Nate Clifton’s journey to an SEC football scholarship was far from a typical one.

Clifton didn’t play football until his freshman year of high school. But a little encouragement from the Brentwood Academy coaching staff and his mother started him on a path that’s led him to a Vanderbilt scholarship.

BA assistant Jason Mathews fondly Clifton’s journey in a signing ceremony at the school on Tuesday.

“Nate’s story is one of my favorites, I’m going to tell it years from now,” Mathews said. “Nate came to us as a basketball player, and that’s all he was, a basketball player. Coach [Cody] White and I can remember seeing him walk into the weight room, and we split up basketball and football and the end of the workouts, and Nate went to the basketball [side.]

“Coach White and I kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Hey, we kind of need to get this kid to play football. We called his mom and said, ‘Will you consider letting Nate play football?’”

Mathews barely got the question out before he got an answer.

"‘Yes! What time does he need to be there?’” Mathews laughed, quoting the answer he got from Natasha Clifton, Nate’s mom. “‘He’ll do whatever it takes!’”

Jason Mathews (left) discusses Nate Clifton's journey to Vanderbilt, with Nate Clifton (sitting), Natasha Clifton (black sweatshirt) and Nate's brother, Nehemiah (visor) looking on.

BA won state titles in each of Clifton’s four years. The path wasn’t always fun, but the journey was worth it.

“He got yelled at as a freshman,”Mathews said on Tuesday. “He got yelled at as a sophomore, he probably got yelled at a little bit as a junior. And I don’t know that he truly loved football until the end of [2017], until he played really, really, really well, started getting some attention, started getting national looks.

“He just trusted the process. … All of his offers were offensive line offers until the last one. … All of a sudden, Vanderbilt came in and offered him on defense.”

Natasha, decked out in Vanderbilt gear, sported an ear-to-ear grin before, during, and after her son’s signing ceremony.

“This whole thing was a faith journey,” she said. “Nathan had some great opportunities… I called it ‘a blessed stress.’ The hard part was waiting for the right opportunities, the right fit for him.”

Nate said former BA teammates Gavin Schoenwald and Cam Johnson, now scholarship football players at VU, “talked him up” to the coaching staff. That’s something his mother noticed also.

“It gave him hope, put it that way,” she said. “They just kept encouraging him.”

Clifton attended camps and games at Vanderbilt for months. Even as he played a key role in leading BA to another state championship a few weeks back, his season ended without a VU offer.

Clifton is significantly more reserved than his mother. But quietly, he had his own hopes. And when VU defensive line coach C.J. Ah You visited him in person last week to extend an offer, that broke through the veneer.

“I was jumping up and down!” Nate remembers.

Mathews, a former NFL offensive lineman who played with the Titans from 1998-2004, joked that his feelings were hurt that Clifton wasn’t going to play offense. All along, Mathews had groomed in for that side of the ball and also asked him to “trust the process,” but was thrilled with the outcome.

“What they’re getting is a very smart, very athletic [player]. Great feet, and he’s just a great young man.

“He’s the total package. He’s young, he’s raw, but I know Vanderbilt constantly gets those young men and grooms them into great players. If I had his frame, and I moved as well as he did, I’d play defensive line, too.”