How Xavier Legette overcame loss of his parents to become the Panthers’ first-rounder

There are no laws that protect feral hogs in South Carolina.

And thank goodness. They are ugly varmints. At best, they go through your trash and munch on your Halloween pumpkins. At worst, they wander onto farms and destroy millions of dollars in crops.

A local physician named Al Gilpin is explaining this as a television behind him flashes the NFL Draft. The first pick of the first round walks across the stage in Detroit. The final pick of the first round is sitting at a table inside of a Mullins, South Carolina banquet hall as Gilpin points to him.

Gilpin explains how he met Xavier Legette at a football camp in Mullins, how they became friends — and how they will go out after dawn with a night-vision scope on their rifles, scanning land for feral hogs or raccoons or whatever else.

“That’s right up Zay’s ally,” Mullins basketball coach Eric Troy said. “Anything outdoors. Horses, motorcycles, four-wheelers, fishing, hunting.”

“He loves to go coon hunting and riding horses,” Legette’s aunt Chrystle Neal said of her nephew. “He has always been fascinated with horses. He loves riding horses. He loves the whole cowboy thing. He has cowboy boots and hats.”

On the hogs, though — yes, you can eat them. Sometimes they do. But sometimes there are just too many. One night, Gilpin said, he threw 14 in the back of his truck and went to a grocery store parking lot in Florence handing them out.

“I could have run for mayor and won,” he joked.

‘Nobody sounds as country as Zay’

Mullins is a rural town (population 5,029) just an hour west of Myrtle Beach. Folks have been farming on the land for almost 500 years, interesting considering the town is most famous for selling crops.

When tobacco was introduced to the region in the late 1800s, farmers would bring their tobacco to Mullins, conveniently located next to a railroad depot, and tobacco sales would be held in the town. It was so much a part of the city that Mullins High School’s mascot is the Auctioneers.

“We’ve never had anything like this,” former Mullins football coach John Williams said at the party. “It’s like we’re getting drafted, too.”

There are plenty of folks around the country who have grown interested in Mullins the past few months, as well — because they were infatuated with Legette’s accent. In a video from his Pro Day, many couldn’t get over his cowboy dialect. He has this Southern twang where vowels come with a little drawl. “Man” is “maaanee.” “Road” is “Rooowwd.”

“Someone was saying it’s the Mullins accent, but we don’t talk like that,” Neal said with a chuckle. “When he left, he did not talk like that. … My mom even asked, because (Will) Muschamp was the coach then, she’s like, ‘Does Muschamp talk like that?’ Where is this coming from? It has gotten thicker and thicker.”

“Nobody sounds as country as Zay,” Troy added. “I told him earlier, I said, ‘You’ve got to get a translator or something. I don’t understand what you’re saying.’”

Heart, hometown fuel Xavier Legette

OK, so maybe Mullins didn’t give him the accent. What the town did give him, perhaps by way of osmosis, was his heart. There are few 20-somethings on the verge of making millions who will get in their car and make a two-hour drive from college to their hometown just to be around family for the night.

Thursday, more than 100 people gathered to watch the draft with Legette. At times, it felt like a wedding, where the bride and groom bounce from table to table, chit-chatting and thanking everyone who came. Most of the time, though, it just felt like a family BBQ. No one looked at Legette as anyone other than “Zay.” No one was too worried to approach him because the night was stressful. And Legette never turned anyone away. If you were 3 years old, 83 or anywhere in between, he gave you the same energy, the same focus, the same kindness.

This winter, when his career ended at South Carolina after a 71-catch, 1,255-yard redshirt senior season, Legette signed with the agency CAA, which came with a nice little check. People quickly knew about it. They found out because the entire Mullins High basketball team was sporting new LeBron shoes. And the track team had new gear. And the football team got new pads, dummies and a bunch of other practice equipment.

“We hadn’t gotten any new stuff in the 11 years I’ve been there,” Mullins wide receivers coach Donald Brown said. “That’s the type of person he is.”

Family ties

It’s also Legette thanking all the folks who got him to Thursday. The ones who were there for him when his parents passed away.

Just after his freshman year of high school, his mother, Anita, died following a long battle with breast cancer. Before she passed, Anita told her mom, “Thing about this: I just don’t want to leave my children.”

“But she always knew that I’d look after him, that I’d do the best I could,’” said Linda Neal, Legette’s maternal grandmother. “Our house was always open. As it is now.”

Linda’s house was directly across the street from Legette’s. Chrystle’s was on the same street, too. Legette didn’t have to go far to find support, but he was not a kid that would easily spill everything. During those ensuing months, he shut down. When asked how he was doing, he’d quickly reply, “I’m fine” and shut his lips. He was sitting in class sleeping with a hood draped over his head.

Anita, in many ways, gave Legette the traits that made him a first-rounder. She was a softball player and a track star at Mullins. If you wanna know how he’s so fast, it comes from his momma. And why does he help others? Well, Anita spent her life working for the South Carolina Head Start program to aiding the young kids.

“I don’t know how he worked through it,” Troy said. “But people were in his ear.”

One of Linda’s friends was a school counselor at Mullins and she’d talk with Legette every week. If he ever texted or mentioned something out of the blue to Linda, she’d send the counselor to talk with him just to make sure he could process out loud.

As time passed, he found a new way to cope.

“A part of his grieving for her was to do things he thought would make her proud,” Linda said. “I think that might’ve been the catalyst for a lot of this.”

At Mullins, he played football, basketball and baseball and started garnering recruiting interest after he moved to quarterback his senior season and ran for more than 1,800 yards and 19 touchdowns. Deciding between Tennessee and South Carolina, he chose to stay in state, close to Mullins. He signed with South Carolina on Dec. 21, 2018.

Three months later, he called his grandma early in the morning.

“I don’t think I can go to school today,” Legette told Linda.

“Whatchu mean you don’t think you can go to school?”

“I think my daddy died,” he said softly.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I can’t wake him.”

“I’m on my way. I’ll be right there.”

His father, Anthony, died of a heart attack in March 2019, fewer than two months before his son graduated high school.

Anthony had a little bit of the country accent, too, just not with the thick twang of his son’s. And he worked his rear end off, spending years as a mechanic at Collins Motors. Why does Legette call his high school coaches all the time, begging them to open the gym doors? Why does he feel the need to jump in practice reps when he’s hurt? That comes from his daddy.

“He worked all the time, man,” Williams said of Anthony.

‘Coach, they’re here’

Anita and Anthony never got to see their son suit up for South Carolina. They didn’t get to watch him become one of the best receivers in America. They didn’t get to stand next to him as he became a first-round NFL Draft pick.

“Me and him talked about last week,” Brown said. “I was like, ‘Only if your mom and dad could be here.’ He said, ‘Coach, they’re here.’”

It is often in the happy moments that we reflect. It’s why the anniversaries are so hard. Birthdays and holidays are more reminders of those who aren’t there. Which is why inside the banquet hall there was a photo of Legette and Anthony on his USC visit that Linda had photoshopped to include Anita. It’s why the draft party needed to be big. More people equals more stories.

Like this one: For as long as anyone can remember, Anita called Legette her million-dollar baby. “That boy is going to make me some money because he won’t stop running,” she’d say.

Anita’s baby still hasn’t stopped.