For many, the notion of attending college was never even a consideration. For many, making it out of their neighborhoods alive was the primary concern.
Senior Terrance Montgomery was one of those kids.
“Basically my grandfather and my grandmother wanted me to succeed at anything,” Montgomery said. “I could have been a successful mechanic and they would have been happy about it, as long as I wasn’t out on the streets.”
Montgomery, 24, grew up in Wilkinsburg, Pa., a borough of Pittsburgh, where Montgomery lived with his grandparents. Montgomery recalls plenty of crime, gang violence and drugs in his neighborhood.
With little support from either parent, Montgomery was left to his own intuition as far as things like hygiene, after school activities and schoolwork were concerned.
Support from his grandparents was essential.
Montgomery was a big kid. Today he stands at around 6 feet 2 inches and weighs more than 280 pounds. He’s been playing on the D-line and at D-end since his high school years, but before he started playing ball, he was enormous. He weighed in at more than 340 pounds then and was about 5 feet 10 inches. Throw in a dose of middle school brutality, and life’s rough.
“I was always the big kid, the smelly kid. And it was stuff that wasn’t instilled in me as a child,” Montgomery said. “I had an official bath night every Sunday. And when you hit puberty, and you start getting armpit hair and smellin’ worse and you’re not bathing properly, kids are harsh, man.”
Montgomery said football saved his life. Diabetes, or worse, a heart attack, was just around the corner when he started playing in his freshman year of high school. But before he started playing, he moved outside the city with his father to a predominantly Caucasian area. The move was an experience in culture shock.
“It was strange,” Montgomery said. “I was looking at a sea of white people; it was different.”
Freshman year was rough. Living back with his father and having to deal with hid dad’s alcoholism and drug abuse had an adverse effect on his studies.
“My dad was physically abusive to me because of the depression he was in,” Montgomery said. “I would miss a lot of school because I would miss a lot of sleep at night, because I didn’t want the next day to come. I would just try to stay up as long as I could.”
As a result, Montgomery missed more than 85 days of school and was forced to repeat the ninth grade, but this time he came back with a renewed drive and a passion: football.
“I started gaining more acceptance because of the sport,” Montgomery said. “It saved my life. I was 340 pounds in ninth grade, but if I wouldn’t have stared playing football and losing weight, I would have had a heart attack and died. That’s why football is such a big deal for me. On top of that, it was an escape from my home life.”
After high school, he enlisted in the Army, married his high school sweetheart and began playing football at Reedley College, a junior college in Reedley, Calif. In 2006, on the day the Steelers won the Super Bowl, Montgomery’s daughter was born.
In 2008, Montgomery transferred to the University and began playing for head coach Mike Bellotti. However, the pressures of school, the media and his family took a toll.
Some of the problems were systematic in nature. The benefits provided to student-athletes at the University are bountiful; however, for some, the transition of coming from nothing to the offer of everything is difficult to adjust to. 
“People expect that individuals that come from that type of environment to switch off that environment,” Montgomery said. “It doesn’t work that way. There needs to be a bigger support system for people that are coming from nothing.”
What Montgomery has recognized is something that hasn’t been addressed by the administration. Drawing athletes from lower income areas and placing them in the most prestigious position in a large university can be overwhelming for students who have lived without a lot their entire lives.
“Maybe they come from not eating food every night to coming in and the school saying, ‘Here’s a thousand dollars,’” Montgomery said. “The measure of a man is not based on one single action. It’s based on a series of events that may or may not have been fortunate in his life.”
Montgomery has been forced to face his own demons concerning the issue.
Last year, he and his wife separated for a period of time, and she returned to  Pennsylvania. It was during that period that Montgomery was able to reflect on the importance of his family, his past and the priorities he needed to lay out in his mind. 
Montgomery has started attending church regularly, something he finds has strengthened his integrity and provided a support system that was absent before. He wants to see his daughter grow and wants to provide her with the support, guidance and security he didn’t have during his childhood. And he wants to see that for his next child too, one that’s already on the way. 
After graduation, Montgomery is thinking of moving to Florida with his wife. Besides football, he’s found a passion for mixed martial arts fighting. But really, he just wants to pursue something that makes him happy.
“I’m not saying I’m perfect, I’m not saying I’m better than anybody, but I have started to live my life happily, and that’s how I want to continue to live my life,” he said.
[email protected]