The only thing scarier than Nic Scourton on the football field is Nic Scourton in the “Fortnite” video game.

Before being the anchor of Texas A&M’s defensive line with 11 tackles for-loss and 4.5 sacks in seven games, Scourton was the best gamer in the Bryan, Texas, area. On Saturday, the adrenaline surge LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier gets when he sees Scourton chasing him will mirror how Scourton’s best friend, Andrew Buban, feels when he tries to shoot Scourton’s “Fortnite” character, only to watch him build a protective castle the instant he loses some health points.

“In two seconds, you’d be in a box,” Andrew said. “I used to play pretty intensely, too, and I don’t think I could ever beat him.”

Scourton will soon be an NFL player, but Andrew always tells people he could realistically do anything he wants. Scourton has a knack for hyper-fixation on whatever’s in front of him. In college, it’s Texas A&M football. But early in high school, Andrew’s father, Lane, remembers him streaming video games online.

The audience has grown since he transferred to Texas A&M, now playing in front of 100,000 people. He’s helped lead the Aggies to a 6-1 record and the No. 14 ranking, but Lane says the fans won’t find him in College Station’s bar scene reveling in the success. 

“If he had his choice of going to Northgate or going back to his apartment and getting online and playing video games, he’s going back to his apartment and getting online and playing video games,” Lane said.

Scourton isn’t anti-social. Lane recalls him and Shemar Turner as the last two players outside the Slocum Center after the Missouri game, signing autographs for every kid. But he does have a small circle, and video games are how he bonds with them. 

It was “Mortal Kombat” with his younger brother as a boy. When he moved in with the Buban family at the beginning of his sophomore year in high school, it was “Fortnite” and “Rocket League.”

Bryan High School, which Scourton and Andrew attended, is just over five miles away from Kyle Field. Over the years, there have been a lot of different Nic Scourtons who couldn’t bridge that distance, who’ve put on the Vikings’ uniform and had the talent to put on the Aggies’ but never did. Scourton is not a “what-if” story. He’s on your television screen, wreaking havoc on Texas A&M’s opponents and creating a future for himself because of the choices he and Andrew made together in high school.

“I don’t look at Andrew as a friend,” Scourton said. “That’s my brother.”

Like brothers, Scourton and Andrew fought a lot when they first met.

Andrew was a center on Stephen F. Austin Middle School’s eighth-grade football team, which meant he lined up against Scourton daily. Andrew remembers them as mortal enemies at the time. They’d go at each other’s throats, sometimes ending up in a fight that needed to be separated.

“This was before we both hit puberty and he grew three times the size of me,” Andrew said.

But the more fisticuffs were thrown, the more the rivalry evolved into mutual respect.

“He never backed down from anybody,” Scourton said.

By freshman year, once they were placed in the same standardized testing room for multiple days and in the same theater class, the mutual respect evolved into a friendship.

Scourton and Andrew, however, were on different tracks. Andrew was the son of Bryan High’s principal, Lane Buban, which kept him straight-laced. Scourton, on the other hand, didn’t have much supervision.

Scourton’s parents, Nicky Scourton and Ashley Caraway, were separated and locked in a custody battle during Scourton’s freshman year. His father, whom Scourton now refers to as his best friend, was recently released from prison at the time and trying to get back on his feet. Meanwhile, his mother worked as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) in a Bryan nursing home, with shifts starting at 6am and often lasting 16 hours, as a single parent.

“We came from a family that didn’t really have anything,” Ashley said. “But we tried to give my kids everything.”

The custody battle and lack of supervision combined into a storm of slacking off for the 14-year-old Scourton. He’d stay up all night playing video games and use school to catch up on sleep. His grades plummeted. Angry at his home circumstances, he and his mom argued.

The tumultuous situation culminated in one big fight at the beginning of his sophomore year, after which Scourton left Ashley’s house and skipped school the next two days, trying to find another place to stay. On the third morning, he returned in the same clothes to the football locker room. Andrew told Scourton he could stay at his house that night. The only problem was that he hadn’t cleared it with his father. 

So Andrew walked into the principal’s office and told Lane that Scourton was staying the night, to which Lane said absolutely not. As a school administrator, he had first-hand knowledge of Scourton’s behavioral problems. Andrew wouldn’t budge.

Before his dad became principal at the high school, Andrew had spent his summers at the middle school where Lane worked. While driving home, he’d sit in his dad’s car and watch how Lane would pick up kids walking home two miles away and drive them the rest of the way. 

Finally, Lane relented. His son had won an argument with the principal. But just one night, he said.

“One night turned into three years,” Lane said.

Andrew laughs remembering how awkward those first few nights were. Scourton walked on eggshells, not wanting to overstep any boundaries. He camped in Andrew’s room all day, only walking around the house when Andrew did so. He waited until midnight to eat snacks in the kitchen because he didn’t want to take something he wasn’t supposed to.

But as a day turned to a week and a week into a month, Lane sat Scourton down and said if he was going to live here, he’d treat him like one of his two sons. He taught Scourton how to drive, got him a couple jobs with Andrew and helped him open checking and savings accounts to manage his money.

“When they gave me a room and they painted it for me and helped me decorate it, that’s when I felt like I was part of the family,” Scourton said.

Ashley signed over legal guardianship to the Bubans. She still handled her son’s medical appointments and says the Bubans left the big decisions up to her, which gave her peace of mind. But she worked such long days and had another son to care for, and her oldest boy needed more structure to get on track.

“The Bubans, I appreciate them very much,” Ashley said. “I told them Saturday at the (Missouri) game, “I thank y’all.’”

Scourton’s biological parents and the Bubans watch Scourton dominate on the football field together on Saturdays, but college athletics was not on the radar when the Bubans took him in. Scourton had failed multiple classes his freshman season and needed to make up credits, so Andrew and Lane tutored him after school. 

Scourton had the ability – he’d scored in the 1300s on his PSATs as an underclassman. But now he had people in his home life putting the necessary pressure on him to study and not stay up all night gaming.

By the end of his sophomore year, then-Texas defensive line coach Mark Hagen began showing interest in Scourton. This was when college football became possible, and Scourton began hyper-fixating on his school work and athletic career to make it a reality.

Bryan High School made back-to-back playoff appearances in Scourton and Andrew’s junior and senior seasons. Scourton was getting recruited on the defensive line, but he played running back, too, because he was the strongest man on the field. He used to cut off Andrew’s blocks at tight end while Ashley hollered from the stands in a split Andrew/Nic jersey.

By the time Scourton was a senior, Hagen had moved to Purdue as a co-defensive coordinator. He was now selling Scourton on moving to West Lafayette, Indiana, instead of nearby Austin. It was a massive step for Scourton, who graduated high school at 17. When he used to go on trips with the Bubans, he asked Lane to wake him up every time they crossed into a different state because he’d never been outside Texas.

Once Scourton was sold on Purdue, Andrew applied to the engineering program late and got in. He and Scourton referred to each other as twins. His twin needed him as he embarked on a football career thousands of miles away, just like Scourton had that morning in the locker room in sophomore year. But Andrew needed his twin, too.

“You do the craziest things for your family,” Andrew said. “I had no clue what Purdue was.”

Every weekend during freshman year, Andrew would go to Scourton’s apartment to get beat in video games. They moved back in together sophomore year, when Scourton led the Big Ten with 10 sacks.

Texas A&M hadn’t offered Scourton out of high school. But head coach Mike Elko took notice once he saw Scourton’s production in the Big Ten, and the fact he’d grown an inch and gained 40 pounds. Once Scourton transferred back to Bryan/College Station, so did Andrew. They were a package deal.

This Saturday, Scourton will star in the most meaningful game in the college football slate, a battle for first place in the SEC between Texas A&M and LSU. He’s the headliner of a defensive line that’s notched at least seven tackles for-loss in four straight games and a potential First Round NFL Draft pick come next April. And, to think, when the Bubans took him in six years ago, they just wanted him to pass algebra.

“I get kind of choked up thinking about it,” Lane said. “He was not on a good path. He turned things around.”

The Bubans emphasize this is a “he” over “we” story. They were an influence, a structure. But everything Nic Scourton has today is because Nic Scourton earned it.

“He made those choices,” Lane said. “He could’ve rejected all that and said, ‘To hell with this. I’m not doing this. I don’t want to be part of this.’ But he embraced it. He knew what he needed to do to get to where he wanted to be.”

Scourton will be on Kyle Field this weekend, just five miles away from the high school he almost flunked out of, with a lifetime of growth represented in that short stretch.