STONY BROOK, N.Y. — A chance encounter with a former NFL player while riding the subway from the Bronx to school in Harlem as a ninth-grader altered Justin Morgan's future.

Now, the 6-foot-6, 335-pound Morgan is a redshirt senior on the Stony Brook football team's offensive line.

He is expected to be a major contributor for the Seawolves once play resumes in the spring, in a sport he only renewed playing midway through high school.

"I was taking the train one morning. And a man was just staring at me," Morgan recalled. "It's early in the morning in New York City. You don't like anyone staring at you."

The man approached Morgan during his otherwise-routine commute as a freshman — the 5 train from the Gun Hill Road station to 149^th St., then the 2 train to Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School.

He asked if Morgan played football.
 
"I used to, but right now I'm playing basketball," Morgan said. "I'm fully devoted to basketball. I'm not looking to play football. I'm satisfied. I'm happy."

Morgan and the man nonetheless exchanged phone numbers.

While at basketball practice later that day, a Poly Prep Country Day School staff member called to give Morgan information about the school. Morgan's basketball coach at the time grabbed the phone and hung up.

That night, though, Morgan informed his mother about the encounter and the follow-up call at basketball practice.

She investigated the school's credentials. And she called the Poly Prep administrator back and listened.

An assistant principal who had sent a few youngsters from the Harlem Jets youth program to the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, private school also advocated enrolling, given the full scholarship offer and quality education and football program.

"I bought in and decided to go," Morgan said.

Morgan had played football through the sixth or seventh grade, before shifting his focus entirely to basketball.

At 360 pounds as a 10th grader, he was a natural for football at Poly Prep.

Even though he was offered the opportunity to play both sports at the new school, he stuck to football after transferring.

"They put me right on varsity. I was big. I was always big," Morgan said with a laugh. "There was definitely a learning curve. At first they had me on defense. I only played nose guard, because I was so big. I was just going to be a defensive specialist — goal line and short downs they were going to put me in. Football just became full time. I fell in love with the work I was doing."

During his junior season, the potential to play major Division I college football became evident to Morgan. He had watched defensive lineman Jay Hayes go from Poly Prep to Notre Dame.

"My coach would always preach to us, 'You're going to college. We're going to help as much as we can to get a scholarship,'" Morgan said. "And they did that. I always saw the college coaches coming in. It wasn't like they were just coming in to see Jay Hayes. Our whole football team, coaches were coming in to see them. I was like, 'This is real.' They were looking at me, and I hadn't played yet."

To this day, Morgan recalls the first school to offer him a scholarship.

Stony Brook.

He eventually signed with Pitt and spent two seasons with the ACC program, dressing for games but not seeing action on Saturdays. Then, after spending the 2018 season at Independence Community College, which was featured on the Netflix documentary series Last Chance U. that year, he arrived on Long Island, at the school that originally had been the first to offer him.

"I'm big, so you can't miss me," Morgan quipped about his presence in the documentary.

Morgan sat out last season at Stony Brook. He is now poised to thrive on the offensive line, reunited with former high school and Pitt teammate Elias Reynolds.

"Stony Brook was the first school to flat-out offer me in high school," Morgan said. "And I wanted to come closer to home. I'm from the Bronx. It's only an hour and a half away. It's right there. It was a no-brainer to me. I love the environment. I knew what I could bring to the team. It was home. And I wanted to be home to play in front of my family. I hadn't seen my family in a long time. They hadn't seen me play in a long time."

It's a sequence that was set in motion by a chance subway encounter with former NFL player Wali Lundy during Morgan's freshman year of high school.

"I definitely remember meeting Justin on the train in New York City that day eight years ago," said Lundy, now the running backs coach at Lafayette College. "I noticed his size and was immediately curious what sport he played. … After our conversation, I connected Justin with a former UVA teammate of mine, who I knew played football at a prominent New York high school when he was his age. Justin eventually transferred to that high school to play football, and the rest is history.

"I'm happy to hear he has done so well and is graduating college. It's rewarding to know that a short 30 minutes of my day potentially helped shape someone's life for the better. You never know whose life you can impact just by starting a conversation."