Anthony Young still doesn’t know why he was unable to finish his football career at Iowa State.

A senior defensive back last season, Young was one of six players announced by coach Paul Rhoads as “no longer a part of our program” at a National Signing Day news conference on Feb. 1.

Young, a junior college transfer from Palomar Community College (Calif.), battled injuries to his right knee and hamstring throughout the 2011 season. 

But in November, Young was given the ultimatum by Rhoads to either play through the pain or transfer to another program.

Injuries sideline Young for senior season

Before last year’s ISU spring practices began on March 22, 2011, Young tweaked his knee while going through noncontact defensive back drills at the Bergstrom Practice Facility.

The ISU training staff diagnosed Young’s injury as a minor iliotobial (IT) band injury on the outside of his right knee and he missed no time, participating in all 15 practices and the annual spring game on April 16, 2011, where he registered three tackles and forced a fumble.

Although he had not experienced any other incident of severe pain in his knee, one day in early June, Young woke up and could not walk. That day he had an MRI, which revealed he had torn the lateral meniscus in his right knee.

Young had surgery, performed by Dr. Tom Greenwald, to repair the meniscus on June 20, 2011 — his 22nd birthday.

Although Young was informed by Greenwald to rest his knee for three days, Young was called by Associate Athletic Director of Athletic Training Mark Coberley to come to his office the next day so he could take a look at his knee. The training staff told him they weren’t sure, but believed the injury could be hamstring tendonitis. Young said Coberley informed him he would like to undergo what he deemed an “accelerated rehab.”

“[Greenwald] told me it will probably be an eight- to nine-week process,” Young said. “But the training staff, in their eyes, it’s more like five weeks to try and get you back out on the field.”

Young agreed to the rehabilitation regimen and within one week was already submitting his knee to leg slides on a wall and abbreviated weighted exercises.

Despite wariness of the speed of his recovery, Young stayed in Ames during the first week of August when players had the opportunity to go home before beginning practice on Aug. 5.

“I thought it was going too fast,” Young said. “I knew what my body could take and I wasn’t sure what was going on.

“But I was just putting trust in their hands [that] they’ve been there, they’ve dealt with a lot and I’ve got total respect for them. But at the same time I was like, ‘It’s not going too well.’”

Young made it through the first three practices in August before his knee began to swell.

Young scheduled a meeting with Rhoads and told him that, both mentally and physically, he felt like it was best for him to use his redshirt for the 2011 season. In that meeting, Young said Rhoads told him he would assess the redshirt at a later date when there was more certainty with the injury.

In the final week of August, Young’s knee, which he said felt like a tight knot, continued to swell. The training staff injected Young’s knee with two shots that he was told were anti-inflammatories.

Young sat out the next three weeks before receiving another shot — this time cortisone — that allowed him to practice during the team’s bye week from Sept. 19 to 23 before hosting Texas on Oct. 1.

Young’s knee again swelled up again and he did not practice for the entire month of October, but still participated in upper-body workouts, attended practices and joined the other defensive backs for film sessions.

Young went back to Greenwald in November to have an exploratory scope on the knee, which Greenwald determined that hamstring tendonitis was the cause of the knot.

“My point of view what I was getting from [Young] was basically that [the training staff] was just thinking that he was just lying and didn’t want to play or whatever the situation was,” said Kristen Morris, Young’s mother. “He wouldn’t have come all the way to Iowa if he didn’t want to play football.”

Had he been healthy during last season, Young felt like he would have been a starter in the ISU secondary. Young, who began fall camp behind senior Leonard Johnson at the right cornerback position, battled with junior Jeremy Reeves before the 2011 season and felt that his experience from playing nine games in 2010 would have helped his chances to be a contributor at one of the cornerback spots.

As one of only three players on the 2011 roster that, according to Rivals.com, were four-star recruits, Young came to Iowa State before the 2010 season as one of the top junior college recruits in the country.

“You could tell by his highlights that you’d have to buckle up and pick your game up because he looked like he was going to come and take a spot,” said former defensive back Ter’Ran Benton. “It took him a while to get used to the coaching but he got to it and I did feel like if he would have been healthy enough, he would have been able to play [in 2011] and possibly start.

“If he’s healthy enough, he’ll be able to play this game for a while.”

Young denied redshirt, told to transfer or play through pain

After it appeared evident that Young would not be able to recover in time to play last season, Young said he and Rhoads met in November to discuss whether Young would be granted a redshirt for the season.

Young said Rhoads told him, “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t redshirt you because you have done nothing to [hurt] the program or the team, you haven’t caused any problems and your grades have picked up.”

Young left the meeting feeling good about his chances to receive a redshirt. The next day, however, Young was called to another meeting, this time with Rhoads, then-secondary coach Bobby Elliott, Coberley and other members of the football team’s training staff.

What Young said Rhoads told him in the meeting:

“Anthony, I’ll give you your redshirt. But if I give you your redshirt, you’re going to have to graduate in the spring and take your talents to another program, or you can come back this season and help this team out.”

After hearing that, Young left the meeting in frustration without giving Rhoads an indication whether he planned to stay or transfer.

“I was upset with why I had to redshirt and then go to another team,” Young said. “It was already hard for me trying to run and I’d been trying to practice. It wasn’t like I was just sitting out and thinking I’m just going to take my redshirt year; there’s nothing I can do about it, but I tried to come out and practice multiple times and even after that, I still tried to come out and practice and I couldn’t come back.”

At this point, Morris contacted Rhoads and expressed concern more for her son’s health than for his playing career.

“I felt as though he was just trying to appease the situation,” Morris said in reference to her conversations with Rhoads. “When I was talking to him I told him, ‘I’m so far beyond the point of Anthony playing football, I’m talking about my son’s knee. The way I sent my son to you is the way I want him to return to me.’”

During the next two months, Young said he continued to attend practices, position meetings, team meetings and workouts and even traveled with the team in late December to the Pinstripe Bowl in New York City.

On that trip, Young was treated just as any other injured player, receiving all of the apparel and gifts the bowl provides. While he was in New York, Young said, there was no indication from anyone on the coaching staff that he was no longer a member of the team.

On Jan. 1, two days after the Pinstripe Bowl, Young went to work out at the team’s weight room facility in the Jacobson Athletic Building, but was told by Yancy McKnight, director of strength and conditioning, that McKnight had been told by Rhoads that Young was no longer allowed to use the team’s facilities.

Young went to Rhoads’ office and found out he was out recruiting and would not return until Wednesday. Young tried to contact Rhoads via phone but could not get a hold of him. Young met with Rhoads at his office on Wednesday morning.

Young said he told Rhoads at that meeting that he came to Iowa State to play, not to transfer to another school.

“I did everything I could to try to show him that I wanted to be here and that I don’t want to leave,” Young said. “I told him all of that and he told me, ‘Anthony, if we would have had this talk earlier then things could have been different, but the team and the program has moved on without you.’”

Rhoads told Young the team didn’t have a scholarship available for him because the 21 members of the 2012 recruiting class — which includes five defensive backs — were to sign their letters of intent in one month.

Young said he stood up from his chair, punched the door of Rhoads’ office — breaking his watch — and walked out.

“I never had a real reason for why I had to leave Iowa State,” Young said. “Unlike other people on the team that got dismissed, they have a certain reason and know why. But mine, I really don’t have a reason besides I look at it as that since I couldn’t come back and play that I have to leave.”

Rhoads and Coberley did not respond to emails from the Daily in regards to this story. McKnight directed the Daily to Tom Kroeschell, ISU associate director for athletics communication, who informed the Daily that all three would not be commenting on this story. Emails sent to Elliott, who is now safeties coach at Notre Dame, were not returned.

“I felt as though they just threw my son away as if he was a piece of trash,” Morris said.

‘Football is what I love … I don’t plan on stopping’

NCAA rules allow any student-athlete who has eligibility remaining who earns an undergraduate degree — Young will graduate this weekend with a degree in liberal studies — the ability to transfer one time to another school and be eligible for the next athletic season.

Despite checking with the academic staff two to three times a week in January, it took more than a month for Young to get his transfer papers prepared and signed by Iowa State. In that time, the Feb. 1 National Signing Day had passed, meaning most schools had already decided where their football scholarships would be allocated.

Young, who was restricted from transferring to all other Big 12 schools, Iowa and Northern Iowa, contacted four schools — Arizona State, Middle Tennessee State, New Mexico State and Utah State — prior to his transfer papers coming through and after they did, only Middle Tennessee State remained interested in him.

Young was medically cleared on Feb. 15 to return to training, but on Feb. 28, while doing agility drills on one of the basketball courts at State Gym, his knee gave out on him again, and Middle Tennessee State rescinded their interest.

Young was no longer allowed to have an MRI covered by the football team, so he was forced to wait until mid-April to fly back out to California in order to meet with a knee specialist.

The Ontario, Calif., native is currently back home meeting with another specialist with the hope that he can determine the extent of his re-injury in late February. Young said he may have torn the remaining cartilage in his meniscus.

“I’m not going to stop playing football just because of the situation that happened,” Young said. “Football is what I love and it’s something I’ve been doing for a long time, so I don’t plan on stopping.”

Young attended the ISU spring game on April 14 and sat alone in the stands, supporting his roommate, redshirt senior wide receiver Jerome Tiller.

“It was weird just to be able to watch it and not be out there,” Young said. “It was kind of hard.”

While Young sees his departure from Iowa State as unfortunate, he said he has no regrets.

“I feel like when you regret something, you feel that you didn’t do enough and I feel like I did everything I could personally to communicate with the coaches,” Young said. “We had a number of talks and I got the feeling that [Rhoads] just wasn’t being straightforward with me in those talks.”

Young said he “never had the fact that I’m leaving Iowa State in my head” before his meeting with Rhoads in January. Young enjoys the devoted base and believes a winning mindset is being developed.

“The team is in a great position and I just wanted to be a part of something like that,” Young said. “If I would have been able to come back for the 2011 season, I would have came back; all the great things that we’d done, it would have been something great to be a part of.

“I was there [in 2011], but I wasn’t really a part of it because I wasn’t out there on the field. I really wanted to come back to prove myself, [that] I am who they recruited and also to be a part of the whole fan base and just play for Iowa State.”

Young will visit Central Michigan on May 9 and has also received interest from Football Championship Subdivision team Murray State and Division II New Mexico Highlands University.

Morris knew the distance would be difficult when her son left California for the first time in 2010 to play at Iowa State, but felt confident after an in-home visit from Rhoads and former ISU secondary coach Chris Ash that her son was making the right decision.

A year and a half later, Morris, a single mother of four, will be helping her son pay for medical costs as he tries to find another school to play his final season of college football.

“If they would have told me, ‘Well, I just want you to know that if Anthony gets hurt, he’s not going to be able to play for our team,’ I’d get that,” Morris said. “All I got was, ‘We’re going to take care of him, oh yeah, hoorah, he’s a great kid and we’ve heard multiple great things about him and we can’t wait to get him on our team and this, this and that, but that if he didn’t produce, we don’t want him, forget it.”