissatisfied and feeling he wasn't progressing after the Sun Devils finished 3-9 for the second year in a row.
Conyers transferred to Tech, three hours south of where he grew up. Now filled out to 6-foot-4 and 265 pounds, he's caught 11 passes for 105 yards in the Red Raiders' first three games, including touchdowns in victories over Abilene Christian and North Texas.
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Conyers might have saved himself a lot of time and perhaps lack of fulfillment had Wells been greedy and pressed him for a prompt commitment. Conyers says he wanted to commit that day. It's always been his family's favorite school. He's been friends with Tech quarterback Behren Morton since elementary school when they attended the same football camps.
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"It's crazy to think about," Conyers said, "because I really think I would have been at Tech my whole career if it wasn't for them telling me not to be."
Conyers' words and those of his mother carry no resentment or regret. They view the way his career has unfolded with equanimity.
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Conyers says Wells encouraged him to enjoy his recruiting experience and rest assured the Red Raiders would be happy to have him.
Told of Jalin's speculation that he would have spent the past five years in Lubbock had he committed on the spot, Kimberly said, "That's probably true. However, it's hard to say, because they've been through coaching and staff changes, player personnel, different things like that and that might have happened, but I also believe we go through things for a purpose and for trials and tribulations and to come out better on the other end. I don't know if he'd be the person he is today if he hadn't gone through all those other steps along the way."
Texas Tech tight end Jalin Conyers (12) has caught 11 passes for 105 yards and two touchdowns this season. Conyers, a fifth-year senior from Gruver, came to Tech in January after one year at Oklahoma and three at Arizona State.
Jalin Conyers was Texas high school star in two small towns
Jalin is the oldest of five Conyers children. He has a sister at Oklahoma State and three younger brothers. He grew up in Stinnett and attended Stinnett West Texas schools up through his sophomore year. The move to Gruver, 32 miles north in the Texas Panhandle, came before his junior year.
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Kimberly, at different times over the past two decades, has been a teacher, coach, counselor and school principal. She was the Gruver High School principal from 2019 until May 2023. She now works at Oklahoma Panhandle State as director of teacher education, chair of the elementary education department and an assistant professor.
"Yeah, I didn't have fun in high school," Conyers said in a lighthearted way. "My parents were very strict. I think that made me be who I am today, which I'm thankful for it, but back then, man, it was tough. Especially having your mom in school. You couldn't get away with nothin'. If I had a C, she would know within the next 30 minutes."
Conyers had all sorts of fun in sports, though. He was a state silver medalist in the triple jump.
The basketball teams he played on qualified for the UIL state tournament each of his last three years. Conyers averaged 21 points and 10 rebounds per game as a sophomore on a state-champion Stinnett West Texas team in 2018. His teams at Gruver lost in a state final in 2019 and advanced to the state tournament in 2020 that was canceled on account of the pandemic.
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He could have had options to play college basketball, but college football staffs elsewhere started to see what Matt Wells saw. Jalin Conyers blew up. On the 247Sports composite recruiting index, he was a top-30 recruit in Texas and top-200 in the nation.
His future crystallized for him one evening in the family living room amid the nightly flurry of football coaches reaching out.
"He would be answering phone calls, answering text messages," Kimberly said. "I was sitting on the couch, and he was lying in the floor. I'm pretty sure he had just gotten off a phone call or something, and he kind of looked at me and said, 'Mom, I think I'm playing football now.' I said, 'Yeah, I think you're going to.'
"We, he had always thought the plan was going to be to play basketball, and it just didn't turn out that way."
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That didn't end the interest in Conyers as a basketball player, even after he had spent that first season at Oklahoma. When he had his name entered into the NCAA transfer portal, Conyers said a couple of schools, especially UT-San Antonio, wanted him to come back to hoops.
"Some still wanted me to play," he said. "I thought that was pretty funny. I'm built a little bit bigger now, so they probably don't want a 265(-pound) small forward."
Jalin Conyers fitting multiple roles for Texas Tech football team
The Texas Tech football team can use an athletic, 265-pound guy in all sorts of ways. The Red Raiders think they can line up Conyers as a traditional, in-line tight end, as a wide receiver, an H-back or as a wildcat-formation quarterback.
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Last week, the Red Raiders put three tight ends — 6-9, 270-pound Mason Tharp, 6-5, 245-pound Johncarlos Miller and Conyers — on the field at once. They scored three touchdowns on plays that deployed Tharp on the line and Conyers and Miller in the backfield, lead blocking for a running back.
"Honestly, I think you could put me anywhere," Conyers said.
Texas Tech tight end Jalin Conyers, back row center, is shown with his siblings and cousins after the Red Raiders' Aug. 31 season opener against Abilene Christian. Conyers grew up in Stinnett and Gruver, about three hours north of Lubbock.
The best part for the Conyers family is that come Saturday they're no longer split up, a few in the stadium and several watching on TV. Kimberly Conyers estimates Jalin had family at about dozen games in his three years at Arizona State, but seldom both parents at the same time. Either Cory Conyers or Kimberly would travel to watch Jalin, and the other would stay home for the other siblings' activities.
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At the season opener this year, Jalin realized what he'd been missing. He soaked up the experience of his first time through the Raider Walk. Once inside the stadium, he took time to look around, noting the early arrivals in the student section. He did some juggling, something that's part of his pre-game warmup.
Alan Wartes sent a text to Conyers, Morton and wide receiver Coy Eakin. Wartes is executive director of the West Texas-based Air It Out skill-position camps they used to attend.
"He told us good luck," Conyers said, "and he can't wait to watch. It was definitely cool to hear from him and think back to where we started."
No one was more eager to finally see Conyers play college football close to home than his family. That first night against ACU, he had not only them, but his old coaches from Stinnett West Texas and Gruver.
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"I was shaking, I was so happy and excited and nervous," Conyers said. "It was a good feeling. I had a bunch of family there, a lot of friends that have never watched me play in college."
"Of course, he's always grown up as a Tech fan," Kimberly said, "and we kind of instilled that in him when he was little. So just being there, especially the first week, watching him enjoy that and embrace it, was watching a dream come true for him. It's been a while. To see it come to fruition and to see him find a place where he feels at home has really done my heart good."
Don Williams has covered Texas Tech sports since 1986. Reach him by email at dwilliams@lubbockonline.com. Follow on X.com @AJ_DonWilliams.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Jalin Conyers finds his happy place with Texas Tech football
