J'Onre Reed got his nickname on a cold, rainy night in rural Kansas years back, as he was finding his identity as a football player for Hutchinson Community College.
It's best to just let him tell the story ...
"I'm a Kevin Gates fan -- he goes by the 'Big General.' I won't say I stole it from him. My teammates at Hutchinson knew I was a Kevin Gates fan, and one day we're playing a game against Butler Community College. It was a night game, I think it started raining a little bit, and we were running the ball, but it was a quiet game -- cold night, quiet game, we were already winning so the stadium got quiet because the game got boring because we were just whooping ass. I think we ran almost 400 yards that game," Reed says, sharing the story with TrojanSports.com earlier this week.
"But one of my wide receivers heard me from the sideline making calls, just going through it down the field. It was like a 12-play drive from end zone to end zone, and I'm calling it out, calling out blitzes, I'm ID'ing blocks, I'm getting my five guys to [play as one] and we go down the field and score. I come to the sideline and he's like, 'Bro, you're like the operator, the general. You the Big General.' Yeah, I like that ... So it kind of stuck like that ...
"That was the route I took with it -- OK, I'm a field general, but you can just call me the 'Big General.'"
That's the presence Reed hopes to have on the field this year at USC in his final season of college football, as he announced his transfer from Syracuse to the Trojans on Wednesday and went in-depth on the move and his background soon thereafter with TrojanSports.com.
The 6-foot-3, 316-pound Reed started the last two seasons at center for Syracuse, playing 1,530 offensive snaps while allowing 23 pressures and 4 sacks combined over those two years.
He was a coveted target in the transfer portal and one of the biggest additions for USC this offseason, with the Trojans needing to replace veteran center Jonah Monheim.
Ultimately, he only took visits to UCLA and USC last week while cancelling or declining opportunities for subsequent visits to Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Tennessee after he made his Trojans decision. Arizona and Arizona State were also considered.
