Nov. 27—PULLMAN — Mason McCormick sat in Jimmy Rogers' office in Brookings, the small town in South Dakota where a dynasty was unfolding beneath their feet. It was November 2020, and due to the coronavirus pandemic, their South Dakota State team was idle. They went on to play a spring season, but as the virus ravaged the world, the Jackrabbits had some time this fall.
He had recently become SDSU's starting left guard, so McCormick had built up credibility with Rogers, the Jackrabbits' co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. At some point, McCormick wanted to use that to recommend a certain player to Rogers and other coaches. But the timing didn't feel right to McCormick. The Jackrabbits were in limbo. Their season could start at any time.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThat's about when Rogers broke the silence.
"Hey, did you ever know this kid Tucker Large?" Rogers said.
It was music to the ears of McCormick, who was dying to bring up Large anyway. The two grew up together in Sioux Falls, some 60 miles from Brookings, putting Large less than an hour's drive from the SDSU coaches who would soon change his life.
At that point, the wheels were already in motion, transforming Large from undersized prospect to punt returner to star safety for Washington State, where he's wrapping up his fifth and final year of college football this fall. But at the time, if you zoomed out far enough, none of it quite added up: Large was still several inches under 6 feet tall. He preferred basketball over football. Heck, he didn't even play football as a ninth grader, and he didn't earn meaningful playing time for Roosevelt High until he was a junior.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut McCormick saw the potential, and if Rogers trusted anybody on this South Dakota State team, it was McCormick, who personified the traits that have come to define a Rogers team: selfless and committed, physical and hard-nosed, ready to lose a tooth if it meant converting on fourth-and-short. "He was what we all wanted the team to embody," Rogers said. "When a guy like that is adamant about trying to add another player that's as competitive as him, we gave him a shot." McCormick is now the Pittsburgh Steelers' starting left guard.
So within a few months, Rogers and SDSU coaches hit the road and visited Roosevelt High, where Large was enjoying a sterling senior season, on the basketball court and the football field. He fielded a few football offers, but they all came from Division II teams, four to be exact. SDSU coaches told him they could only offer him a preferred walk-on spot. Large accepted.
So on Nov. 11, 2020, Large announced he was taking his talents to South Dakota State, where he didn't have a scholarship. It was a full-circle moment for McCormick, who won't take credit for Large's ascent — but he does remember encouraging him to give football a real chance. The conversation wasn't much of a heart-to-heart, McCormick remembers, just a casual interaction shooting around at a gym in Sioux Falls.
In that gym, McCormick says, he told Large this: He could be a great basketball player at the Division II level, maybe NAIA. He's an incredible hooper.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"But you can play Division I football," McCormick told him, "just off your mindset, and you're quick. If you pour this thing, you won't have to pay for school. You're gonna be a good football player. He's like, you really think? And he did it, and fell in love with it. Obviously, I'm not taking any credit for that. Tuck's worked his ass off to become who he is, and I would just like to say that I was one of the first to believe in him, you know? That he could do it."
----Years before he blossomed into one of WSU's best players on either side of the ball, earning the team's top grades in defense and coverage on Pro Football Focus, Large didn't exactly look the part. As a high school freshman, he stood all of 5-foot-6 feet tall, and he didn't have much interest in football. He was freaky athletic, sure, and his competitiveness stood out like a skyscraper in a South Dakota wheatfield. But star safety on an FBS football team verging on bowl eligibility?
"I never thought that would happen," Roosevelt football coach Kim Nelson said.
But the more people you talk to, the more you learn about the way Large grew up and the traits that make him who he is, the less surprised you are that he has blossomed the way he has. The first piece to the puzzle: Large has three brothers, two older and one younger. "So naturally," said Jordan Soukup, Large's strength trainer back home, "you're kinda just fighting for it." That fostered a fire in Large, the kind that shows up in all manner of ways.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSoukup, who still works with Large when he travels back to Sioux Falls, has seen it materialize on all kinds of levels. The one he remembers best came when Large was younger, around his 10th or 11th-grade year, and the two were working on a power clean. Large couldn't complete the lift. "This lift is driving me nuts," Soukup remembers Large telling him.
"I was like, Tucker, we'll work on this lift as long as we have to, until you get it," Soukup said. "And we spent probably the whole hour of the session just working on the power clean. But he got it. He was just basically like, 'I'm not moving on and I'm refusing to do anything else until I get this lift right, because I wanna get this right.'"
"He's been the type of young kid that likes to prove everyone wrong. It's fuel for him," said Julie Large, Tucker's mother. "If you tell him he can't do it, he's gonna find a way to do it."
Around the same time in his life, Large was going out for basketball as a freshman, all 5-6 and 150 pounds of him — if that. Roosevelt was matched up against cross-town rival Sioux Falls Washington, the home of senior star Seth Benson, a 6-foot-2 athlete who would go on to start at middle linebacker for Iowa. Before long, Large checked into the game, and before long, he found himself tangled up with Benson.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"He kinda gives Seth Benson a shove, and Seth kinda knocks him down, and Tucker gets right back up in his face," Roosevelt coach Mitch Begeman said. "This kid was 6-2, and just raw as can be, strong.
"But Tucker did not back down from anybody, and he's not afraid. So I just think, where does that motor come from? I think it just comes from him understanding that he knew he had to outwork everybody that he came in contact with, because he didn't have maybe necessarily all the athletic intangibles that other kids had."
The funny part about Large's story, about the way he broke out at Roosevelt then caught on at South Dakota State and did all of the same things at WSU, is that much of it begins on the basketball court. That's where coaches like Begeman began to notice what makes Large's ascension possible: his motor. The energy he plays with, the relentless nature of his game.
Part of that comes with the positions he's played on the football field. Before he found a niche as a college safety, he fashioned himself a high school cornerback, the kind who always figured take time to catch on at the next level: He was solid and physical, a wide receiver's matchup nightmare, but because Large's measurables never stood out — today, he's listed at 5-foot-11 and 183 pounds — he had to take the long way.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut it was all kindling to Large's firTake another example from Soukup, the head sports performance coach at Harrisburg High School, just outside of Sioux Falls. In his time in that role, he's worked with plenty of younger athletes, freshmen who prefer to take things slow, to settle into their roles. "He didn't have that mindset," Soukup said. "He was like, no, I'm gonna go for this opportunity. I'm gonna make this my opportunity. Tucker believed he could play right away, and he made it his mission to."
"I've always loved his confidence," Nelson added. "'Coach, just give me the ball,' or 'put me in a position. I'll make a play for you. They're not gonna throw it over my head. I hope they throw it my way.' That kind of thing. When you have that confidence, then I think you're not afraid to make some plays and gamble a little bit. He's never had any fear about doing that."
"There's kids that have motors," Begeman said, "and there's Tucker Large."
Part of Large's story, part of the way he's turned into such a key cog in the Cougs' secondary, is told in what others missed out on. Last winter, when he decided to enter the transfer portal and follow Rogers to WSU, he did so with a "do not contact" tag, which signals a player has another destination in mind. That didn't stop other schools from reaching out, he said back in August, interested in his services. He paid them no mind.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementEven his high school coach, Nelson, looks back at Large's career and wonders what could have been. He remembers those days, when Large wasn't getting much recruiting attention. He always rationalized it to himself this way: Large may be his last name, but relatively speaking, he is still pretty small.
"But when you put him on the football field and watch him practice, he's going 100 miles an hour and making plays right and left," Nelson said. "So any coach that would watch him play would think, 'we need that guy on our team.' That's how I felt. Like I said, my biggest regret was we didn't give him the ball more. I would have fired myself if I'd have known that was gonna happen."
In 11 games in the crimson and gray laundry, Large has looked like one of the best safeties on the west coast. In a total of 562 snaps, he's given up only one touchdown. He's earned a PFF coverage grade of 80.0, by far the tops on the team. That number also ranks No. 31 nationwide among safeties with his playing time.
On the year, he's piled up 68 tackles, including 2.5 for loss. He's broken up three passes. He did snag one interception, which came in WSU's road loss to Ole Miss in October, but it was wiped out by a holding penalty that remains a mystery to this day. And counting his tackles in space is like finding Waldo: you could probably do it, but it would take quite a bit of time.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementStill, Large can't exactly spend his final regular-season game at WSU smelling the roses. The Cougars are one win away from reaching bowl eligibility, which would make nine out of the last 10 full seasons this program has done so. It's a point of pride around the program, perhaps rightfully so, but WSU can't waltz into this one. The Cougars are in this position, in part, because they fell to the Beavers in Corvallis earlier this month.
In any case, though, Large has left his footprint all over the Cougs' program. At most, he has two more games left at WSU. When he departs the team, though, his coaches will try and recruit players of his ilk, the kind who make it feel like he never left.
"I think my joy comes from coaching players like Tuck," Rogers said. "Guys that just are willing to listen, willing to work hard and then go do it the right way, with the right type of spirit and competitiveness, and don't settle for just a good game here and there. Want to be great, regardless of their intangibles. They're always on, and compete and bring the best out of people.
"If anything, he's grown into a great leader and a great voice to our youth of the team, and that's here or at SDSU. He's been pivotal. For him to come here and help the build of a team, I'm in debt to all those guys, so he means a lot. I've been with them since a walk-on to an all-American and a guy that's gonna probably see himself be in the NFL. It's a cool story, and he deserves a lot of credit."
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