“Football is an extremely important part of my life and it’s a big part of my identity, but football is not my identity. I find joy in a lot of other things.”

Sure, Harris Good is a captain of the Trinity football team, but he’s also much more than that.

“I like a lot of reading and photography. I’m in SGA. I’m in a fraternity. I like doing other things and I don’t like being bound by football,” said Good, who was also an award-winning painter in the third grade.

“I entered a national painting competition in the third grade and I won, which was cool. I painted a dragon with watercolor and it’s actually pretty dope; it’s definitely in my house,” Good said.

He continued dabbling in art in high school, submitting work to the Texas Arts Education Association’s Visual Arts Scholastic Event (VASE) all four years. Simultaneously, he was on the football field, earning himself the nickname “Meatwagon.”

“We ran a triple option, but I played running back. I played defensive tackle and I played running back. So my senior year, we called it the ‘meatwagon’ offense,” Good said.

The five-foot-11-inch 280-pounder carried the ball 26 times for 141 yards and scored five touchdowns in his final high school campaign. While his running style didn’t attract much attention from coaches at the next level, his play at defensive tackle did. 70 tackles including 17 for loss and four sacks were good enough for Texas All-State honors

He would commit to Harding University, a top-ranked Division II program in Arkansas, where he played four games before being redshirted. But at Harding, Good felt confined to football.

“At Harding, we were on an athletic scholarship. It was like you were expected to basically be football-oriented all the time and I just couldn’t do that. I love football, but that’s just not who I am. And I’m talented at football, but I just can’t do it all the time,” Good said.

At that point, Good explored other opportunities and in the fall of 2019, he found himself in Trinity’s maroon and white. Four seasons later, he’s made one all-SAA second team, an all-SAA first team and has been selected as a team captain twice.

He credits much of his success to the experience he had before Trinity.

“I played against the Remington Award winner for Division II in scout team every single day my freshman year of college. That’s the best center in the country for Division II. And then I came here and I was like, ‘Oh, this is easy.’ … No matter what the level of competition was, I was like okay, ‘There’s not much I haven’t seen,’” Good said. In high school, he even played against Dallas Cowboys 2022 first-round pick Tyler Smith.

But in his fourth year as a Tiger and his fifth as a college football player, things look different for Good. He is the lone returning starter from Trinity’s defensive line, a unit that is one of the best of its kind across all of Division III.

“In the past couple of years, I’ve been leading in sacks and tackles for loss and stuff like that. But what comes with that now is a lot more attention. Last year I got some singles and I got double-teamed. But this year it’s like all doubles and now even triples,” Good said.

While the stats might not reflect the impact he’s having, Good is learning to live with it as he anchors a defense that is fourth in NCAA Division III in rushing yards allowed per game and 12th in scoring defense.

“It’s really cool to see other guys have success like Carson [Byrd] and Jacob [Munoz]. It’s been so fun because whenever we’re in a game … I can say, ‘I can do this and this and I can get a tackle that allows a one-yard gain. Or I can do this and Carson can make a tackle for a three-yard loss or Jacob can get a sack.’ Just orienting my play to make other guys more successful, it’s been super cool,” Good said.

His experience has led to his growth, and his life outside of football has led to perhaps the best version of himself on the field.

“They call me grandpa now, which is just so wildly irritating. But it’s also kind of funny, so I kind of like it,” Good said.