Catching up with legendary Texas A&M linebacker Dat Nguyen

Still holding the Texas A&M all-time record with 517 career tackles, Dat Nguyen is one of the most beloved linebackers in Aggie history. Nguyen joined TexAgs Radio ahead of the July 4 release of the documentary on his life, titled "All-American: The Dat Nguyen Story."

Key notes from Dat Nguyen interview

• I do remember playing basketball. That was in the offseason. All the players would get together. Coming from the small town of Rockport, basketball was my second love after soccer. Football was my next love. I was bigger than all my Asian friends, so I thought I would be the next Shaquille O'Neal.
   
• Andy Richardson and 12th Man Productions asked if I would do a documentary and said I had a great story. I watched it with Ross Bjork a few months ago. It touches you. You realize the path you went through. It’s the journey of my life.
   
• I was the guinea pig for doing documentaries with 12th Man Productions so they could start to do it with all different former athletes. It blew me away. For the first 20 seconds, Ross and I looked at each other and shook our heads and said, “This is unbelievable.” I'm excited to share it with Aggieland. It shares a lot of stories of my life. Their crew did a fantastic job.
   
• When I came to America, I remember I was five years old, and I remember my mom saying to stay with my family and friends because those were the only people I could trust. We had an opportunity. I saw how hard my dad worked. I saw how hard my mom worked raising six kids. English was a second language. My mom still barely speaks English. She understands it. They put God first in our life. When Vietnam invaded the south, we left at midnight. There was a little town south of Saigion that the English translation is “Port a Rock.” I grew up in Rockport. How ironic is that?
   
• I started playing football in eighth grade. It's really crazy. The guy who recruited me to play in junior high was coach Cliff Davis. He played baseball at A&M. He was my junior high coach. I played basketball, and my brother and cousin played football.
   
• There was an annex between the athletics buildings and the school. Coach Davis would pass to go to the facilities. He would stand in front of my typing class and recruit me to play football. I eventually said I would play. I didn’t realize they had thigh pads and belt loops around the hip pads. All this stuff was a foreign language to me. I saw love in the game. It became part of me. I loved the competition.
   
• The one thing I learned from Coach Davis was visualization. In my first game in eighth grade, Coach Davis said to go to the gym. It was dark. He said to put our helmets on the ground. He said to lie down and close your eyes. We thought that this guy was crazy. He said, “Quarterbacks, imagine throwing the perfect pass. Running backs, make the first guy miss. Linebackers, make that tackle. DBs, make that PBU.” We go play the game. The next Thursday, we played at home. He kept making us go into that gym. We only had 28 players, so we would play both ways. I saw myself visualizing those plays. As my career went on, everyone always asked me how did you see that play? How are you so instinctive? I saw it last night before I went to sleep. I visualized it and saw it before.
   
• You felt you were the odd one out in sports. We had eight Vietnamese kids on our soccer team. We won the championship one year, and there was not one clap except for the parents and coaches on our teams. If you worry too much about that, it will kill you. We played Kansas my senior year, and I remember there were some racial slurs. You block it out. God gave me the ability to not worry about it, but deep down, it's burning. You smile and walk away.
   
• R.C. Slocum gave me an opportunity at Texas A&M. Our relationship has gotten so much better as we got older. When you are a coach, you don't realize it. It goes by so fast. Slocum and I haven't been on the golf course in quite a while. He has been unbelievable to me. He's almost as important to anybody in my life besides my mom and dad. He hired great coaches who were Godly men. Everyone was patting you on the back in Rockport, and then in College Station, everyone was good.
   
• Those four to five years at A&M impacted me. The success on the football field is minor to what the coaching staff and Texas A&M meant to me.
   
• Not many people get to play all three levels of football in one state. The first mini-camp I went to, I had played 50-plus games at A&M. I thought I knew football. We called our defensive plays and adjusted to the formation. Halfway through 7on7, the coach told me to get in there. I was running in and turned to the coach on the sideline. I got the signal. I look over. I was like, “Oh crap! That’s Troy Aikman. That’s Emmitt Smith. Look to me right, That’s Mike Irving.” They snapped the ball. I didn’t move. I was so star-struck.
   
• It's crazy going back to the story. Your family left Vietnam. You come to America. You play America’s sport. You get drafted to the NFL. You play for America’s team. How crazy is that? It’s been a blessing.
   
• We finally have a quarterback. That’s the most important. Conner Weigman will be an expectational quarterback. The receivers are unbelievable in Evan Stewart and Noah Thomas. The 'X' factor is Ainias Smith. To cover a guy like Ainias, that is the worst feeling. You have to stay healthy on defense. I think the defense will be better under the second-year system.
   
• In 1996, we were the preseason No. 2 team in the country. We ended up went 6-6. It was very similar. We bounced back. We went to the conference championship game the following year and won it. There are a lot of similarities. I got to confess. I was on the wagon last year. I designed a flag that said “Texas A&M 2022 National Champions.” After Appalachian State, I had to take that flag down. The next year should be some good exciting football for Texas A&M.