CJ Spiller’s grandmother was his biggest fan. Her influence looms large to this day
C.J. Spiller’s voice broke.
He paused for a moment before squeaking out the words, “Just proud, just proud.”
He knows his grandmother, the late Nettie Pearl Allen, would be overjoyed by her grandson’s accomplishments. Now 20 years after her death, Spiller will be inducted into the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame on Dec. 7.
Clemson will hold an in-stadium presentation Saturday to honor Spiller during halftime of the No. 6 Tigers’ home opener against S.C. State at Memorial Stadium.
Spiller’s mother, Patricia Watkins, wife Daysha and daughter Shania Elise will be in attendance. His older brother, Darren Alexander, can’t make it as he deals with the effects of Hurricane Ida in New Orleans. His sister, Lashae Mitchell, is home with a newborn son.
In a sport that so often exudes masculinity, Spiller will be surrounded by four of the most important women in his life — Allen, in spirit, included.
“I wish she was here physically to share this moment with me,” Spiller said of Allen, “but I know she’ll be smiling down happy.”
Cleaning and conversing
“Mama Net” would do anything for her family. When Watkins couldn’t take Spiller to school because she didn’t have a car, Nettie Pearl Allen stepped in.
The matriarch worked as a custodian at Union County High School in Lake Butler, Florida — Spiller’s eventual alma mater — and went to the school early to clean. That meant Spiller had to wake up and be ready as early as 6:30 a.m. He enjoyed spending time with his grandmother, though, and was often ready to go before she arrived to pick him up.
Allen stopped at a local Hardee’s restaurant to get Spiller a sausage biscuit on the way school.
“She used to tell me, ‘I don’t know if he’s my little bodyguard or he just knows I’m going to take him to Hardee’s every morning,’ ” Watkins said. “He’s the one that always used to go with her.”
Spiller helped her pick up papers and trash in the classrooms and gymnasium. When it was time, he walked four minutes down the street to attend Lake Butler Middle School.
Watkins knows that time meant more to her son than just helping his grandmother pick up trash. The two bonded as Allen instilled values in her grandson, including the importance of never giving up and having faith in God.
Years later, when Spiller was thinking about leaving Clemson, he spent the six-hour ride from Lake Butler back to campus going over those conversations he had with his grandmother. Allen stressed education, and Spiller gave her his word he’d graduate. He couldn’t back out on that.
No matter how he felt or the adversity he faced, C.J. could not let Grandma Nettie down. So after 3 1/2 years at Clemson, Spiller graduated with a degree in sociology in December 2009, becoming the first person in his family to receive a four-year college diploma.
“That’s how important that was to him, the promise he made and the example he wanted to be for so many other people,” Tigers head football coach Dabo Swinney said. “I just think she shaped him in numerous ways from just the character that he has (to) the type of man he’s become.”
Spiller, the waterboy
At 6 years old, Spiller was too young to play on the Bengals Mighty Mites Pop Warner football team. He was inconsolable.
Allen noticed how passionate Spiller was about football, being the popular younger kid that the older neighborhood kids wanted on their team. She decided to sign him up for Pop Warner.
When Allen and Watkins went to sign Spiller up, him not being 7 yet made him ineligible to play. Watkins said Spiller “cried like a baby” when he couldn’t play. After the coach saw Spiller’s reaction, he proposed a compromise.
Spiller could be on the team as a water boy, handing out cups to his (sort-of) teammates during timeouts. Once his job was complete, he had to get back on the sidelines.
“Don’t you get the football and run because you can’t play,” Watkins recalled the coach telling Spiller. “He said, ‘I know you’re passionate about it and I know you love it. When you do start, you’re going to excel at it because you’re so passionate at a young age.’ He saw that.”
To say that Spiller excelled is a fair assessment. By his senior year of high school, the Floridian was ranked 19th nationally and was the No. 2 running back in the state, drawing offers from schools like Alabama, Clemson, Florida, Miami and Florida State, ultimately choosing the Tigers.
To his dismay, he’d have to go through the recruiting process without Nettie Pearl.
Losing Grandma Nettie
Allen was Spiller’s No. 1 fan.
She never missed a game, setting up her lawn chair in the stands and watching him compete in the sport he loved. Spiller called her his biggest fan and critic.
“She would let me know right after the game what I did wrong from a body language standpoint, from a playing standpoint, the way I controlled my tongue,” he said, “because I was — y’all probably don’t know, I’m not a huge talker — but on the football field, I’m probably the biggest trash talker. She always used to give me pointers of what I can and can’t do.”
For games that required travel, Allen sought out a ride and offered to pay people to get her and her grandson to games. Hardee’s would be the meeting spot for everyone before heading out to that week’s game.
Eventually, the family got a car, a brown four-door Dodge 400.
“That car was so old,” Watkins said, laughing. “That thing wasn’t fast, but it got us there, praise God.”
Allen traveled everywhere and cheered Spiller on until, one day, she couldn’t.
Nettie Pearl Allen became terminally ill and, on May 5, 2001, passed away from liver cancer.
Remembering Nettie
Watkins believed Spiller, who was in eighth grade at the time of his grandmother’s death, used football to cope. He always kept a part of Allen with him throughout his career. On gamedays in high school and college, he wore wristbands with Allen’s initials on them — NPA.
Spiller was a first-team All-American at Clemson and still holds the ACC single-season and career records for all-purpose yards, compiling 2,680 yards in 2009 and finishing his career with 7,588. He was drafted ninth overall by the Buffalo Bills in 2010. He played for five NFL teams before hanging his cleats up.
In February, Spiller was named Clemson’s running backs coach after spending 2020 as an unpaid coaching intern for the Tigers.
He’s already a member of the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame and state of South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame, inducted last year. Now he adds another hall of fame honor. Spiller is already preparing for the surreal moment, remembering where he came from.
Without Nettie Pearl Allen, there’s no hall of fame.
Without Nettie Pearl Allen, there’s no Pop Warner, no C.J. Spiller.
“I know she would go back to some of those memories and to see how he has done so well — not only on the football field, but off the football field,” Watkins said of her mother, “how well he has carried himself. Through it all, he has still remained humble. His faith has not changed. If anything, his faith has gotten stronger. I just know that she would be so proud and overwhelmed. She really would.
“Me, his mom, I am.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "CJ Spiller’s grandmother was his biggest fan. Her influence looms large to this day."
