In the summer of 2017, Chris Paul stepped onto Tulsa's campus with a mission to take the next phase of his life by storm.
Now as a 23-year-old who is among the 324 players invited to the NFL combine this week in Indianapolis, Paul said thinking of his student-athlete experience seems surreal at times.
His five years at Tulsa were more than even he could imagine.
"Sometimes I sort of have to pinch myself, like, 'Is this really real? Is this really happening?'" Paul said.
Paul graduated with a degree in computer information systems last May and is working on a Master of Business Administration. He did two internships with a bank in Oklahoma. He was involved in several student leadership groups on campus, including University Ambassadors, the Student Association, Future Alumni Council and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The Houston native who has Nigerian roots even helped found and is the current president of The Black Men's Initiative student organization, which aims to provide opportunities for Black men to gather and connect on Tulsa's campus.
A Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee member, Paul has advocated for his peers at the campus, conference and national levels. He's also served on the American Athletic Conference's Racial Equality Action Group and the NCAA Board of Governors Committee to Promote Cultural Diversity and Equity.
A former high school choir member with a passion for singing and songwriting, the 6-foot-4, 324-pound lineman released an EP with a teammate as his producer in the fall of 2021. Paul goes by The Seventh — his favorite musical chord — as an artist and loosely described his genre as "alternative R&B" with a wide variety of influences, including several Nigerian artists, Alicia Keys and Tyler, the Creator.
Oh, and the four-year starter at Tulsa may hear his name called in the NFL draft in April.
Paul feels like he "truly maximized" his time in college and described it as an "extremely rewarding" experience. It's allowed him to picture a future with many career options: football, information technology and athletics administration, to name a few.
The key to everything he got out of his college experience, Paul said, was his approach to being a student-athlete paired with the support he received from Tulsa from top to bottom. When asked who at Tulsa had sizable impacts on him, Paul answered like he was accepting a Grammy. He listed coaches, administrators, Tulsa athletics' entire Office of Academic and Student Services, as well as a handful of professors.
"I have so much gratitude to all of those people because they each poured into me in different ways. There was never anything I felt like I couldn't go to them about," he said. "I could sing the praises of all those individuals forever because they are an imperative reason why I am where I am today."
Specific to his approach to being a student-athlete, Paul said he never wanted to pigeonhole his college life to one aspect of himself. Rather, he learned to "embrace the intersectionality" of all his different passions, only one of which is football.
"You're not just a student-athlete. You're not just a student," he said. "There are so many other aspects of you, and they don't have to be separated. They can be embraced. They're actually, from my experience, stronger together."
Paul's path at Tulsa is filled with several examples of this, including his education. He started in Tulsa's cybersecurity program but transitioned to computer information systems because of its more collaborative nature. He wanted to work on teams, which he said paid dividends during his summer internships with BOK Financial, a bank in Oklahoma.
"Getting to work hands on with teams, being a student-athlete really helped me do that because I do that all the time anyway," he said of his internships, which included working on BOK Financial's information technology and information security teams. "It was great to get in those kinds of environments and use the innate skill sets that I have and pour into those teams in that way."
Paul's experience with SAAC has allowed him to work in a different type of team environment, as well. It also alleviated a fear he had coming into college.
"I was very involved within my community overall in high school, so one of my biggest concerns of being a football player was I would have to lose that aspect of involvement because I wouldn't have time or opportunities to do anything but football, but I was wrong," Paul said.
Paul has represented his football team on Tulsa's SAAC, his school on the American Athletic Conference SAAC and his conference at the national level.
His time on Division I SAAC has allowed him the opportunity to serve on the Division I Football Oversight Committee, where he's seen the sport's "full picture" from the administrative side of decision-making. Alongside fellow Division I SAAC member Isaac Vance from Kent State, Paul has also helped facilitate a student-athlete connection group, comprising 30 football players from across Division I. The connection group provides feedback for both student-athletes to bring to the oversight committee and reinforces "the student-athlete voice is what matters the most," Paul said.
"Having the student-athlete voice present on every committee and at every table and every room is extremely important," he added. "These are our student-athletes that pour their life into their sport and their craft. We are the reason our coaches, our administrators, everyone do what they do, so it's very important to operate our institutions, operate our conferences, operate our Association in that manner that really takes that voice, the most important voice, into account."
Additionally, Paul emphasized the importance of his experiences on the NCAA Board of Governors Committee to Promote Cultural Diversity and Equity. That engagement was especially important after the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020.
"It gives me the opportunity to share my experiences and what I've been through from a student-athlete perspective and pair that with the many other perspectives on the call, and I think that's very beneficial," he said. "I'm most appreciative of the fact that we've been given this opportunity and this platform to really speak on behalf of our student-athletes and actively and intentionally work toward the progression of intercollegiate athletics."
As Paul begins to work toward the next phase of his life, he said he's grateful for the path Tulsa helped put him on. Whether it's the NFL or otherwise, he feels prepared for whatever life has in store.
"Having the opportunity to play college football is huge and is such a blessing and comes with a plethora of opportunities," Paul said. "When you look back and look at your journey up to this point, it makes it that much more special."
