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71 wasn't a lot traffic, we pulled the rim to the street and played basketball until the sun went down." Davis also tried boxing, but his size put him in the ring against more mature competition. "ey used to knock me around a little bit, but it made me tougher," he said. Instead of football, Davis spent his adolescent years on AAU basketball courts. "I truly thought I was going to be the first 300 pound point guard." Even when he began playing organized football as a freshman in high school, things weren't rosy. Davis was continually slotted on the offensive line, but he wanted to play defense. "I hated football. I played offensive tackle and I hated it," Davis said. "I went to three different high schools. At my last high school (Stevenson in Sterling Heights, Michigan) they put me at offensive tackle and I asked them to try me at defensive tackle. Coach (Rick) Bye finally gave me a chance. I caused a little bit of havoc and he let me play. I'm thankful for the opportunity he gave me." Bye plugged Davis at defensive tackle as a junior; he was a two-way player the next season. As a high school senior, Davis compiled 58 tackles with six sacks. He also blocked two field goals and intercepted a pass. In Davis's two seasons, Stevenson won 23 of 26 games and advanced to the 2009 Division 1 state championship. Davis redshirted with the Hawkeyes in 2010 and in 2011 he missed five games because of injury. As a sophomore in 2012, Davis saw action in 11 games. "I was discouraged. Here I am ready to go into my fourth year and I haven't started a game," Davis said. "It was hurting me. I knew I could do it, but I didn't know what the possibilities were." T o the doctors and teachers that said Carl Davis was overweight, who's smiling now? Truth is, Davis was — and still is — a large and athletic young man. Now a 6-foot-5, 315-pound fih-year senior defensive tackle on the University of Iowa football team, Davis is an All-Big Ten Conference selection with a goal of being All- America. Just think, Davis and the sport of football almost never happened. e snickers started in fourth grade when a P.E. teacher brought a scale to class. Everybody weighed in. "I was happy," Davis recalls. "I was a big guy. I stepped on the scale and I was 230." "at's not good," his teacher said. Davis was dazed. He was a legend at recess; no one could touch him in basketball or any sport for that matter. And now they're saying his weight is "not good?" "It made me mad," Davis said. "You have doctors telling you you're obese and you're a young kid. When I think of obese, I think of you can't move, but they have all these guidelines, and I don't believe in those." e heartache wasn't over. Davis couldn't participate in a local Police Athletic League football program because of his size. His age group played in the C League, but his weight was 60 pounds more than was allowed in the A League for the oldest children. Davis had an option to join a team and work out until he got down to an "acceptable" weight, but he wasn't interested. "I played basketball and did whatever I could get myself into," Davis said. "Everybody came to my house and we played in my back yard. If there