It started with a "Hey" that Drenon Fite Jr. yelled down from his apartment window to the street below.
"I was getting in my friend's car, and I turned around, like, 'Who is that?'" Tamara Fite recalled. "That was it. We met, dated for a year, were engaged for a year, and we've been married ever since."
But if you ask their youngest son, Tamara's "baby" C.J., the Fite family origin story is a little more Hollywood, especially when you consider Drenon was on the football team at Texas State University and Tamara played competitive volleyball and basketball in college.
"They're both so competitive. My mom hates to lose. My dad hates to lose," he said. "I think their first date was playing one-on-one basketball or something. They were going at it, and I guess Dad was trying to dunk on her."
Whether it was the "hey" or the dunk, twenty-plus years later, Sun Devil Football has a rare gem in C.J., who has been with the team since his freshman year in 2023 — something increasingly rare in the NIL and transfer portal era of college football.
C.J. certainly garnered interest from other schools, and he could have already declared for the NFL Draft. But it's the family values that Head Coach Kenny Dillingham and the Fites share that have kept C.J. at Arizona State throughout his collegiate career.
"It just goes back to what Coach Dillingham is doing and the family I built here. I know that things here are worth more in value than what money can buy," C.J. said.
That loyalty, he said, is rooted not just in opportunity but in the values that have guided him long before college football became a business.
"I feel that as time goes on through college football, things around can change, but me as a person shouldn't. My core values shouldn't change. If I lean back on the things I grew up on, it's as if no other decisions need to be made."
Fite family values
Growing up, C.J. was surrounded by family, faith, school, and, of course, sports. Both of his parents were collegiate student-athletes who became coaches, and all three children also played at the Division I level.
His sister Madison played volleyball at Texas Southern before beginning her coaching career, and his brother, Drenon Fite III (Trey), is a defensive lineman at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Between church, school, and sports schedules, the Fites relied on a "divide and conquer" approach to practices and games, with grandparents and a host of family and friends supporting them.
But no matter who was playing, one thing was certain.
"We're going to be there to support you," Drenon said. "It was one of the promises that we made to all of our kids."
And it wasn't just one parent.
"We run deep. We have mobs of people," Tamara said. "We really just traveled as a family," she said, noting that nobody in the immediate family would ever miss a game. "The only time I missed the game in high school, I had COVID, and I was livid. I had to stay in my room and listen to the game on the radio."
This promise still holds true today. If C.J.'s parents can't make it to a game, another family member tries to be there instead.
"To be able to have somebody in the stands every game of the week, it's a blessing," C.J. said. "After the game, I can hug them, talk about the game and tell them I love them."
Educational excellence and leadership
The Fite family foundation is not just built on athletics. Drenon and Tamara are also educators, currently assistant superintendent and principal at Tatum Independent School District, respectively.
Academic expectations in the Fite house were clear.
"We always talk about hard work," Tamara said. "Their work ethic was amazing because we did not expect anything less. You're going to work hard, and then we'll be satisfied with whatever you get. But if you didn't work hard, then I'm not satisfied with it, and you shouldn't be either."
That same discipline helped C.J. grow into a quiet leader in his faith. In high school, Tamara later learned he had been sending devotionals and scriptures to teammates. As a fifth grader, he led classmates in prayer for a student who had been in a car accident.
"He never told me he was doing anything like that," Tamara said. "But he just took that so seriously."
The Sun Devil family
The values instilled by the Fites are a big part of why C.J. is seeing so much success at Arizona State. He chose the Sun Devils because he saw three things: Family, culture and faith.
"If you have those three things, I think that's really the biggest thing," C.J. said. "Going into college, I wanted a place that had culture, that had a family feel, and that I was able to grow in my faith, and that's what I have here."
C.J. describes ASU's family feeling as running "from top to bottom."
"Everybody shows everybody the same respect that you would to a family member," C.J. said.
That respect includes answering the phone whenever a teammate calls.
"Everybody knows that if they call my phone, I'll answer. If I call their phone, they answer," C.J. said. "We can crack jokes, have deep conversations, and there are also those funny conversations that have you just dying, laughing, rolling on the floor."
Embed: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY0qjO4ytFx/
That phone policy extends to the coaching staff and players' families, which Drenon especially appreciates with his youngest son a 17-hour drive from home.
"There hasn't been a time when I've called coach myself, and he hasn't answered," Drenon said. "For him to manage all that and still take time to answer my calls and respond to me, that's big. That doesn't happen everywhere."
It is that family-away-from-family that earns Tamara's stamp of approval.
"They said they were going to take care of my baby, and they took care of my baby," Tamara said.
For Tamara, that matters because C.J. has always been drawn to family. He was the kid who sat with his parents at games instead of drifting into the student crowd, the homebody she still remembers as her "baby."
"When I say that boy loves family, he does," Tamara said. "You do not find the type of loyalty like that anywhere. It's very, very rare and he's always been like that."
That loyalty shows up in small ways, too. Tamara said C.J. will gently correct her if he thinks a comment is unfair or unkind.
"He keeps me in line," Tamara said. "He's not going to talk bad about anybody. He's going to make sure, 'Mom, don't say that. You don't know that.' He is a loyal individual."
The future
C.J.'s future dreams carry the same family imprint. The NFL remains the goal, but C.J. also talks about building an all-inclusive facility that offers training, recruiting support, mental health resources, and after-school care for kids.
"I want to be able to help and serve people," C.J. said. "I feel like we're called on Earth to be able to serve and help people, have servant leadership."
His family already sees how each person could contribute: educators, coaches, counselors, therapists and leaders working toward the same purpose.
Drenon said that dream has come up in conversations about life after football, because even for gifted players, the game has an expiration date.
"The divorce is coming. It's just a matter of when," Drenon said. "But you've got to prepare yourself, and he understands that. He's really mature for his age, and he can stay locked in and focus on the main thing."
C.J. Fite is a Sun Devil for Life
C.J. will always be Tamara's "baby," and he doesn't mind that she still calls him that. In a way, it fits. He is still the youngest son who grew up surrounded by family and rooted in his faith. He's still the player who looks for someone familiar in the stands after a game.
Only now he looks to the stands, which are a little bit more crowded, and he does so as a veteran, a leader, and a loyal four-year Sun Devil.
For C.J. Fite, staying at Arizona State was never complicated.
"I felt like God called me to be here," C.J. said. "To have the faith tied in with the family that's created here and the culture that's created here, I really didn't want to go anywhere else."