great sports illustrated article on Leonard Fournette (link provided)

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There's only one ball on the football field, and everybody wants it. If that ball is in your hands, you have to take care of it like it's your baby. In that ball the whole of Louisiana is in your hands.

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"Me and that wooden paddle became well acquainted," Fournette says with a laugh. "I was doin' too much clownin'. My seventh-grade year seems like I got the paddle every period. Sometimes twice. But I needed that discipline. Keeping my slacks clean, tying my own tie every morning, making grades—all that changed who I am."

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That was evident after a bitter loss to Rummel High in the state semis his senior year. He bawled on the field afterward and was the last player to leave the locker room. Waiting for him in the parking lot was one of his biggest fans, Derek Mercadal II. Deuce, as he's known, had fallen in love with Fournette watching St. Augustine games with his father, an alum, and earlier that year, with the innocence of youth, he invited Fournette to his fifth birthday party. To the Mercadal family's shock, Fournette arrived straight from the airport, having just returned from an all-star camp. He presented Deuce with a St. Aug jersey and stuck around to play touch football. Now, after the loss, Deuce was crying too. On the way to the bus Fournette stopped, scooped up Deuce and tenderly offered some consoling words. "At his lowest moment he had the empathy to comfort my son," says Derek Mercadal, a lawyer. "That tells you everything you need to know about Leonard—about how much he cares for other people and his community."

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