Great read on Kendall Beckwith

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This is her son’s passion. It’s his one true love. He breeds, raises, trains and rides horses.

“I ain’t nothing but an old cowboy,” Kendell claims. “They’re my children. They’re my kids.”

One of the nation’s most athletic, intimidating and ferocious football players kisses horses on the nose and strokes shaggy manes. He teaches them to walk and rides them across fields. He embraces them, and he disciplines them.

He cares for them in more ways than you can imagine.

When one of them tramples on her own food bucket, rendering it useless, Beckwith deconstructs an old dog house, using the roof as a food bowl.

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You can get in the weight room all you want, but wresting and riding horses all day is a full body workout. Works those muscles hidden in all different parts of your body.

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Dear Lord baby Jesus, lyin' there in your ghost manger, just lookin' at your Baby Einstein developmental videos, learnin' 'bout shapes and colors, please let Kendell Beckwith come back for his senior year so he can stay close to the horses.

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Coaches moved him to defensive end full-time. That didn’t necessarily work, either. During LSU’s preparations for the Outback Bowl, he was moved to middle linebacker.

“It was frustrating for him, but we settled him,” Wendell says. “We told him, ‘Let coaches try you in different positions.’ ”

He settled in at middle linebacker — the position he always had his sights on — and overtook D.J. Welter for the starting job midway through last season. He wasn’t ready to be a starter through the first half of that season, Kendell acknowledges.

The season opener against Wisconsin in Houston last year came in front of 71,000 people in an NFL stadium.

“I was so nervous. So many people,” Kendell says. “I knew the plays, but it’s almost like the first time when you get in. I just felt pressure.”

Coaches strung him along, giving him a series every quarter or so. Eventually, Kendell “got used to it,” he says.

And now? Well, he’s an All-SEC second-team pick, a 250-pounder running 4.55-second 40-yard dashes, a junior who’s turning heads — from opposing coaches to ones in Baton Rouge.

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