FOOTBALL IS THEIR BUSINESS, & BUSINESS IS GOOD | Meet the Fites, and read about their fascinating football life

TATUM – Football might be a way of life here in Texas for a lot of families.

But very few live it like the Fites.

And it’s every single day.

Drenon and Tamara Fite – educators at Tatum Independent School District – are the parents of a pair of FBS stars Drenon Fite III (Trey) and CJ Fite. And while the young men were both home in the last week, it’s only the calm before the storm that will be the 2024 season.

But don’t ever, ever feel sorry for ‘em.

They wouldn’t have it any other way.

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ETBlitz.com editor / publisher Mitch Lucas sat down with dad Drenon and his two sons late last week, when both guys were home briefly.

Trey, the oldest, is a student, a redshirt sophomore, and linebacker at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and CJ is a student, a sophomore and defensive tackle at Arizona State University.

Yeah – the distance between the programs is a challenge in season. More on that in a bit.

Both Trey and CJ were standouts, of course, for Tatum High School’s Eagles, where not only is Drenon the assistant superintendent for Tatum ISD, but mom Tamara is the principal at Tatum Primary School. So there are serious expectations in place, not only grades but across the board, and behavioral standards already, right?

Let’s turn up the pressure cooker just a bit more.

Drenon is also a former football coach.

So what does Trey do as a Tatum Eagle?

Well, he goes out and wins defensive lineman of the year in his district not once, but TWICE; earns the defensive player of the year award in his district as a junior; does well enough in the classroom to be named to the academic all-district AND academic all-state; and oh, by the way, was a qualifier for the UIL State Track & Field Championships as a senior, just to top it all off.

Then, it was time for the recruiting process to begin.

And boy, did it.

“Mine basically started in the summer,” Trey recalled, meaning the summer just before his senior year began. “I went to the SMU camp and my recruiting kind of skyrocketed after that. I started getting offers and offers. As the season went on, more offers started to come. Kansas State was probably my biggest one, and that’s when other schools, like Arkansas, started to come. And then, in October, or maybe November, I ended up committing to my current school, Louisiana at Lafayette.”

But there was way more to it than that. Trey got a curve ball when Louisiana-Lafayette coach Billy Napier, a very hot coach at the time, interviewed for and took the job at the University of Florida.

“So I had to make a decision,” he said, “and I ended up going to SMU. Went to SMU and didn’t think it was the right fit. It was crazy because the day after I entered the portal that Sunday – that Monday, coach Des (Michael Desormeaux, Louisiana at Lafayette head coach) was like, ‘Hey, we’ve been wanting you, we have one spot open for you, and if you really want it, we’re gonna leave it open for you,’ and I committed that day.”

From a parent’s perspective, Drenon wanted to intervene from the outset, but he knew that he and Tamara had to let Trey make his own decision.

“Being the first, and getting caught up in the hoopla of going to the big schools and all that – it ultimately comes down to mental stability,” Drenon said. “You go on these trips, and they wine them and dine them, and making you feel like you’re the king. Everybody’s got a story, everybody’s got something to sell you.

“To be honest, his mom and I were sold on Arkansas, coach Sam Pittman. Sam’s a great guy. He’s just personable. And I think on that weekend – they brought like the eight or nine that they wanted – (Trey) might have been the only one that didn’t commit that weekend. We were the last of the Mohicans.”

For the Fites, did they want Trey to go somewhere he could play soon? Yes! Did they want him to go somewhere he could win? Heck, yes! But they wanted him to go somewhere most of all that he could play, win and that they could feel good about him being safe – and happy.

“We went to Walmart and bought gear,” Drenon said. “And as the first son, sending him off to college – (Tamara) had to be content with who she was leaving him with. Sam sold her on, ‘This is where your son can feel safe.’ She was sold. Didn’t care about football. And too, you know, playing in the SEC, that was awesome.”

But Trey had different ideas, a different path. That path took him – at least briefly – to SMU.

He went to SMU initially. But he wouldn’t stay there. He would wind up in the transfer portal, and end up basically being recruited all over again. His eventual stop was his first choice: Louisiana-Lafayette.

“Once again, you get in the lane of trying to steer, make the best decision, he picked SMU knowing the degree, and what comes with it,” Drenon explained. “That’s great, but you’ve still got to be happy. Knowing that he ended up at his first place, where he wanted to go in the beginning, he’s come full circle. He’s happy now. And I will say, the coach who recruited him, he probably talked to him every day. They’ve built a relationship. To this day, my wife and I were talking, and our next big family event, we’re going to invite him. He’s family. From day one: he’s been open and he’s been honest. He takes care of him. That’s not at every place. And I’ve seen that, from first-hand experience. That speaks volumes about the character of a person.

“People use this word ‘culture,’ and you hear that. But I can say definitely at Louisiana and even at Arizona State, they are building a culture that people want to be a part of. You can see it.”

Now, what was C.J. doing – what was he observing – during all of Trey’s recruiting process? Did he pick up on all of this?

You bet he did after a phenomenal career at Tatum, where he left as one of the state’s top 200 prospects, and one of the best defensive tackle prospects in the nation, according to ESPN.

“I had a head start compared to him – when he was going through recruiting, I was always around,” the younger brother said. “Every trip he was on, I was right there with him. So I was really on the radar of all the schools that were recruiting him. It was a matter if they wanted to offer or not.

“It was kind of iffy, because I’m undersized for an interior lineman. That was really the biggest challenge. But with (Drenon) being an educator, and having the resources, I didn’t have to do it all myself – he had connections to coaches, connections to others.”

C.J. talks about being “undersized” for a defensive lineman, and he might be for some people in the business – he’s listed at 6-foot-2, 315 pounds – but don’t tell that to many who covered him a year ago and can see big things planned for him in 2024.

In the 2023 season, C.J. was one of eight – just eight – interior defensive linemen in all of FBS to play more than 300 snaps as a freshman, and one of only three true freshmen to do so. Fite played 200 more snaps than any other true freshmen linemen in the Pac-12, and his grade on run defense (75.0) was second among all true freshmen interior linemen in the FBS, and fourth when you include true and redshirt freshmen linemen.

In short: C.J. Fite had a heck of a freshman year.

Richie Bradshaw, who covers Arizona State for Sports Illustrated (si.com), discussed the Sun Devils’ defensive line position recently here: (Position Preview with Richie Bradshaw (youtube.com)).

“Fite could be (a staple of the team) for three years,” Bradshaw said. “…Throwing (Jacob Rich) Kongaika next to C.J. Fite is a terrifying thought for opposing offensive linemen, to think they are going to have to handle two just massive, strong human beings. It’s kind of a pick your poison.

“With C.J. Fite, I know he’s been working a lot on his pass-rushing skills, and to be able to take that step forward as sack master – one of the expectations that has been placed on him by himself is that he wants to take that next step and become Will Sutton. And for everybody that’s an ASU fan, that’s a high bar. That’s a two-time Pac-12 defensive player of the year, one of the all-time great Sun Devils. But if you’re going to set an expectation for yourself, shoot for the moon. And that’s where C.J. Fite is. Even beyond that, if he’s not a stat guy, he just needs to be a high-impact player, somebody that is going to command the respect of the offensive line, someone that can take on the double team. He and Kongaika together – really exciting for me.”

C.J. had a bit of his own battle a year ago.

And it happened because a coaching legend was let go.

Right about the time Fite was settling in, coach Herm Edwards was fired as football coach at Arizona State University.

“I thought it was going to be a breeze when I committed during the summer to Arizona State. But when coach Herm got fired, that’s when I had to make a tough decision. I liked that whole staff, they were nice. I had to figure out if I was going to decommit or stay. I ended up decommitting, and then, I was trying to get back in the recruiting process.

“It was tough trying to figure out where I was going to go. It was very stressful, trying to figure out what was open, who would take me, things like that, trying to figure out what was the next place. And then when I got the call from the new staff at Arizona State, I told them I’d call them back. After I got out of class, I did talk to them – that was Monday, and had it done by Wednesday. I never really wanted to decommit, but it was kind of like I needed to; there were a lot of uncertainties; so we were trying to make sure things were more stable when they got the new staff.”

Fite went on to have that great first year, and did so without expecting it.

“I’d say coming in, I really didn’t expect to play,” he said. “I expected to come in, rehab, try to get my knee right, learn from people, get things straight – pretty much learn how to “do” college, learn how to go to school, learn how to practice, things like that. I didn’t really expect ASU to have any expectations of me because the new (coaching) staff recruited me late; they came late. So they recruited me maybe a few weeks before signing day. I think I probably exceeded my expectations and theirs.”

Trey had a different challenge: bulk up a little bit, and shift his focus from being all over the place as a multi-sport athlete to a single focus: football.

“Biggest thing coming from high school, I was a multi-sport athlete, so the biggest thing was focusing on getting bigger, focusing in on football, because I played so many sports,” Trey said. “The program’s expectations were the same, just make sure I develop as a player, and then obviously, get bigger, especially when I first got there. I put up some numbers, but the biggest thing was to keep on developing me at my position and grow as a player.”

Neither of the Fite sons gets to stay home long – C.J. was expected back not long after the interview, and Trey will return soon, as well.

And for anyone wondering how the family divides all those games with all the distance between Arizona State and Louisiana-Lafayette, they don’t do a lot of one parent at one game, and one at the other.

“We don’t do much of that, if any,” Drenon said. “She doesn’t like that. We have a lot of extended family, and they’ll go to one game and we’ll go to the other, depending on who’s home, and that’s pretty much how we determine where we’re going.”

Based on their sons’ career direction and trends so far, the Fites had better get used to traveling – they look to be doing it for the foreseeable future.