21 months later, Kristian Fulton finally ready to find his footing at LSU

NEW ORLEANS -- Keith Fulton’s phone rarely stops buzzing.

Often, it’s his wife, Michelle, checking on him, or the same group of friends that he grew up with in Marrero. Keith tends to play the role of mediator when it comes to his pals, a skill that’s come in handy quite a few times of late. Over the past 18 months, his attorney has been equally persistent.

One caller recently grabbed his attention.

“Someone called me today about writing a book about this,” Fulton said. “I think it’s been bookworthy from what he’s been through until now.”

The subject would be Keith’s son, Kristian, and the rigamarang that the LSU cornerback has navigated through since last February. Kristian, the youngest of Keith’s four children, has been thrust into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons: drug tests, NCAA suspensions and expensive legal counsel.

An 18-year-old student-athlete did what typical 18-year-old college students do -- make bad choices. In Kristian’s case, hanging out with a certain crowd led to poor decisions. That included smoking marijuana before an NCAA-mandated drug test, and because Kristian plays for LSU, it cost him his entire sophomore season and nearly his junior year, too.

The family tabbed Don Maurice Jackson, an Alabama-based attorney who specializes in these types of cases, to represent Kristian. On Aug. 9, the NCAA denied giving Kristian a re-consideration case, but two weeks later reduced a two-year suspension to one as long as the he could pass a drug test.

Alas, a path back to the field for Kristian for the first time since Dec. 31, 2016.

After successfully passing that drug test -- one of more than 30 he has taken and passed in the past 18 months -- Fulton will play Sunday night when the No. 25-ranked Tigers battle No. 8 Miami at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Kristian’s adventure to be reinstated is nearly complete. His father questions if the reality has yet to set in, but expects an outpour of emotions as soon as his son takes the field in Jerry’s World in primetime television.

Kristian’s hard-fought battle is certainly bookworthy, if you ask Keith. It’s a long-winded cautionary tale comprised of Bible verses, high-priced attorneys and Canadian Football League contracts -- nothing typical whatsoever for a former All-American trying to get his career back on track. Though Kristian has been constantly in the headlines over the past few months for his legal battles, his story will finally begin when LSU’s season commences.

“Now, he has a story to tell,” Keith said, “and it’s that he made a mistake.”

Now, redemption is calling Kristian’s name.

Kristian was 6 years old when Keith noticed something … different … about his youngest child. He can’t pinpoint just one thing about his son; he’s just always been a bit different than the rest.

Keith wasn’t alone. During youth basketball games, former New Orleans Saints linebacker Patrick Swilling would echo Keith’s sentiment. “That’s an NFL player,” Swilling told him the first time he saw Kristian on the court.

That elite athleticism eventually morphed into confidence. Kristian set a school record with 22 interceptions during his time at Rummel, including 11 his junior year and six more as a senior. Those video game statistics earned him a trip to Oregon for The Opening Finals and a spot in the Under Armour All-America Game. Kristian, who normally was soft-spoken, called his father with a scouting report on the handful of cornerbacks ranked ahead of him by national recruiting services.

“Dad, this dude is garbage,” Keith laughed.

“He’s just different,” he goes on. “He’s built different. He wants different things than most people. Everyone just wants to go to the league. He felt like he was going to be a No. 1 draft choice all along. He’s always been different.”

Kristian had LSU, Florida and Arkansas hats on the table in the Rummel gymnasium in February 2016, a decision he wrestled with up until the morning of. He refused to tell his father, but confided in his older brother, Keith, now a walk-on wide receiver at LSU.

The decision came down to LSU and Florida, but ultimately chose to stay in-state because of defensive backs coach Corey Raymond and his ability to help Kristian reach his full potential. If Kristian was going to fulfill his dream of becoming a first-round NFL draft selection, Raymond would help him get there, Keith explained.

“Everyone predicted Kristian to go to LSU. Some people were predicting him to go to Florida. That day was kind of surreal,” Keith explained. “People asked if I was going to have my LSU stuff on, but I didn’t know what to put on. He told Keith that he flipped back and forth between LSU and Florida. Keith thought he was going to Florida, but I trusted in Corey. Corey was the main reason why he chose LSU.”

The Fulton’s relationship with Raymond never waned, as LSU’s defensive backs coach would consistently update Keith on how Kristian was progressing throughout his first year in Baton Rouge. Kristian saw action in three games and seemed primed for a breakout campaign in 2017.

That changed after Kristian took an NCAA-mandated drug test after the Tigers’ 29-9 defeat of Lamar Jackson and Louisville in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando. Raymond picked up the phone to call Keith in February 2017, this time delivering bad news.

“He’s suspended for two years,” Raymond said. “He tried to cheat a drug test.”

Those words sent chills down Keith’s spine as he tried to process the fact that his son wouldn’t be on the field for the next two years. It didn’t stop, as the family searched for answers for several months after to no avail.

The issue was especially perplexing for Keith, who has never tried drugs.

“The LSU Athletics Department, everybody knew what type of person Kristian was. That wasn’t him. The closest thing I’ve ever done to drugs is drinking,” Keith said, sipping a Tito’s on the rocks with a splash of cranberry juice during a lunch in New Orleans’ Central Business District.

That June, Keith was preparing to work a track meet in Orlando. Swilling, who has always had a vested interest in Kristian, called to suggest legal representation. His solution was Don Maurice Jackson, a high-powered Alabama attorney with The Sports Group who specializes in NCAA legislation.

Keith wasted no time reaching out to Jackson, whose counsel came with a hefty price tag.

“We talked and he told me what the price was. I didn’t have that kind of money,” exclaimed Keith, a 56-year-old Uber and Lyft driver in New Orleans. “Don told me to send him the case and he’d start working.”

The attorney did just that.

Jackson was optimistic that Kristian would be back on the field at some point during the 2017 season. That positivity naturally spread to Keith, too.

When the NCAA slapped Kristian with a two-year suspension, it was a result of what the institution described as “tampering” with the drug test. That was not the case, Jackson argued. Kristian was nudged to substitute another person’s urine for his own. After all, when Kristian heard it was a drug test, he didn’t realize the NCAA was seeking out performance-enhancing drugs. Kristian had smoked marijuana and feared the potential ramifications.

“Kristian understands that he made a mistake,” Keith said. “It’s unfortunate that he followed the bad characters that suggested him doing that. That test was for steroids -- not weed -- and it goes to show you the thought process of an 18-year-old versus a 22- or 23-year-old. I made bad decisions even at 29.”

Jackson was unable to sway the NCAA to allow Kristian back onto the field as a sophomore. That led to countless Saturday afternoons with Keith beside his son in his dorm room, and a solemn, often emotionless Kristian watching his teammates play down Nicholson Drive in Tiger Stadium.

In between, Keith would text Bible verses to his son and remind him of those NFL dreams he had just a few years earlier. It remained a constant theme for the length of the year.

“I don’t think it even hit him at first,” Keith said. “I would send him Bible verses. ‘You need to stay focused on your goal, son.’ I tried to keep him focused. It’s his goal! We knew he was one of the better defensive backs coming out, and I don’t care what anybody says -- Kristian is Kristian, and he’s special. In the long run, this will put him in a better situation to be even more special.”

The situation grew even more difficult as outside institutions reached out to both Kristian and his father to gauge the cornerback’s interest in leaving LSU. Multiple junior colleges and even the Canadian Football League contacted both Kristian and Keith, with the Canadian Football League offering up a two-year contract with one year fully guaranteed.

While Keith was quick to ignore those phone calls, there were times when Kristian, longing for his return to football and unsure when that day would come at LSU, gave consideration to possibly leaving.

“Seriously?” Keith remembers asking.

Kristian couldn’t comprehend his father’s resistance to the idea. He asked for his thoughts on possibly playing in the Canadian Football League.

“I don’t think sh*t about it … not right now,” Keith responded.

“A lot of people would’ve quit. They wouldn’t taken the low road and gone to JUCO,” Keith said. “The JUCOs kept calling and they wanted to talk. Everybody was calling from around the country wanting him to come. We had to wait and see what was going to happen. We had an offer from the Canadian Football League for him to sign a two-year contract. Guaranteed contract or no guaranteed contract, there’s no way he was doing that. It ain’t going to happen. We weren’t doing that. We’re not interested.”

Kristian’s adversity became a national storyline, but it was only one of four hardships that his father had to monitor during that two-year stretch.

Kristian, his youngest son, faced a murky future at LSU, meshed between ongoing legal battles and NCAA suspensions. It paled in comparison to what his step-siblings had to battle.

Lakisha Matthews, 37, is Keith’s oldest. Her mother died in a car accident a few years ago. About 18 months ago, Matthews discovered she needed a kidney and pancreas transplant. Lawrence Coutee, 36, is his oldest son. In the past two years, Coutee has overdosed on drugs twice and was forced to checkin to rehab. Like Matthews, Coutee’s mother passed away about three years earlier.

“I’ve been through a lot the last 17 or 18 months,” Keith exhaled. “My son overdosed twice. I’ve dealt with the fact that my daughter had a kidney and pancreas transplant. She had a transplant and my son has a drug problem we’re trying to fight. A lot of people don’t understand. The hurtful part is that when people said things about Kristian, they don’t know that I’m dealing with other things.

“I’ve got to deal with everything. I can’t just deal with Kristian. I’ve dealt with all of this and nobody knew.”

Elsewhere, Keith Fulton Jr. underwent his own personal challenge. A Rummel grad, Keith signed his national letter of intent with Mississippi College in 2014. He walked-on to LSU in the spring, reuniting with his little brother for the first time in more than four years.

Naturally, Keith Jr. carries a rather large chip on his shoulder. He broke his foot during his senior season at Rummel, which limited the scholarship offers he received out of high school. He took an alternate path and is now out to prove he belongs at LSU. That doesn’t come without frustration or self-doubt.

“Everybody doesn’t look at walk-ons the same,” Keith said of his son. “He feels that he’s better than that. He felt like he could go there (to LSU) and compete. You can question a kid’s speed, but you can’t question his heart.”

“Son, your turn will come, you’ve just to wait for it,” he tells Keith Jr., a message he had to replay to Kristian as well.

For all that Keith wrestled with and bottled up inside over the past year and a half, he’s finally realizing there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Matthews recently returned to work. Coutee is out of rehab and called his father about six weeks ago. “He’s doing better,” Keith mentioned.

As they search to regain normalcy in their own lives, the entire family has rallied behind Kristian’s triumph. His victory represented an even bigger accomplishment for his step-siblings and, of course, his father, whose biggest concerns about health and wellness and regaining eligibility have been reduced to finding No. 22 jerseys for the rest of his family and, yes, those closest to them.

“Kids will be kids and I did everything I could do, but I keep on trying to get them better,” Keith said. “My son is doing better. He called me and he’s doing alright. He’s my son and I love him. She’s calling me, too. Her dentist wants a Kristian Fulton jersey. I said, ‘Alright, Kisha, tell him to go online and order one.’”

Twenty one months.

It’s been 21 months since the last time Kristian raced onto the field in a purple and gold uniform beside his teammates. Through months on watching on TV and receiving bits and pieces of motivation from his father through texts, Kristian’s time has finally arrived.

Keith and Michelle will both be in the Dallas area over the weekend. Both are Southern grads and watched their alma mater on Saturday take on TCU. That evening, they were joined a special dinner guest for the first time: Don Jackson.

While Jackson has represented Kristian for more than a year, he and Keith had never met face to face. When Keith hired Jackson, the two agreed that if Kristian walked out onto the field at AT&T Stadium, that Jackson would be in the stands.

Keith has consistently fielded phone calls from family members trying to race to Arlington, Texas to see Kristian suit up and play. He’s made no assurances, only that he and his wife will be on hand to see the next chapter of this ongoing story.

“Only the Good Lord could keep me from this game,” Keith smiled. “I had a dream about it. I really did. I felt like he was going to be on the field. You have your doubts, but it’s like questioning God. ‘Why did this happen to me?’ I felt like I was going to see him play. I didn’t know when it would be, but I saw that he’d back on the field. I just had an epiphany.”

Kristian’s return is due to the perseverance of LSU Vice Chancellor and Athletics Director Joe Alleva and Robert Barton, a partner at Taylor Porter who assisted in the case. Kristian was quick to commend Alleva during his first appearance in front of the media this week for his continued support since the beginning of the suspension.

“Joe Alleva was behind Kristian since Day 1,” Keith said. “He was 18 at the time and he didn’t know. He listened to someone he shouldn’t have. He made a mistake and it was the wrong mistake, but he made a mistake. Joe Alleva was supportive from the beginning.”

“Barton deserves credit, too,” he added. “He was key. He and Don worked closely together.”

Through each ebb and flow, Kristian appeared unfazed. Each twist and turn, his chin remained up.

Keith imparted the some advice onto Kristian as he did Coutee through his struggles with drug addiction -- don’t dwell on the negatives. Those words resonated with the now 19-year-old, who exhibited a rare maturity throughout the saga that’s simply uncommon in today’s sports landscape.

“I’ve always been stern with him,” Keith began. “There’s a path to your direction even though you may fall off. What I tell him, I tell Lawrence: ‘You may have a failure, but failure can be corrected. You can go from a negative to a positive, but you can’t stay in the negative side.’

“I think Kristian understood, man. He understood we were going to fight for him and he had a lot of family support. We never gave up. Never never, ever, ever gave up, and I never gave up.”

“You’d have to take me to my grave,” he continued. “I’m old, but I still got a lot of life left in me.”

Keith’s tenacity helped keep Kristian undaunted. The oft-stoic junior rarely cracks a smile or wears his heart on his sleeve. He remains thankful to all those who supported him, namely Alleva and Derek Ponamsky, Orgeron’s hand-picked special assistant.

The first sign of life came on Monday, less than 24 hours removed from the news that Fulton would be cleared to play against the Canes, so long that he passed one more drug test. LSU head coach Ed Orgeron brought Kristian onto a stage to announce that the cornerback would rejoin the team for the season opener. Finally, Kristian cracked.

“Coach O -- he brought me up onto the stage and everybody clapped and (gave me) a standing ovation,” Kristian said on Monday in front of the media. He just let me know what it meant, like while I was on the team during my suspension … I’m sure everybody can see it’s a different energy. When I go into the team meeting, I’m just smiling. I can’t stop.”

As frustration mounted in the midst of The Fulton Family’s battle with the NCAA, there was always a possibility that Kristian could declare for the NFL Draft after this season -- even if he didn’t play in 2018. Kristian’s reinstatement certainly adds a new wrinkle to equation. For now, he’s nowhere close to making that call.

When Kristian signed with LSU, he did so with the intent of being the best defensive back to come through the program, a monumental task considering the wealth of NFL stars such as Patrick Peterson, Tyrann Mathieu, Jalen Mills and Donte Jackson -- to name a few -- who are currently in the league.

The first contest against Miami will be emotional, but his decision to potentially stay or go after the season won’t be. It’ll be personal.

“I hope he can get over the emotions quick and get back to playing,” Keith said. “We’re not focused on the draft. It’s his decision. If I know Kristian the way I know Kristian, I think he’ll come back. He may want to come back because when he signed with LSU, he wanted to be the best and he believes he can still do that.”

Keith compares his son to Mathieu, but about four inches taller and equally as good of a ballhawk. He can still recall when Mathieu was at St. Augustine and single-handedly beat his alma mater, West Jefferson.

“He’s a playmaker,” Keith said. “It’s a mentality.”

Part of Kristian’s decision to forego opportunities at a multitude of junior colleges or pass up on guaranteed money from the Canadian Football League was a growing love for his university.

Kristian struggled choosing between LSU and Florida on the morning of National Signing Day, but selected the Tigers to honor his grandmother, Helen Quirett-Shaw, who earned his Master’s degree from LSU and battled dementia around the time her grandson made his decision. She passed about two months later.

As Kristian settled in, he, too, developed a love for LSU. It’s evident on his left forearm, where those three symbolic letters are now tattooed. Today, they represent more than the college football program he chose.

“He fell in love with it,” Keith said. “It was all him. He just grew.”

Keith considers his son’s passion for LSU as the reason why fellow Rummel alum Ja’Marr Chase is now on the roster. Remember that Chase was on the verge of picking TCU over LSU on NFL Network at The Opening Finals in Oregon last July, but an unplanned segment carried too long and eventually derailed his announcement. At one point, Chase was verbally committed to Kansas and then to Florida, where he visited right after the TV snafu later that July.

Chase was all set to pick the Horned Frogs as a tribute to his grandmother on her birthday. That never came to fruition, but became a shared connection with Fulton while on his official visit that January before National Signing Day. Chase, who never fully entertained the notion of sticking close to home for college, was swayed in an entirely new direction after being hosted by his former teammate.

“Ja’Marr had a bad taste with LSU and I knew they had a lot of work to do,” Keith recalled. “I told Jimmy (Ja’Marr’s father) to let him make a decision. That’s when Florida was in the mix. I told Jimmy to let ‘em go. Ja’Marr went on his official and Kristian hosted him. That was unusual because it’s a kid who was suspended and we didn’t know when he’d play hosting a recruit. Kristian was honest with him and they shared the same kind of thing. Ja’Marr loved his grandmother and Kristian loves his grandmother. They intertwined.”

Both Rummel alums are expected to play pivotal roles in the Tigers’ tilt against Miami. All eyes will be fixed on Kristian making his long-awaited return to the team after watching from afar all last season.

Bookworthy -- that remains to be seen, especially since we’re nowhere close to the conclusion. The early chapters are still being written -- to say the least -- but an incredible journey littered with wide-ranging emotions and uncertain futures should certainly suffice.

“It’s been a long road, but I’m happy now,” Keith said, taking a page out of his son’s own book. “I can finally smile.”