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Here are the untold stories and people who shaped the linebacker’s path to becoming an NFL first-round draft pick.
By Michael Gehlken
10:45 PM on Jul 17, 2021 — Updated at 8:00 AM on Jul 19, 2021
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The other 5-year-olds screamed “back up!” before Micah Parsons took swings in T-ball. He won national championships in youth wrestling, plowed past opponents in pee-wee football at Sunshine Park, and made high school basketball his personal slam-dunk contest.
A word is commonly used around here to signify someone of advanced skill: different. Athletically, Parsons is different. Being different makes his story no less resonant in Pennsylvania’s capital.
“He shows these kids there is hope,” said Ahmod Bullock, equipment manager at Harrisburg High.
In April, Parsons became the first Harrisburg native to be drafted in the NFL’s first round, as the Cowboys chose the former Penn State linebacker and edge rusher at No. 12 overall. The feat required more than talent. On a journey beginning inside a Jefferson Street row house, Parsons rode a feverish competitive drive and youthful spirit that matured over time.
Too often, talent has a way of not making it out of Harrisburg. Violence, drugs and incarceration can derail promise.
Parsons not only made it out. He has returned.
The day after the Cowboys drafted Parsons, he arrived at The Star wearing a gray sweatshirt that read in black, block letters, “Harrisburg vs. Everybody.” In the days following, he was back in the ‘Burg, throwing a public post-draft party. The Harrisburg mayor then presented him a ceremonial key to the city.
On Tuesday, Parsons will travel with the Cowboys to training camp in Oxnard, Calif. The odds-on favorite to win NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year has aspirations beyond the field.
“I want to be one of the greatest, if football works out,” Parsons said. “My other one would be to change lives. God blessed me with extraordinary gifts and ways to get me to where I am. He saved me when I did things that I shouldn’t have. He only made me stronger. He was like, ‘You can fail, but you won’t fail today. You can fall, but you won’t fall today. You can die, but you won’t die today.’ I just feel a step closer to him.”
First steps
The three Parsons children routinely rode the bus together after school, their drop-off location a few blocks from their Uptown home at 2255 Jefferson St. One day on the bus, Micah and a fellow elementary school student got to talking. A challenge was extended. Micah accepted.
They were going to fight at the bus stop.
That student’s older brother issued a warning to Micah’s brother Terrence Jr., who is four years Micah’s elder: If Micah lays a mark on his brother, Terrence would be held accountable. The bus hissed to a halt. Everyone exited and formed a crowd.
Micah laid a mark.
The chase after Terrence began.
Many aspects of Micah’s upbringing epitomize Harrisburg. There was struggle and instability. At times, he was overlooked and underestimated. He spent the first several years of his life in Uptown, one of the area’s most impoverished and crime-dense neighborhoods, before an incident helped lead to relocation.
A group of boys ran down and jumped Terrence. Micah, about 7 at the time, could do little but watch. Shatara, the second-oldest of the Parsons siblings, helped defuse the pummeling the only way she knew how, picking up a brick with one hand and a beer bottle with the other.
She shouted as she swung.
“I’m the only girl, and those are my brothers,” Shatara said. “It was just like, ‘Well, this is the life. I live in Uptown. I have to protect my brothers.’ I will do that to this day.”
Said Micah: “Shatara is definitely a ride-or-die. Anytime you need her, she is definitely on go. … She didn’t connect, but she had a good way of getting people off of him.”
Sherese Parsons juggled three jobs to help support her children. She delivered newspapers from 3 to 7 a.m. — often later when it snowed — before returning home and seeing them off to school. After what she termed a “power nap,” she reported to her full-time job in dental insurance, a shift at Target from 6 to 10 p.m. and back home for what little sleep she could manage before doing it all over again.
She and their father, Terrence Parsons Sr., who was highly active in the kids’ athletics, insisted they play sports year-round rather than languish inside an empty house or, worse, the streets outside it. Athletic scholarships represented a way out.
Some sports tournaments were out of state, including Texas. Terrence Sr., a former truck driver, was behind the wheel for those long commutes. Meanwhile, Sherese worked her magic and sold meals to local families for extra income.
Dishes included fried chicken, mac and cheese, collard greens, sweet potatoes, corn bread, boneless beef ribs, baked ziti and lasagna.
Sherese moved to the Dallas area on Thursday. She is living with Micah.
“A lot of people are getting into the food truck business,” Sherese said. “I’m thinking about it.”
About a year after Terrence Jr. was jumped, the family moved miles east into the suburbs, seeking whatever residence could be afforded in the higher-rated Central Dauphin School District.
Critical move
It seemed time for a change.
In Uptown, if leaving for a weekend or even Sunday church, kitchen dishware first was wrapped and cockroach bombs were planted. The family returned home to fumes and dozens of dead roaches, which entered from next door. Sherese and Terrence Sr. saved money to purchase a minivan that, less than two weeks later, was stolen.
Many kids in Central Dauphin grew up watching the clever mouse outwit the cartoon cat in Tom & Jerry.
The show differed in Uptown.
“We had a pet cat named Tiger,” Micah said. “I used to watch him eat up mice. It was crazy.”
In a common Harrisburg tale, Micah has friends who have been killed or incarcerated. At age 11, his parents officially separated. Food from sporadic grocery trips lasted only so long; a change in address didn’t change that. He relied on ramen, pan-fried bologna sandwiches and giving families who opened their homes. Both sets of grandparents routinely stepped up to the plate.
Micah understands being a young father himself; Malcolm Floyd Parsons was born May 1, 2018, shortly before Micah’s 19th birthday. His son’s middle name, “Floyd,” is in honor of youth football coach Floyd Hamm, who died from cancer when Micah was in high school.
Hamm always believed in Micah. Not everyone did.
For a period of time, Micah struggled academically. He recalls a grade-school teacher and principal both predicting that he wouldn’t be successful in life. Micah made peers laugh while failing the seventh grade. They laughed harder when his parents forced him to repeat it, many of those same kids teasing him and calling him “stupid.”
Criticism compounded when Micah, as a five-star recruit at Central Dauphin High, transferred to Harrisburg High during his junior season. The decision, which coaches from both schools say stemmed from his mother’s move to a more affordable living situation, galvanized the town.
Harrisburg High features a predominantly Black and Hispanic student body. Some of the city’s least privileged neighborhoods, including Uptown, feed into it. Micah was embraced on his new campus and team. He took more reps on offense. The Cougars, who plan to retire his No. 23 jersey, didn’t lose again that season until the state championship game.
Today, there is a consensus among locals that Micah’s community impact is more meaningful as a Harrisburg graduate than it would’ve been had he stayed at Central Dauphin, which is more affluent and less diverse.
But at the time, there was plenty of bitterness.
“He had so many people bashing him,” said close childhood friend Da’Ron Jennings, a Central Dauphin student at the time. “People used to come up to me all the time and say, ‘I can’t wait for a couple years when Micah is working at a gas station.’”
Competitive nature
Micah has never grown accustomed to losing.
In playground basketball games like Knockout and 21, he became irate as a kid whenever his siblings blocked his shot and defeated him. In college, he said, he cried after Penn State’s football losses — there were six in two seasons. He lost badly at Connect 4 at a friend’s house in high school and at chess a few months ago. He downloaded apps, learned and drilled strategies, and then challenged the person who beat him.
Micah won those rematches.
A few years ago, Micah lost to Jennings in bowling on two straight days. Micah returned alone to ABC North Lanes in Harrisburg to practice. Bowling alley manager Earl Burger said that he advised him to use a 15-pound ball instead of an 8-pound one. He also recommended getting his own shoes and ball while offering pointers on how to achieve consistent spin.
Micah practiced, practiced and practiced for several straight hours at a time. He won that rematch, too. Today, he owns eight bowling balls, his highest single-game score a 277.
“Everything always has an answer key,” Micah said. “You’ve just got to find it — or have the will to want to grind to find it. ... I just try to find things that can mentally destroy people, just to say I beat you. There is no greater feeling than beating somebody.”
Micah may be more competitive than he is athletic, which is saying something. That the two traits happen to coexist in the same person is critical to understanding not only why he reached the NFL but why it’s reasonable to believe he is still scratching the surface of the player he can become.
Micah, 22, hasn’t had much time on task at linebacker, which is his primary position with the Cowboys. When on defense in high school, he predominantly played end. He opted out of his third college season in 2020, citing COVID-19 and his family’s health. So despite leading Penn State in tackles as a freshman and being an All-American as a sophomore, much of the answer key is still there to learn.
Penn State defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Brent Pry has called Micah the most competitive player he has ever coached.
That opinion began to form when Micah was still a student at Harrisburg.
“He came to every [Penn State prospect] camp that summer before his senior year,” Pry said. “He came to camp as a [defensive] end. Then, he came to camp as a linebacker. Then, he came to camp as a [defensive back]. Then he came to camp as a wide [receiver].
“We had four or five defensive backs in that camp when Micah was a receiver. These guys had power-five [conference] offers, and we wanted to evaluate these guys. We wanted to see if we wanted to jump in and offer any of them. Micah torched every one of those kids. We couldn’t offer any of them. At 240 pounds. It’s just that kind of stuff. I said, ‘We’ve got to give this guy a shot at linebacker.’”
In college, Micah petitioned for Penn State coaches to play him also on offense, which he did extensively during two seasons at Harrisburg as a running back. He requested a chance to return kickoffs and permission to wrestle as a two-sport athlete. Micah was serious enough about wrestling that he called Nittany Lions wrestling coach Cael Sanderson.
Head football coach James Franklin didn’t sign off.
Coming of age
Those who know Micah best say that he is young at heart.
Be it Fruit Smiles, Trolli or pink Starburst, Micah is “like a little kid with candy,” Jennings said. For several years, Micah has played a prank called Splish Splash, which involves pouring a pot or bin of cold water, ice cubes and all, on someone who is asleep. People have learned not to retaliate.
“He’ll do anything to get his revenge,” said AJ Brown, a childhood friend. “And when he gets his revenge, it’s 10 times worse.”
Micah has a running game of Punch Buggy with some of his closest friends, including Penn State linebacker Jesse Luketa. Anyone who spots a Volkswagen Beetle on the road can deliver a punch to the other. A pink Beetle, the game’s unicorn, means a strike to the face, Jennings said. No one in the game has spotted a pink Beetle in the company of others.
Micah has threatened to procure one and park it on a random street.
“He was going to [drive] us that way, so he can get us,” Jennings said with a laugh.
That goofy, somewhat sinister sense of humor remains part of Micah’s otherwise low-key personality. He tries to have fun where he goes. But as it relates to maturity, Micah himself acknowledges he has learned there is a time and place, knowing to better walk the line between humor and discipline.
“If I was the same person as when I was 18, or when I was 17 or 15, it wouldn’t make any sense,” Micah said. “People got to learn. People got to make mistakes.”
Micah learned from having to repeat the seventh grade.
Not allowed to play sports that year, he approached school more seriously.
Five years later, Micah took extra classes as a high school senior to graduate a semester ahead of schedule and enroll early at Penn State. He graduated from Penn State in three years, earning his bachelor’s degree in criminology.
Despite transferring from Central Dauphin High as a junior, his experience there included an important foundation. Micah’s humor and charisma at times disrupted practice flow, especially given how teammates gravitated toward him, defensive line coach Ben Cohick said.
To keep practice on track, Cohick sent Micah away for sprints up a hill. This happened often enough that Micah has campaigned for the inclined area to be named “Parsons Hill.”
Cohick is hesitant to brand it that.
The practice field, however, does overlook a pond, and in Cohick’s decade at Central Dauphin, Micah is the only player whom he has banished to the end zone during practice to stare at the pond as a timeout.
“If he wants to name anything after him, we can name the pond,” Cohick said.
At Penn State, Franklin preaches punctuality. Any player less than 10 minutes early to a meeting is too late. There were instances in college when Micah wasn’t where he needed to be when expected, including a freshman-only meeting, Micah said.
Franklin punished him with a Dawn Patrol, a morning workout under the guidance of strength coach Dwight Galt III.
“I had the most grueling punishment for an hour, from 6 to 7, between up-downs, every different type of bear crawls, army walks to dumbbell holds to sleds to stairs, abs,” Micah said. “Everything you could think of, he found a way to attack my body. That was my first time. Then, I had another where I think I was late to class, and they always check it. Boom, another Dawn Patrol.”
Micah learned.
There wasn’t a third.
Around the draft, Micah thanked Franklin for the stringent discipline. He understands that it was better to learn such lessons in college than as an NFL rookie, avoiding a poor first impression with the Cowboys and probably some $1,000 fines, too.
Pry reported seeing maturity strides in Micah in recent years, including his 2020 season away from Penn State during the opt-out.
That year, public questions about Micah’s character surfaced when a former Nittany Lions player named Micah, among other teammates, in a hazing lawsuit against the university.
No criminal charges against Micah were filed.
“To me, there were never character concerns,” Pry said. “He wasn’t going to punch somebody. He wasn’t going to hit a girl. He wasn’t going to rob a bank. He wasn’t a guy who ever got in trouble with us. It was silly things, having the wrong pair of pants at practice, stuff that he eventually grew out of. There was never anything major that was concerning to us about Micah.
“Obviously, I’ve fielded a lot of phone calls [from NFL teams]. I told every one of them — and I’ve known Micah since the ninth grade — there’s not a single thing that would keep me from drafting him as high as I possibly could. He’s got a good heart.”
Between defensive end, running back, punter and kickoff returner, Micah did about everything but serve water during his two seasons at Harrisburg High.
Tyshawn Black took care of that.
Black went from a waterboy to 17-year-old senior at Harrisburg, playing football on the interior offensive and defensive line. He has the same coach, Calvin Everett, that Micah had. With 7-month-old son Ta’Cari, he is a young father like Micah. He used to live a 5-minute walk from where Micah lived on Jefferson Street.
Micah arrived at Penn State in 2018.
That year, Black lost one friend to suicide in February, his grandmother to a June house fire — Jackie Black saved three grandchildren, ages 6, 7 and 8, before she died — and a second friend to a December shooting.
When the Cowboys drafted Micah on April 29, Black watched alongside dozens of Harrisburg High coaches and teammates at a viewing party. It was held near campus at a sports bar and grill called Underdog.
“To see someone go No. 12 from the Uptown area,” Black said, “the same area as you, the same city as you, went to the same school as you, put on the same uniform as you, the same everything as you, that’s crazy. That’s like motivation. Me personally, I really didn’t care what team he went on. It was just motivation. Damn, he really did it. That’s rare from Harrisburg.”
That’s different.
By Michael Gehlken
10:45 PM on Jul 17, 2021 — Updated at 8:00 AM on Jul 19, 2021
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The other 5-year-olds screamed “back up!” before Micah Parsons took swings in T-ball. He won national championships in youth wrestling, plowed past opponents in pee-wee football at Sunshine Park, and made high school basketball his personal slam-dunk contest.
A word is commonly used around here to signify someone of advanced skill: different. Athletically, Parsons is different. Being different makes his story no less resonant in Pennsylvania’s capital.
“He shows these kids there is hope,” said Ahmod Bullock, equipment manager at Harrisburg High.
In April, Parsons became the first Harrisburg native to be drafted in the NFL’s first round, as the Cowboys chose the former Penn State linebacker and edge rusher at No. 12 overall. The feat required more than talent. On a journey beginning inside a Jefferson Street row house, Parsons rode a feverish competitive drive and youthful spirit that matured over time.
Too often, talent has a way of not making it out of Harrisburg. Violence, drugs and incarceration can derail promise.
Parsons not only made it out. He has returned.
The day after the Cowboys drafted Parsons, he arrived at The Star wearing a gray sweatshirt that read in black, block letters, “Harrisburg vs. Everybody.” In the days following, he was back in the ‘Burg, throwing a public post-draft party. The Harrisburg mayor then presented him a ceremonial key to the city.
On Tuesday, Parsons will travel with the Cowboys to training camp in Oxnard, Calif. The odds-on favorite to win NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year has aspirations beyond the field.
“I want to be one of the greatest, if football works out,” Parsons said. “My other one would be to change lives. God blessed me with extraordinary gifts and ways to get me to where I am. He saved me when I did things that I shouldn’t have. He only made me stronger. He was like, ‘You can fail, but you won’t fail today. You can fall, but you won’t fall today. You can die, but you won’t die today.’ I just feel a step closer to him.”
First steps
The three Parsons children routinely rode the bus together after school, their drop-off location a few blocks from their Uptown home at 2255 Jefferson St. One day on the bus, Micah and a fellow elementary school student got to talking. A challenge was extended. Micah accepted.
They were going to fight at the bus stop.
That student’s older brother issued a warning to Micah’s brother Terrence Jr., who is four years Micah’s elder: If Micah lays a mark on his brother, Terrence would be held accountable. The bus hissed to a halt. Everyone exited and formed a crowd.
Micah laid a mark.
The chase after Terrence began.
Many aspects of Micah’s upbringing epitomize Harrisburg. There was struggle and instability. At times, he was overlooked and underestimated. He spent the first several years of his life in Uptown, one of the area’s most impoverished and crime-dense neighborhoods, before an incident helped lead to relocation.
A group of boys ran down and jumped Terrence. Micah, about 7 at the time, could do little but watch. Shatara, the second-oldest of the Parsons siblings, helped defuse the pummeling the only way she knew how, picking up a brick with one hand and a beer bottle with the other.
She shouted as she swung.
“I’m the only girl, and those are my brothers,” Shatara said. “It was just like, ‘Well, this is the life. I live in Uptown. I have to protect my brothers.’ I will do that to this day.”
Said Micah: “Shatara is definitely a ride-or-die. Anytime you need her, she is definitely on go. … She didn’t connect, but she had a good way of getting people off of him.”
Sherese Parsons juggled three jobs to help support her children. She delivered newspapers from 3 to 7 a.m. — often later when it snowed — before returning home and seeing them off to school. After what she termed a “power nap,” she reported to her full-time job in dental insurance, a shift at Target from 6 to 10 p.m. and back home for what little sleep she could manage before doing it all over again.
She and their father, Terrence Parsons Sr., who was highly active in the kids’ athletics, insisted they play sports year-round rather than languish inside an empty house or, worse, the streets outside it. Athletic scholarships represented a way out.
Some sports tournaments were out of state, including Texas. Terrence Sr., a former truck driver, was behind the wheel for those long commutes. Meanwhile, Sherese worked her magic and sold meals to local families for extra income.
Dishes included fried chicken, mac and cheese, collard greens, sweet potatoes, corn bread, boneless beef ribs, baked ziti and lasagna.
Sherese moved to the Dallas area on Thursday. She is living with Micah.
“A lot of people are getting into the food truck business,” Sherese said. “I’m thinking about it.”
About a year after Terrence Jr. was jumped, the family moved miles east into the suburbs, seeking whatever residence could be afforded in the higher-rated Central Dauphin School District.
Critical move
It seemed time for a change.
In Uptown, if leaving for a weekend or even Sunday church, kitchen dishware first was wrapped and cockroach bombs were planted. The family returned home to fumes and dozens of dead roaches, which entered from next door. Sherese and Terrence Sr. saved money to purchase a minivan that, less than two weeks later, was stolen.
Many kids in Central Dauphin grew up watching the clever mouse outwit the cartoon cat in Tom & Jerry.
The show differed in Uptown.
“We had a pet cat named Tiger,” Micah said. “I used to watch him eat up mice. It was crazy.”
In a common Harrisburg tale, Micah has friends who have been killed or incarcerated. At age 11, his parents officially separated. Food from sporadic grocery trips lasted only so long; a change in address didn’t change that. He relied on ramen, pan-fried bologna sandwiches and giving families who opened their homes. Both sets of grandparents routinely stepped up to the plate.
Micah understands being a young father himself; Malcolm Floyd Parsons was born May 1, 2018, shortly before Micah’s 19th birthday. His son’s middle name, “Floyd,” is in honor of youth football coach Floyd Hamm, who died from cancer when Micah was in high school.
Hamm always believed in Micah. Not everyone did.
For a period of time, Micah struggled academically. He recalls a grade-school teacher and principal both predicting that he wouldn’t be successful in life. Micah made peers laugh while failing the seventh grade. They laughed harder when his parents forced him to repeat it, many of those same kids teasing him and calling him “stupid.”
Criticism compounded when Micah, as a five-star recruit at Central Dauphin High, transferred to Harrisburg High during his junior season. The decision, which coaches from both schools say stemmed from his mother’s move to a more affordable living situation, galvanized the town.
Harrisburg High features a predominantly Black and Hispanic student body. Some of the city’s least privileged neighborhoods, including Uptown, feed into it. Micah was embraced on his new campus and team. He took more reps on offense. The Cougars, who plan to retire his No. 23 jersey, didn’t lose again that season until the state championship game.
Today, there is a consensus among locals that Micah’s community impact is more meaningful as a Harrisburg graduate than it would’ve been had he stayed at Central Dauphin, which is more affluent and less diverse.
But at the time, there was plenty of bitterness.
“He had so many people bashing him,” said close childhood friend Da’Ron Jennings, a Central Dauphin student at the time. “People used to come up to me all the time and say, ‘I can’t wait for a couple years when Micah is working at a gas station.’”
Competitive nature
Micah has never grown accustomed to losing.
In playground basketball games like Knockout and 21, he became irate as a kid whenever his siblings blocked his shot and defeated him. In college, he said, he cried after Penn State’s football losses — there were six in two seasons. He lost badly at Connect 4 at a friend’s house in high school and at chess a few months ago. He downloaded apps, learned and drilled strategies, and then challenged the person who beat him.
Micah won those rematches.
A few years ago, Micah lost to Jennings in bowling on two straight days. Micah returned alone to ABC North Lanes in Harrisburg to practice. Bowling alley manager Earl Burger said that he advised him to use a 15-pound ball instead of an 8-pound one. He also recommended getting his own shoes and ball while offering pointers on how to achieve consistent spin.
Micah practiced, practiced and practiced for several straight hours at a time. He won that rematch, too. Today, he owns eight bowling balls, his highest single-game score a 277.
“Everything always has an answer key,” Micah said. “You’ve just got to find it — or have the will to want to grind to find it. ... I just try to find things that can mentally destroy people, just to say I beat you. There is no greater feeling than beating somebody.”
Micah may be more competitive than he is athletic, which is saying something. That the two traits happen to coexist in the same person is critical to understanding not only why he reached the NFL but why it’s reasonable to believe he is still scratching the surface of the player he can become.
Micah, 22, hasn’t had much time on task at linebacker, which is his primary position with the Cowboys. When on defense in high school, he predominantly played end. He opted out of his third college season in 2020, citing COVID-19 and his family’s health. So despite leading Penn State in tackles as a freshman and being an All-American as a sophomore, much of the answer key is still there to learn.
Penn State defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Brent Pry has called Micah the most competitive player he has ever coached.
That opinion began to form when Micah was still a student at Harrisburg.
“He came to every [Penn State prospect] camp that summer before his senior year,” Pry said. “He came to camp as a [defensive] end. Then, he came to camp as a linebacker. Then, he came to camp as a [defensive back]. Then he came to camp as a wide [receiver].
“We had four or five defensive backs in that camp when Micah was a receiver. These guys had power-five [conference] offers, and we wanted to evaluate these guys. We wanted to see if we wanted to jump in and offer any of them. Micah torched every one of those kids. We couldn’t offer any of them. At 240 pounds. It’s just that kind of stuff. I said, ‘We’ve got to give this guy a shot at linebacker.’”
In college, Micah petitioned for Penn State coaches to play him also on offense, which he did extensively during two seasons at Harrisburg as a running back. He requested a chance to return kickoffs and permission to wrestle as a two-sport athlete. Micah was serious enough about wrestling that he called Nittany Lions wrestling coach Cael Sanderson.
Head football coach James Franklin didn’t sign off.
Coming of age
Those who know Micah best say that he is young at heart.
Be it Fruit Smiles, Trolli or pink Starburst, Micah is “like a little kid with candy,” Jennings said. For several years, Micah has played a prank called Splish Splash, which involves pouring a pot or bin of cold water, ice cubes and all, on someone who is asleep. People have learned not to retaliate.
“He’ll do anything to get his revenge,” said AJ Brown, a childhood friend. “And when he gets his revenge, it’s 10 times worse.”
Micah has a running game of Punch Buggy with some of his closest friends, including Penn State linebacker Jesse Luketa. Anyone who spots a Volkswagen Beetle on the road can deliver a punch to the other. A pink Beetle, the game’s unicorn, means a strike to the face, Jennings said. No one in the game has spotted a pink Beetle in the company of others.
Micah has threatened to procure one and park it on a random street.
“He was going to [drive] us that way, so he can get us,” Jennings said with a laugh.
That goofy, somewhat sinister sense of humor remains part of Micah’s otherwise low-key personality. He tries to have fun where he goes. But as it relates to maturity, Micah himself acknowledges he has learned there is a time and place, knowing to better walk the line between humor and discipline.
“If I was the same person as when I was 18, or when I was 17 or 15, it wouldn’t make any sense,” Micah said. “People got to learn. People got to make mistakes.”
Micah learned from having to repeat the seventh grade.
Not allowed to play sports that year, he approached school more seriously.
Five years later, Micah took extra classes as a high school senior to graduate a semester ahead of schedule and enroll early at Penn State. He graduated from Penn State in three years, earning his bachelor’s degree in criminology.
Despite transferring from Central Dauphin High as a junior, his experience there included an important foundation. Micah’s humor and charisma at times disrupted practice flow, especially given how teammates gravitated toward him, defensive line coach Ben Cohick said.
To keep practice on track, Cohick sent Micah away for sprints up a hill. This happened often enough that Micah has campaigned for the inclined area to be named “Parsons Hill.”
Cohick is hesitant to brand it that.
The practice field, however, does overlook a pond, and in Cohick’s decade at Central Dauphin, Micah is the only player whom he has banished to the end zone during practice to stare at the pond as a timeout.
“If he wants to name anything after him, we can name the pond,” Cohick said.
At Penn State, Franklin preaches punctuality. Any player less than 10 minutes early to a meeting is too late. There were instances in college when Micah wasn’t where he needed to be when expected, including a freshman-only meeting, Micah said.
Franklin punished him with a Dawn Patrol, a morning workout under the guidance of strength coach Dwight Galt III.
“I had the most grueling punishment for an hour, from 6 to 7, between up-downs, every different type of bear crawls, army walks to dumbbell holds to sleds to stairs, abs,” Micah said. “Everything you could think of, he found a way to attack my body. That was my first time. Then, I had another where I think I was late to class, and they always check it. Boom, another Dawn Patrol.”
Micah learned.
There wasn’t a third.
Around the draft, Micah thanked Franklin for the stringent discipline. He understands that it was better to learn such lessons in college than as an NFL rookie, avoiding a poor first impression with the Cowboys and probably some $1,000 fines, too.
Pry reported seeing maturity strides in Micah in recent years, including his 2020 season away from Penn State during the opt-out.
That year, public questions about Micah’s character surfaced when a former Nittany Lions player named Micah, among other teammates, in a hazing lawsuit against the university.
No criminal charges against Micah were filed.
“To me, there were never character concerns,” Pry said. “He wasn’t going to punch somebody. He wasn’t going to hit a girl. He wasn’t going to rob a bank. He wasn’t a guy who ever got in trouble with us. It was silly things, having the wrong pair of pants at practice, stuff that he eventually grew out of. There was never anything major that was concerning to us about Micah.
“Obviously, I’ve fielded a lot of phone calls [from NFL teams]. I told every one of them — and I’ve known Micah since the ninth grade — there’s not a single thing that would keep me from drafting him as high as I possibly could. He’s got a good heart.”
Between defensive end, running back, punter and kickoff returner, Micah did about everything but serve water during his two seasons at Harrisburg High.
Tyshawn Black took care of that.
Black went from a waterboy to 17-year-old senior at Harrisburg, playing football on the interior offensive and defensive line. He has the same coach, Calvin Everett, that Micah had. With 7-month-old son Ta’Cari, he is a young father like Micah. He used to live a 5-minute walk from where Micah lived on Jefferson Street.
Micah arrived at Penn State in 2018.
That year, Black lost one friend to suicide in February, his grandmother to a June house fire — Jackie Black saved three grandchildren, ages 6, 7 and 8, before she died — and a second friend to a December shooting.
When the Cowboys drafted Micah on April 29, Black watched alongside dozens of Harrisburg High coaches and teammates at a viewing party. It was held near campus at a sports bar and grill called Underdog.
“To see someone go No. 12 from the Uptown area,” Black said, “the same area as you, the same city as you, went to the same school as you, put on the same uniform as you, the same everything as you, that’s crazy. That’s like motivation. Me personally, I really didn’t care what team he went on. It was just motivation. Damn, he really did it. That’s rare from Harrisburg.”
That’s different.