OXFORD | The perfect-for-social-media moment showed the highlight of what happened on Halloween night. Ole Miss head coach Matt Luke handed KeShun Wells, a senior walk-on special teams starter, a black bucket decorated for the holiday, and Wells opened the contents before his emotions poured out and his teammates swarmed him in celebration.

Wells saw only the “ship” on the paperwork when he realized he was receiving a football scholarship for the semester, his final one with the Rebels. Happiness and relief were the initial feelings, and the Ole Miss football Twitter video that’s been viewed 113,000 times as of Sunday morning flashed to hugs and congratulations before Wells led the post-practice team huddle.

But that video didn’t show the after and certainly didn’t show the before — the failures, the sacrifices and the perseverance needed to simply keep playing the game and work through an arduous daily schedule in an effort to be an Ole Miss football player who finishes college with a degree.

Once the camera disappeared and teammates retired to the Manning Center, Wells took a knee and reflected on his past half decade. Three different junior colleges didn’t want him as a football player. He worked odd jobs simply to pay living expenses, and he had to finagle his living situation to stay in school.

The scholarship offer may have happened in seconds, but it was a path paved with potholes. So when Luke walked over and took a knee beside Wells, his tears were on the verge, and they fell immediately as the quick conversation started.

“He told me how proud he was of me and how it wasn’t given to me,” Wells said, fighting back a cracking facade as he recounted the story more than a week later. “He told me I earned it. That was it. That did it. I just broke down. I earned it. Everything was worth it. It paid off. I went from not wanted to where I am supposed to be.”

Wells, all 5-foot-5 and less than 170 pounds of him, was full of hope, potentially options and probably naiveté when he enrolled at East Central Community College following a solid football career at Moss Point High School, where he ran for 793 yards and nine touchdowns as a senior. East Central gave him a preferred walk-on opportunity but cut Wells before the season began.

The only hope for aid at East Central was in cheerleading, not football, as ECCC cheer coach Paul Karcher — wife of football coach Ken Karcher — offered Wells a partial scholarship to join the cheerleading squad.

He had participated in gymnastics for more than a decade and was inspired by Gabby Douglas while cheerleading during basketball seasons at Moss Point.

Wells, initially, accepted, but on the last day possible, he withdrew from school. In a roundabout way, leaving was actually not quitting, as he knew he wasn’t finished with football. It was a decision geared toward his brother, Omni, who is now a running back at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and has offers to play at four-year colleges.

“I knew there was more to this,” Wells said. “I have a younger brother at home, and if I give up, my brother is going to see that.”

Wells enrolled at Gulf Coast, but the junior college football power didn’t have any interest. He played intramurals and plotted his next move — looking at the bottom instead of the top.

The way Wells saw it, he would find the worst junior college in Mississippi because it — in theory — gave him the best chance to join the program. He found that in Coahoma Community College, the downtrodden Mississippi Delta JUCO that was 1-26 the three years prior to Wells trying out for the program.

On the final day of camp, it happened again. Lowly Coahoma cut Wells from the active roster, telling him he could be on the practice squad, but he would receive no benefits including room or board. That financially wasn’t an option, so Wells headed back to Moss Point, mentally spent and potentially preparing to move on to the next phase of his life that wouldn’t include football.

One of the most important conversations of Wells’ life occurred after the setback at Coahoma. He was planning to attend school and work, but Tashia Fountain stepped in. Fountain’s son, Kweisi, is a walk-on Ole Miss defensive back from Biloxi and related to Wells through marriage.

She drilled into Wells for hours that he shouldn’t quit, to give it one more chance at Ole Miss, to make one more move so regret would never enter his mind. With Fountain’s help, Ole Miss offered him a tryout before the 2017 season. Wells made the team. He would play football again.

“When I got the call to make the team, it felt like a scholarship,” Wells said. “Just knowing I had a uniform. My whole mindset changed, and I was going to reinvent the rest of my life. I knew the sadness of not having a direction or place to go. I knew I’d now work as hard as I could to at least not get cut.”

Wells didn’t see the field in 2017 but broke through a year later with a starting spot on the punt block team. He also had four carries against ULM and kept his internal goal to maximize his time with the strength and conditioning staff, earning top-10 recognitions for 40-yard dash, 10-yard splits and pound-for-pound work.

But while things were progressing with a travel spot and playing time, the intense demands were creating chaos with Wells’ financial situation and free time.

College football walk-ons are stereotypically nameless numbers and practice bodies who fill out rosters, operate scout teams and survive grueling schedules and lack of compensation to continue their playing careers.

It’s not a sustainable year-after-year task for most. The time expectations are equal to scholarship players, but the perks don’t include paid tuition, meal plans or some of the other luxuries that assist those on aid with the grind of the student-athlete.

Practices, meetings, treatment sessions and other obligations carve out much of the days, not including class loads and studying. With money tight and unaccounted for hours at a minimum, Wells has used food delivery work to supplement his budget.

Formerly working and delivering for Insomnia Cookies and currently driving for Uber and DoorDash, Wells, many days, works most of the evening, delivering food or shuttling people around Oxford. Some days he’s even had to leave practice early in order to keep his shifts.

“I would have to leave early because DoorDash has a set schedule,” Wells said. “You can drop or add a schedule, but someone will take your schedule if you drop it and that’s money left out. Thursdays are hot and Wednesdays are hot and people order a lot. They usually order 6-7 p.m. for dinnertime. I would fill my academic schedule around times that I thought I could deliver food and make it work. I’d load up on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to make sure Tuesday and Thursday were off so I could deliver. I’d go to 2 a.m. or so. About four hours of sleep on those nights.

“You know those jobs aren’t going to pay for the whole semester, so I was doing that to eat. I didn’t have a meal plan. I had rent and all this stuff.”

This semester Wells even switched apartments in order to stay afloat with a place to live. He left a monthly-rent complex to move to Campus Walk, an off-campus apartment option that’s tied to the university. Rent can be billed to a bursar account, giving Wells until the end of the semester to pay the balance.

“Living is what you make it,” Wells said. “It’s what I had to do.”

Wells walked in the May graduation ceremony but lacked enough hours to still be eligible for a Federal Pell Grant and play football this season — one last semester of living out his dream while working tirelessly to actually live.

The daily strain had become routine, but Wells’ problems accelerated to a fever pitch two days before Luke’s Halloween basket changed his life. His car had mechanical issues, and a prolonged vehicle absence could have severe consequences.

"My radiator overheated, and that was my only source of making my own money,” Wells said. “I could ask my parents, but I had been asking them for three years to help me out, and it was tough enough. How can I get the radiator fixed? How can I get to work? I was out. I was out of money and thought I would have to leave the team this late in the season. I can’t run my car in the dirt trying to make money.”

Confusion was the first thing for Wells when Luke said his name that evening. It was time for the scout team player of the week honor, and Luke had already given linebacker Jonathan Hess a prize — a plane ticket to travel for the game at Auburn.

But then reality hit, the positive kind in a story of overcoming the opposite. Wells is a scholarship athlete. School will be covered this semester. He’ll get some money back.

“It’s the most favorite thing about being a football coach is to reward these guys who have earned it,” Luke said. “He certainly has, and to see the tears in his eyes and the reaction from other teammates, it’s really, really special. And it’s not something I gave him. It’s something he 100 percent earned. I’m just happy there was one available for me to do that.”

Wells wants to coach when school is finished, specifically back home in Moss Point, in an effort to return the program to former prestige. It’s the end game to keeping hope alive these years. He wants players to see the love for the game in him, to hear his story and realize the healing properties it can provide some people.

There were times when Wells questioned it all, wondering if turning down the cheerleading scholarship sent his life in an untenable direction. But now there’s fulfillment. He sat in the Manning Center, wiping his eyes intermittently, coming back to this: “I went from cut at the worst school in the state to a scholarship at the best school in the state.

“You will get rejected but you can’t stay rejected. You have to stay with it and work for what you want. From financially scraping to stay in college, it made me appreciate the game beyond getting the scholarship. I still love the game. Do you love it enough to do it and not get any pay? What would you do if you didn’t get paid? The game just took over me.”