Ckelby Givens isn’t influenced by money.
The same is true for fame, accolades and other material desires that any normal 21-year-old would fancy. It’s not in the Shreveport native’s nature.
The old soul cares about three things above all else:
1. God.
2. Family.
3. Football.
Those are the priorities that his mother, Capathia Kimble, and father, Phillip Givens, instilled in their middle child, who is Southern football’s star defensive end. Those three items are Ckelby Givens’ compass. It’s why the FCS All-American resisted the allure of FBS.
Givens admits that he’d be lying if he said that the thought of transferring never crossed his mind. The 6-foot-2, 245-pound senior, in fact, entered the transfer portal following his sophomore season in 2023 after leading the Southwestern Athletic Conference with both 21 tackles for loss and four forced fumbles.
The temptation to leave even came from a coach within his family.
“I was one of them,” said his older brother Colyn Givens, who wanted Ckelby to join him when he was a graduate assistant at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2023. “It was no tampering or nothing, but I said, ‘Hey, you can come play for me.’ ”
While these opportunities were enticing, he relied on his core values and his faith.
“I know life is bigger than just money,” Ckelby Givens said. “Things are more important than just having money and at Southern, it’s a family, it’s love. And also the reason why I do this is because of God. So he told me to stay and that’s the reason why I stayed.”
Southern is overjoyed to have him as a Jaguar for a fourth season, starting Saturday when it plays North Carolina Central at 6:30 p.m. in Atlanta. Just as much as Southern loves Givens’ pass-rushing gifts, second-year coach Terrence Graves needs his intangibles.
“He's not perfect, but he walks in excellence,” said Graves, who was an assistant coach in Givens’ freshman year. “He does a great job of being a leader, and the guys feed off of him. He's been a leader from the time he stepped foot on this campus up until now … We're blessed and fortunate to have him.”
The utmost respect is reserved for Givens, who is the team’s unquestioned leader, not because of how often he speaks but with his actions. He outworks everyone and his character is pristine.
His integrity as a person and hunger as a player is the same as it was when Zac Yassine first met him as a freshman, desperate not to redshirt.
“He can be vocal, but I think Ckelby really leads by example,” the redshirt senior defensive tackle said. “Even though I’m older than him, he’s a guy I look up to for real. He’s somebody you want to be like. He’s got every characteristic you want in a great man.”
Kimble couldn’t be prouder as a mother to know how highly people view her son. It's amusing to reminisce on his elementary years when Givens was a troublemaker.
“He's always been very successful and did his work, but yes, the teacher would call me about his behavior,” Kimble said.
Colyn Givens, 25, said his middle brother was a “hothead” who got in more trouble as a kid than he and their youngest brother, Cade, who is a freshman football player at Southeastern Oklahoma State. Those tendencies didn’t last long as Ckelby Givens naturally matured and dived deeper into his faith.
What hasn’t changed much at all is how much he cares for the people closest to him. He’s thrilled that over 40 family members travel to New Orleans to watch him play in the Bayou Classic.
A holiday gathering with relatives is Givens’ ideal day. Top that off with a serving of greens, chicken, rotel dip and the family’s signature rice dressing passed down from his late great-grandmother Dorothy Brewer, he might as well be in heaven on Earth.
Givens’ family is also inextricable from Southern athletics, not simply because of his football career.
Colyn Givens, an assistant defensive line coach at SMU, was a Southern football player for three seasons starting in 2018 and became Southern’s defensive ends coach during Ckelby’s freshman year in 2022.
Ckelby Givens’ grandfather, Cleophus Banks, played basketball and baseball and is in the Southern University Sports Hall of Fame. His uncle, Roman Banks, is the current athletic director and before that, he coached the Jaguars men’s basketball team for six years, leading them to a 71.3% win percentage in the SWAC and NCAA Tournament berths in 2013 and 2016.
Another uncle is Southern basketball standout Carlos Sample who led the Jaguars to back-to-back Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament Championships and NCAA Tournament berths in 1988 and 1989.
Givens is the latest in his family’s line of greatness. Already, he has more than lived up to his name. As a child, the late Cleophus Banks prophesied that his grandson would be the best athlete in the family.
Givens led the FCS in tackles for loss with 27½ and finished third in sacks with 12 last year. In 13 games, he had 73 total tackles (42 solo), 13 quarterback hurries, three forced fumbles and one pass breakup, earning SWAC Co-Defensive Player of the Year. He was instrumental in the Jaguars finishing 8-5 overall and 7-1 in the conference, winning the SWAC West Division title.
Givens made the All-SWAC first-team defense his sophomore and junior seasons. In 2024, he was named the HBCU Defensive Player of the Year by BOXTOROW, a second-team FCS All-American and a Buck Buchanan FCS National Defensive Player of the Year finalist.
He was most recently named to the preseason watch lists for the Buchanan Award and the Stats Perform HBCU National Player of the Year.
The only achievements Givens cares about now is a SWAC and Celebration Bowl title after losing in the conference championship in 2022 and 2024. That blank in his resume eats at the competitor in him.
When Southern lost the SWAC championship at Jackson State on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2022, an 18-year-old Givens was already in the weight room that Sunday in Baton Rouge.
Along with being dubbed the family’s best athlete, Colyn Givens said his brother was always the most competitive.
At St. Peter Baptist Church in Shreveport, Ckelby Givens had his sights on winning Bible trivia. If there’s a spades game, he plans on winning that too. In his fifth-grade drama club, he wanted to be the best. On field day, coming in first is paramount.
“We even had to roll a clip back one year for him and his best friend,” Kimble said. “He said, ‘I was first. Mom, it’s on your phone.’ I had to replay it.”
He even feels the need to be first to wish his mom a happy birthday.
“He's going to make sure he's the first on Mother's Day, he's the first on birthdays, he's first saying Merry Christmas,” Kimble said. “Ain't nobody beat Ckelby.”
The will to win is innate and finishing the job this year with his football team is all that matters to him on the field. His individual awards are “blessings,” but have no effect on how he prepares or views himself.
“I wouldn’t say it’s the player of the year standards, it’s the Ckelby standard,” Colyn Givens said. “Ckelby has standards for his team and he’s going to meet those goals.
“He don't feel pressure from all these preseason accolades he’s getting. He feels the pressure he put on himself to just be the best.”
Not many people understand Ckelby Givens’s dedication better than Greg Baswell.
The assistant football coach entering his 17th season at Captain Shreve High School was Givens’ defensive line coach. Four years later, he’s still is in awe of what his former player accomplished.
“He’s an A in talent and an A in mindset,” Baswell said. “Ckelby is extremely rare.”
That rarity, however, didn’t guarantee a starting spot as a freshman and sophomore.
In those two seasons, Givens never complained. He worked the same way as if he was a starter and celebrated his upperclassmen teammates ahead of him. When his path cleared as a junior, a switch was flipped and he became the team’s defensive identity.
No. 94 was unblockable. Baswell remembered an opposing coach telling him that two players quit mid-game trying to block Givens. He was ferocious and tireless, dominating off the edge and in the interior.
Givens was, and still is, as strong as an ox, with the footwork that would have made him a great boxer, his old coach said. What made Givens truly unfair was his mind. He insatiably studies film. Last month at a birthday party with his brother Colyn, Ckelby at one point was focused on watching football while others socialized.
Baswell called Ckelby Givens an artist who knows the fundamentals so well that he is able to veer off to doing something untraditional. He still hasn't seen anything like it.
“When you coach a kid like that, you don't want to over-coach him,” Baswell said. “There's things that he could do that I would never allow another player to do.”
As a high school senior, Givens was the unanimous District 1-5A MVP and led his team to a 10-2 record and a district championship. He had 78.5 tackles, 13 sacks and 18 quarterback hurries in 11 games.
Baswell said Givens is not just the best defensive lineman but the best high school player he’s seen up close. This includes top-notch recruits like his old teammate Kendrick Law, who is now a senior wide receiver at Kentucky. The fellow 2022 classmate was then an Alabama commit rated the No. 86 player, according to 247Sports. Still, Givens was unrivaled.
“The best football player I've ever seen in my life to this day,” Baswell said. “I don't know that there ever will be the kind of kid that I saw developed over my time. I could coach another 20 years and not see another Ckelby.”
Graves would probably agree that another force like Givens may not come too quickly at Southern, especially when considering his loyalty. His presence extends beyond the box score. Givens makes all 10 other defensive players better.
Fellow star players like SWAC preseason first-team linebacker Vincent Paige and second-team safety Herman Brister have never seen anything like him.
“You can pick any play on film and he’s going to stand out,” Paige said. “I’ve never seen it at this level. Like I’ve never seen it on my team, so just having a guy like that on my team makes it a lot easier.”
Southern defensive coordinator Henry Miller crafted Southern’s defense with Givens as the sun that every player revolves around.
“Every moment you got to pay attention to Ckelby because he works so hard,” Miller said. “And what I like about it is that the guys out there with him, they know they got to match his energy.”
The Southern Jaguars want to compete for a championship every year. This season, they love their talent, returning and incoming. But make no mistake, the name Givens on the field gives everyone even more hope in accomplishing that mission.