The 2023 NFL Draft is officially in the books, and if youâre like most football fans, you probably watched most of the first day â and very little of the last day.
And that would be a shame because in a draft that had its fair share of incredible moments, you may have missed the best of them.
That genuinely touching and emotional moment came in the 6th round of the annual player selection meeting on Saturday.
With the 212th pick of the NFL Draft, the Dallas Cowboys selected Kansas State running back Deuce Vaughn.
Deuceâs father, Chris Vaughn, is the assistant director of college scouting for the Cowboys and, well, just take a look at the manâs reaction and try not to get a little emotional yourself:
The elder Vaughn, seated in the lower left of the screen, emotionally makes his way across the Cowboys âwar roomâ to congratulations before making that customary call to the teamâs latest draft pick.
âHey buddy,â Chris said on the call.
âHowâs it going?â his son responded, surely aware of the likely reason his father was calling him.
âItâs going good, this is dad,â Chris said. âMy phone wasnât working, but look here man. You want to come to work with me next week?â
âI wouldnât mind that at all,â Deuce answered.
The sixth-round pick then spoke to various other key figures in the Cowboys organization, including misty-eyed owner Jerry Jones, head coach Mike McCarthy and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer.
Amid the heartfelt congratulations and jokes about his fatherâs punctuality, youâll notice another key sentiment echoed throughout all of the remarks made to Deuce Vaughn: Family.
Whether itâs Jones or Schottenheimer talking about how âspecialâ this was for Deuceâs âdaddy,â or McCarthy repeating how happy he was for the Vaughn âFamily,â itâs clear that this late-round draft pick carried a bit more emotional heft than they typically do.
Which brings this back to the Vaughns.
Look, thereâs no way of knowing or quantifying exactly how much Chris helped Deuce reach the absolute apex of football leagues. He may have helped a little, he may have helped a ton â but itâs virtually indisputable that he helped some.
According to high school composite scouting site 247 Sports, Deuce was a positively unremarkable three-star prospect out of high school, ranking a lowly 1,235th nationally as a prospect. For a frame of reference, there were only 259 young men drafted into the NFL this year.
To be clear, this isnât to say that Deuce couldnât have made it to the NFL without his father, but given his fatherâs clear emotional investment (to say nothing of time and resource investment) itâs clear that Chris Vaughn helped in some way elevate his son from a top 1,300 football player to a top 250 football player.
The numbers speak for themselves. As general stupidity and crime rates soar, so too is fatherlessness in America.
Fatherlessness was a problem that was glaring in 2018. Several race-based riots, mass shootings, and, oh yes, a whole pandemic later has not made that problem any better in the last five years.
There are countless tragic stories of athletes who crash and burn at various stages of their careers, and itâs hard not to notice a lack of fatherly direction in almost all of those cases.
Deuce Vaughn, thus far, has done the complete opposite of crashing and burning.
Even if Deuce never plays an NFL snap, itâs hard not to view his career trajectory as a total success given where he started (it doesnât help heâs undersized at 5-foot-5.) And while his father may not have been the difference, based on the emotional reaction of his dad and the rest of the Cowboys brass, itâs clear that Deuceâs father was a difference in getting his son to the NFL.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.