Marcus Lattimore

In 2019, Marcus Lattimore was inducted into the University of South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame and it looked like one of the happiest moments of his life. Instead, he was at a major life crossroads as he battled the trauma from trying to figure out his identity away from football. Soon thereafter, Lattimore and his wife moved to Oregon and he basically scrubbed every trace of football from his existence. For so long, Lattimore was universally recognized and beloved back in his home state. People felt like they knew him because of what he did in a No. 21 jersey and what he said in press conferences after games. Turned out they didn't know much about him at all. Turned out he didn't even really know himself. Lattimore, who has been in Portland for the last five years, has made a whole new life for himself as a spoken-word poet and a speaker at drug and alcohol rehab centers. He recently published his first book titled "Scream My Name," a story of how one of the most prominent names in Palmetto State sports history found his true self and transformed his life. Lattimore's football career basically ended when he suffered a devastating knee injury in 2012 against Tennessee. "It's been a grueling experience, but it's definitely been worth it," Lattimore said. "I was dealing with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of existential questions that I wanted answers to. Like: Who am I outside of football? And what do I do outside of football? If you keep throwing those questions into the atmosphere, it's going to lead you somewhere." These are the same questions, and the same trauma, that confront high-profile athletes from all over when the cheering stops and they look in the mirror. Former Clemson star Tajh Boyd battled years of depression when his NFL aspirations were cut short and he tried to carve a niche in the real world. Lattimore is speaking for Boyd and many others when he reflects: "From a very early age, I thought that football was who I was as a human being. So when it's stripped away, there's a dying in a sense. Part of you dies. The old me died and I had to figure out how to go about life, how to resurrect as Marcus Lattimore without a football. Those were questions that I couldn't run from. "When you're 18 years old and you hear 60,000 people screaming your name, your brain changes forever. Pleasure was around every corner for me. You need a balance, and I couldn't find that balance at home." Lattimore also shares something that has never been revealed publicly: He committed silently to Clemson assistant Jeff Scott in the summer of 2009 before his senior year at Byrnes High School. He later signed with South Carolina, but he said he has a deep respect for Dabo Swinney and the culture he's built over 16 seasons as the Tigers' head coach.