Sitting at a picnic table on the Central State campus Tuesday afternoon, he had positioned himself directly between two polling places where bruising battles would play out.

In front of him was the Beacom/Lewis Gymnasium, where people were voting for president of the United States. Behind him was the McPherson Stadium football field where every home game – same as he does on opponents’ fields on the road – he casts a weekly ballot to make himself the nation’s top NCAA Division II tackler.

“Every Saturday I just have to put it out there,” CSU linebacker Darius “D.J.” Wilson said. “When I do that, numbers don’t lie.”

Going into Saturday’s game against visiting Kentucky Wesleyan – Senior Day, the final home game of Wilson’s college career – the fifth-year senior from Chicago has 119 tackles in nine games. That’s an average of 13.22 per game, and that’s tops in the country.

Against St. Joseph’s College earlier this season he recorded 22 tackles, which broke the Great Lakes Valley Conference’s all-time, single-game record. The week before that he had 17 as the Marauders upset Urbana, 28-22. Last weekend in a loss to McKendree University, he had 14, including three for a loss and two sacks.

“He’s having a phenomenal year,” CSU defensive coordinator Darrell Suber said. “Every game he’s all over the field. It’s awesome to see a kid be so successful and especially a kid like D.J.”

Head coach E.J. Junior, who knows something about stellar linebacker play himself after an All-America career at Alabama and 13 years in the NFL, agreed:.

“D.J. is one of those type athletes you get just once in a while in your career. He’s the heart and soul of our football team.”

Marauder pride

While Wilson has become the face of CSU football this season, there was a time when that face was quite a bit chubbier.

“I was pretty chunky as a kid – that’s why my auntie used to call me Ham Hock,” Wilson said with a laugh. “I was pretty thick back then, so when I started playing pee wee football. they made me the nose guard.

“That’s when I realized I liked tackling people. I could just run into a person and bring him down and when I did I liked it. I loved hitting people.”

He also could hit a high note and so he said from the time he was 8 to about 17 he sang in the choir at the Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ on 111th Street in Chicago. Like his folks, he also became quite a bowler and said as a kid he already had his own ball and shoes.

“He just comes from a good family background,” Suber said. “His mom and dad had rules that he followed. They were very supportive and it shows.”

Wilson said his father, Gerald, especially gave him guidance when he first came to CSU.

Although he had won all-conference honors at Rich South High, Wilson said he drew limited interest from a couple of small Division I programs and a few in D-II.

He put together a highlight reel and sent it to various schools, including CSU. A coach at a rival Chicago high school also put a word in for him and the next thing Wilson knew, then-Marauders Coach Odell Jones was visiting him at his graduation party.

Although CSU had no scholarships to offer that 2008 season and would have none for a couple of years after, he agreed to come to the school, though he admits to a bit of culture shock at first and said he soon became homesick.

Back then, he said, CSU football felt more like a “club sport,” and as the under-funded, under-manned Marauders struggled on the field, he said the players were sometimes ridiculed by other students on campus:

“They’d be on us hard. They’d say, ‘Oh you play for that weak football team? Y’all should be doing better.’ Everybody’s good at being a critiquer, but I didn’t see none of them putting on pads and coming to practice.”

He thought about transferring his sophomore year but said his dad convinced him otherwise:

“He told me if I went someplace else, I’d have to build my name up there and I’d have to deal with the politics of coming in from a smaller program. My dad told me to stick it out.

“He said, ‘Central State is going to end up being a good place for you.’ ”

First, though, came a fractured ankle in the second game of his junior season that sidelined him the rest of the year and turned it into a medical redshirt season. Coming back last year, he finished fifth in the nation in tackles and this year has been first most of the season.

“I’ve learned a lot from Coach Junior and Coach Suber,” he said, “but I also remember the thing that really hit me when I first came here and played for Coach West (then head coach, now assistant Al West). They had a coaching staff made up of old Marauders and in the end their attitude helped me want to stay.

“I saw how they took pride in their school and I heard the stories of their championship years and I was like, ‘Man, I want to feel that.’ I thought it was pretty cool. I wanted the old Central to come back and I wanted to be one of the people that helped it happen.”

Next level?

Near the end of last season, Suber said, the Canadian Football League showed interested in Wilson, who instead decided to return to college for a fifth season.

“He could have graduated already – and he will in December – but he wanted to stay another year here,” Suber said.

Although CSU has won just 16 of 74 games since reviving its football program eight seasons ago – after the sport was mothballed eight seasons following its NAIA championship years in the early 1990s – the 3-6 Marauders are showing signs of resurgence this season, and one big reason is Wilson.

Junior said the 6-foot-1 linebacker – who not only has improved his skills and football IQ since coming to college, but has gone from 199 to 235 pounds – has a chance to play in the NFL.

Suber feels the same: “He can play at the next level but we need to get him in a (All-Star) bowl game after the season so he gets exposure (playing against D-I players.) The question with him will be, ‘You did it at this level, but can you do it at the next?’ And I think there is no question he can.”

Wilson said all he needs is the chance.

“I was thinking if Hugh Douglas and Eric Williams and Vince Buck and some other people all can make it to the NFL from Central, there’s hope for me, too. And that means I just gotta keep doing what I do on the field. I got to ball out. Each Saturday I’ve got to put it out there.”

Like he said, “Numbers don’t lie.”