Staff photo / UTC wide receiver C.J. Board tries to find a way past Furman’s Aaquil Annoor during a SoCon football game on Oct. 10, 2015, at Finley Stadium. Board, who signed with the Mocs in 2012 and played his final college season in 2016, has caught on with the New York Giants after earlier opportunities with NFL teams didn’t produce much of a chance to get on the field.Productivity and success have come relatively easily for New York Giants receiver C.J. Board throughout most of his football career. Once he entered the NFL, dealing with a form of failure quickly became his biggest challenge.
Board was an all-state receiver at Kenwood High School in Clarksville, Tennessee. At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, he had 2,032 receiving yards and 146 catches, ranking in the top 10 in school history in both cases. As a fifth-year senior in 2016, he produced career bests with 46 catches, 725 receiving yards and five touchdown receptions.
In the NFL, though, opportunities with the Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans and Cleveland Browns didn’t work out. In 2019 with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Board finally made an NFL team’s 53-man roster for the first time and had two catches.
“Those first few years in the league were tough,” he admitted recently. “I was getting cut constantly, and I’ve never been through that before. You go to high school, you go to college – and college is a little more of a challenge, but you’re still a top player – and then you get to the big leagues and everyone’s good, so it’s a learning experience.
“I leaned on former teammates, friends and family back home and coaches, and that’s helped me out. The biggest thing I’ve taken away from it is that no matter what happens, you have to keep grinding and you have to keep working, and that’s what I did. When I was released, I never took it personal. I’ve learned that it is a business and some of the stuff is out of your control. Some things make you look in the mirror and make you work on things that you didn’t know you had to work on.”