The Venice Vikings taught Damon Wilson II to be a dominant football player. Giving back to them has been another kind of lesson for the new Missouri defensive end: one in what he can be as a modern, paid college football player.
Wilson has donated some of his NIL earnings to the Pop Warner organization that gave him his first chance to play the game. It’s a full-circle development, sort of, but also a symbol of Wilson’s linear growth into the power, the possibility of his newfound platform.
“We knew that he was going to be somebody,” said Jamie Fraser, the president of the Vikings, who play in the Florida Gulf Coast city of Venice.