Dat Nguyen was born in a refugee center at Fort Chaffee in Fort Smith, Arkansas after his family left South Vietnam during the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.
While attending Rockport Fulton High School in Texas, Nguyen dominated the gridiron and excelled on both sides of the ball, as a middle linebacker, running back and even all-state punter.
The do-it-all high school player chose to attend Texas A&M University, where he went on to become one of the greatest defensive players in school history. The full time linebacker left A&M has the Aggie’s all time leader with over 500 career tackles and 51 consecutive starts on the defensive side of the ball.
The leader of the Aggies Wrecking Crew defense, Nguyen was a consensus all-American in 1998, the same year he won the prestigious Bednarik Award as college football’s defensive player of the year and the Lombardi Award given to the outstanding college lineman of the year. He also took home the Lambert Award to completely fill his trophy case. Nguyen was also named Defensive Player of the Game at the Cotton Bowl that same season. His performance was one for the books, which included a bowl record 12 tackles and an interception. In 2017 Nguyen was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
The highly decorated linebacker was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in the third round of the 1999 NFL Draft. After leading the team in special teams tackles his rookie year, he became the Cowboys starting with a linebacker in year two and never looked back.
The undersized linebacker spent his career proving his doubters wrong and during his seven seasons in Dallas, was a key contributor to the Dallas defense. He battled various injuries throughout his career and retired after the 2005 season. Nguyen currently ranks in the top 10 all time in tackles in Cowboys team history.
He later spent time in coaching roles for both of his former teams, the Cowboys and the Aggies.
In this interview with SC Daily, he talks about practicing his autograph in high school, his rookie cards and the number swapping his rookie year, his admiration for Chicago Bears icon Walter Payton and much more.
Tony Reid–You were a major college star at Texas A&M and a key cog in the Dallas Cowboys defenses of the early 2000’s. Both teams have strong fan bases but at what point were you first asked for your autograph?
Dat Nguyen-It’s crazy. It really started for me in high school. Our coach would say we better “get our John Hancock ready.” Back then I was 15 or 16 years old. I didn’t really know. We had a good football and basketball team. We were the celebrities of the community. What was cool about that was kids from elementary school and junior high would ask for our autographs. We had a shop class. I bet three fourths of our basketball team was in that class. Mr. Bailey would allow us to do our time, do our work, do our job and then we had free time. We all worked on our autographs. We would work on it as much as we could to make it more pretty and legible. We started playing with all of that stuff. That was the first time I ever thought about somebody wanting my autograph. 
TR–You have 152 different cards that were produced during your career. Which of those is your favorite card?
DN-I do? What? No way. I have that many cards? I thought I had about 12 cards. We need to do some research and find those cards. What’s amazing about cards is that when you look at the picture you know exactly what moment that was from. If I have a conversation with my kids or a friend about cards, I know it was in RFK Stadium or FedEx Field or wherever it may be. They ask how the heck I know that but I guess you only play 16 games a year. The way you dress or the way you pull your socks up, you remember. There was a card of me playing the Bengals and that was the game where the guy came in who we call Socks Patrol. You get fined if you don’t have enough blue or whatever the dark color is on your socks. He comes in, he is a former player, its Tony Hill. He was working for the NFL. He said ‘Dat, you have too much blue. You don’t have enough white. We need more white.’ Being the smart aleck I was, I took off the socks and put on all white socks. That was the only time I played a game wearing all white socks. I looked slow on tape. I got burned on an out and up for a touchdown. That was the last time I wore long all white socks. That is what you get for being a smart aleck.
TR-Your rookie cards appeared in many products in 1999 including Bowman, Bowman Chrome, SP Authentic and many more. Do you remember seeing yourself on a card for the first time?
DN-My first one was after I played at Texas A&M. I did an autograph signing. The first autograph signing was the one where I had the jersey number 90. In college I had a single number, 9. In the pros at the time, linebackers were only allowed to wear numbers in the 50s and 90s. 59 wasn’t available. 54, which added up to nine, was not available. 90 was the only thing available. That or 99 was also available. I tried on 99 one time and I looked at Jesse Armstead, he wore 98. I looked too small in 99. So, I will keep 90.
The first trading card I ever saw of me in a card I was in number 90. It was in minicamp. I saw the card when I was in training camp. I was doing a signing for somebody during that time. We signed Alonzo Spellman the day I had my autograph signing. Whoa. They just took number 90 away from me. He had more tenure so I had to go switch to number 45. I took my jersey to sign it but that had to be a special one because I will never wear number 90 again. I have a couple of those but those should be collectors items.
TR-What player’s cards did you collect and who did you look to for inspiration as a kid?
DN-Sweetness was number one on the list. In my high school we didn’t have that many players. We only had 28 players on the team. We all played both ways. I always wanted to be Sweetness. Any time I had the chance to score a touchdown on a breakaway I would be holding the ball in one hand and held it like a loaf of bread. I didn’t do any high stepping because I was very flexible back then.
Michael Jordan was big. I loved Scottie Pippen. I played basketball a little bit, too. Scottie was so good at shooting the bank shots. I thought that was amazing, using angles like that. We had all sports. I liked Rickey Henderson. I remember Orel Hershiser. We had all of those guys. I wish I was smart enough to keep all of those cards back then.
TR–Did you manage to hold on to any of your cards from your childhood?
DN-We had all of these cards. Every kid in my small town had a collection. A friend of mine right now has a card shop in my home town. He does really well. Everybody had their binders and folders back then. I wish I would have kept it. I don’t know how or when it got disposed.
TR–If you could go back to your playing days and stop anyone after a game for a jersey swap, who would you ask to trade with?
DN– Drew Brees. A Texas boy that overcame a lot of obstacles. I would say Zach Thomas, too. We didn’t really do that but we had some great players. Every week you were playing great players. The Tiki Barbers and Donovan McNabbs. One of my favorite guys, and if I had a chance to trade a jersey, I would ask Barry Sanders to trade. That would be top of the list. Barry would be number one.
You can read about Dat Nguyen’s life and career in this book.
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