This weekend will be massive for sports fans. The winter Olympics start Friday. The Super Bowl is Sunday, and Texas Connects Us to both.<\/p>\n
Christian Gonzalez got his start in football right here in North Texas.<\/p>\n
He is projected to play a key role for the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez, who\u2019s played three seasons in the NFL, has remained true to his roots.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would equate it to being like a proud dad,\u201d said Rudy Rangel, longtime head football coach for The Colony High School, where Gonzalez spent his junior and senior years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really comes in very unassuming, super quiet,\u201d recalled Rangel.<\/p>\n
Soft-spoken off the field but thunderous in his impact on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, everything he touched turned to gold once he got here,\u201d said Rangel.<\/p>\n
The team became District 5-5A champions during a season that Gonzalez started on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the end of his third game with me, he had multiple offers. By the end of his tenth game, he had over 40 offers,\u201d said Rangel.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez is the son of a 6-foot-9 former basketballer who played semiprofessionally in Colombia, and brother to two All-American track and field athletes and a rising soccer star.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy hope is that he’ll always love what he’s doing and that he’s doing it that reason for the love for the sport,\u201d his mom Temple told NBC 5 in 2023.<\/p>\n
After three seasons playing for Colorado and Oregon in college, Gonzalez was drafted 17th overall by the New England Patriots.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was one of a couple of guys that was invited to go, and it was just a blessing. I couldn’t believe I was there,\u201d recalled Rangel.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez told reporters in 2023 he wanted to buy his parents a house after landing his first NFL deal, a promise he made good on in 2024.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an example, Rangel says, of Gonzalez’s elite status as a player and a person, deserving of his Super Bowl debut.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo see the community really rally and want to root for him and not just because he’s a good footballer, because he’s a good human. Big deal,\u201d said Rangel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This weekend will be massive for sports fans. The winter Olympics start Friday. The Super Bowl is Sunday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85,7508],"class_list":["post-457236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-super-bowl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}