Douglas ready to step up in secondary

That was how it was with Douglas, except for one minor difference.

He found himself at Nassau Community College, a junior college in his native New York City area — and if you don’t believe that can bring you down to earth, well, you haven’t spent any time talking to kids who have gone to junior college.

The only similarity between Power 5 football and junior college is that there are 11 men on a side and the referees call penalties on you that you know you didn’t commit.

Junior college was frustrating for someone who knew he could play at a higher level and had only himself to blame for not making it there.

“Junior college was very frustrating,” Douglas admitted. “I’d wake up wanting to quit. I was losing weight. I was working out two times a day but I wasn’t eating much. I had to pay for books, pay for rent. It was very hard.

“I was kicking myself, but I said, ‘I’ve got to deal with it. It’s too late, I’m already here.’ I had my goal and it was the same goal. As long as the goal stays the same, the route doesn’t matter.”

That is the mature, intelligent approach. You feel Douglas has grown greatly from the kid who was forced off to JC to the player who is now in the midst of heavy competition at the cornerback position.

“It’s very different here,” Douglas said. “In junior college I felt like you could do whatever you wanted to do. I had no one watching me. But now you are playing for something bigger than yourself.

“You have to watch what you do. You have to watch what you do on social media. You can’t have that outside life like other kids. You have to wake up ... it’s football, study books, study football, practice. It’s different. You don’t have a lot of free time to yourself.”

But there are plenty of pluses at the D-I level, too.

“We didn’t have a training table in Nassau. I feel like I missed a thousand meals, but I’ve made up for it here,” Douglas joked.

Or maybe he wasn’t joking.

When Douglas was getting ready to leave Nassau, which has sent a few athletes to WVU, he had put himself into position to be heavily recruited. It was West Virginia that won him over, mainly through the recruitment of former cornerbacks coach Brian Mitchell.

“I felt like West Virginia was home,” he said. “Coach Mitchell promised me nothing. He said, ‘I’m not giving you nothing. You are going to have to work. I’m going to throw you in there and see how you react. You’re going to have to play. I saw you play in junior college, but that’s not Division 1.’”

WVU also impressed Douglas with the approach it carried to the recruitment.

“Every coach was giving me a dream, but I knew no coach was going to give me anything. Why would they do that? If they were going to do it for anyone, it would be the stars of the team and they aren’t even doing it for them.

“They didn’t bash any school. I told coach Mitchell I was thinking about Louisville and why, and he said that was a great reason, but in the Big 12 you have to cover. That’s what cornerbacks do,” Douglas recalled. “It was real. From when he recruited me until he left, I felt like he was a second father to me.”

Douglas got a taste of the Big 12 last year, playing in 11 games, four of them for more than 20 snaps and for 60 snaps against Baylor.

“It’s way faster,” Douglas said. “In junior college, between plays you’d get like 10 seconds to breathe. In this Big 12, you can’t breathe. They come right back at you. They will throw the ball at you four straight times. You have to be ready.”

The Baylor game, with all the Bears’ speedy receivers stretching the field on nearly every play, was the ultimate test.

“Doing that play after play, then playing every special team, and all of that way outside the numbers. It was very hard,” Douglas said. “But I’m used to it now.”

Just like food at the training table.