MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Yusuf Ali was still a walk-on when he knew he had "made it."
It was late in the fourth quarter in the Alamodome, with MT driving down the field against UTSA, trailing 37-29 with under two minutes to go. Back in 2020, where the entire coaching staff had gaiters around their neck on the sidelines.
Ali didn't notice that, of course. He had just taken a bubble screen 21 yards up the field, dragging five Roadrunners with him as teammates Jimmy Marshall, Jarrin Pierce and Marquel Tinsley blocked up field for him to give him the final push he needed to get inside the 10 and give the Blue Raiders a shot.
After a scramble from Asher O'Hara, Ali had his number called again, and wasn't going to let this opportunity go to waste.
"I was like 'I'm going to score this,'" Ali said. "It was my first chance to actually score."
The 5-foot-9 slot receiver, marked by the UTSA safety in the endzone, dove across the line to give MT a shot a tying the game up in the game's final breath.
That first touchdown, a culmination of work for a wideout that posted 19 receptions for 190 yards in 2019 and would go on to start six games and post a team best 12.4 yards per catch in 2020, embodied so many aspects of Ali's play style that has endeared him to not only his coaches, who put him on scholarship after the 2020 season after the Detroit, Mich. native joined the team as a walk-on in 2017, but also his teammates, who named him captain for the team's 2022 campaign earlier this week.
"Yusuf, he's got some dog in him," said Jaylin Lane, Ali's fellow captain and wideout. "He's built different. He's always going hard, whether it's offense or special teams. You're never going to see him take a play off."
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Yusuf Ali didn't start playing football until his freshman year at Maplewood High School, but quickly established himself as a receiver that, despite his size, could play somewhere in college. Until Tony Franklin and Austin Silvoy visited Maplewood, however, Ali didn't think it'd be at the D-I level.
So when the then-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach for MTSU offered him a preferred walk-on spot, Ali jumped at the chance to be a Blue Raider. He had a shot. But, as he quickly learned during his redshirt season in 2017, that didn't mean anything was going to come easy.
"The most challenging part? The mental part of it," Ali said. "You feel like you can play, but you're already kind of behind the ball as a walk-on, because you're not expected to play."
So while he wasn't on the field on game days, Ali took the chance to do every little thing right on the practice field. Taking pride in blocking, something not every receiver wants to do. Always giving 100 percent effort, but especially on special teams.
Little by little, the hard work was paying dividends. He was named the Special Teams Unit's Scout Player of the Year as a true freshman. And while he barely saw the field in 2018, by 2019 he appeared in 11 of MT's 12 games that fall, playing directly behind all-time receptions leader Ty Lee on the depth chart.
"And I think that got my foot in the door and coaches could see that I care and that I'm a hard worker," Ali said. "Everyone knows Ty Lee, and I was the second receiver behind him. So, I knew that I was important to the team if I was going to be behind one of the star receivers. It made me feel like I was actually supposed to be here."
His head coach, Rick Stockstill, saw that drive in him as well as Ali's importance to the team's offense. It put him in contention to be put on scholarship. But there was one holdup for the veteran head coach.
"Yusuf, I'm proud of him because his first couple of years, he just wanted to play football," Stockstill said. "He wasn't interested in going to school. That light finally came on when he realized he wasn't going to be here if he didn't do both."
In the player-coach meetings following the 2019 season, he told Ali that directly. And the wideout got as serious about school as he had been about football, eventually earning that scholarship a year later in the very same coach and player meeting with Stockstill following the 2020 season.
For Ali, it was a moment to be grateful, something Stockstill still remembers about the meeting nearly two years later. And it also meant some of the sacrifices he had to make to make this dream a reality would come just a bit easier. In the bigger picture, Ali noted, it was more evidence of what a walk-on can do at MTSU.
"You're not really at a disadvantage (at MT)," Ali said of being a walk on. "You've just got to come in and work. They're going to play whoever is working hard, whoever is showing that they can do what they ask."
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While he was continuing to establish himself as a devasting blocker, in addition to a slot receiving threat through the 2021 season, where Ali finished the year with a team-leading 45 receptions for 472 yards and four touchdowns, Ali was also going through a transformation off the field. Not so much one internally, but one where he was more willing to show a part of himself that's always been there.
As long as he can remember, Yusuf Ali has memories of being Muslim in East Nashville. Fasting for Ramadan with members of his masjid (the Arabic word for mosque), making lifelong friends in the process, and caring for those in and outside of their community.
Most notably for Ali's day-to-day activities as a football player, particularly during camp, is his need to find time to complete his daily prayers. Muslims pray five times a day, with specific times adjusting each day depending on the solar calendar. Those specific times usually aren't a problem, Ali notes, because if he's in practice or a meeting right when the prayer time starts, that's OK. He just needs to make sure to pray before the next prayer happens, keeping that in the back of his mind as he goes through his daily routine.
More practically, however, is that Ali must find time to pray when he can in the team's busy schedule. Sometimes, that means praying in the Greenland Dr. parking lot outside the football facilities on campus.
"This past year, I've been getting closer to my religion and being more proud of it," Ali said. "So when I don't have anywhere peaceful to pray, I just pray outside. I'm getting more comfortable just doing that."
As he met more people in the area, both in and outside of the athletic department, he met more Muslims. His friend, Samir Abdeljawad, Ali said, encouraged him to show that side of his life more publicly than he had in the past. At the 2022 Raider's Choice Awards, Ali arrived in style, wearing not a suit like so many of his peers, but a thobe, a type of robe often worn by Muslim men, particularly in the Middle East.
From left to right: Jakobe Thomas, Yusuf Ali, Kyle Kee, and Aran Mohamad-Ali at the 2022 Raiders' Choice Awards
For Ali, it was a chance to show the whole side of him to his teammates, something he was glad they accepted.
"I just wanted to be who I really am, not try to be like everyone else," Ali said, recalling the night celebrating a bowl winning season. "Being there with my teammates, it was just a good night."
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Back on the field, Ali is one of two former walk-ons (Chase Cunningham) and one of four sixth-year seniors (Cunningham, Jordan Ferguson and Ja'Kerrius Wyatt) to be named captain for the Blue Raiders this season.
"It was definitely an honor," Ali said. "It hasn't really hit me yet, it'll probably hit in the season when we're actually going out for the coin toss, with the C on the chest."
Graduated with a degree in Exercise Science, Ali is excited for the chemistry his wide receiver room is already showing with the quarterbacks early in camp, while relishing the good-natured trash talk the defensive backs and wide receivers have shown early in highly competitive one-on-ones.
"At the end of the day, we're all trying to get better," Ali said. "And having somebody trying to get better pushes you, because you don't want to be behind the pack. That mentality in the room is just going to make everyone do better. We're just waiting for that first game."
During his final camp, his head coach offered the perspective that he will follow the wideout long after Ali's time in Murfreesboro is over.
"The sacrifices that he had to make, especially early, the first couple years of his career being a walk-on, I'm really proud of him," Stockstill said. "For him to be selected as one of the captains by his peers is a pretty cool story that he'll be able to talk about one day."
