Ben Moa is a guy the University of Utah football team can be proud of — both for his accomplishments on and off the field. Moa, who willed the Utes to a triple-overtime victory over Air Force on Saturday, is a devoted husband and father who is active in his church and plans to someday use his college degree to get a job helping troubled youth.

Contrast that with Ben Allison, a heralded U. recruit out of Ogden High who, himself, was a troubled youth. Allison ran in gang circles and spent what would have been his junior high days locked up due to his crimes. He was shot and nearly killed in a gang-related incident at a wedding after his freshman year at the U. and was later kicked off the team when he was busted by campus police for stealing from the Ute locker room.

The two stories appear to be polar opposites.

Except that Moa and Allison are the same person.

Ben Allison was born in San Bernardino in 1981, the son of an African-American father and a Tongan mother. He spent his early years in California, but, since much of his mother's family lived in Utah, he'd visit the Beehive State occasionally.

After one of these trips to Utah, Allison stayed much longer than he'd planned.

In Salt Lake City for a family reunion when he was 12, Allison and others in the T.C.G. (Tongan Crip Gang) engaged in some criminal mischief and got caught. He doesn't care to go into detail, but the offenses were enough that "I got locked up for three years. I didn't get out of the lock-up until I was 16."

From 13 to 16, Allison lived at the Mill Creek Youth Corrections Center in Ogden. There he went to school, ate, slept, exercised and got into more trouble. There were plenty of fights.

"We'd get in fights almost every day, but then we'd get put in lockdown — 23 hours in, one out," he said.

When he finally was released, Allison stayed in Ogden, living with foster parents Mace and Lomia Tuatagloa for his two years of high school, partially in an attempt to keep away from the trouble that he could get into with the T.C.G. in Salt Lake City.

His junior year of high school was the first time he'd ever played organized football — and he took to it quickly as a defensive lineman and tight end. He also excelled in basketball and track, but it was football that got college recruiters' attention.

In the end it became a choice between BYU and Utah. Allison, in fact, verbally committed to former Cougar assistant coach Norm Chow to go to BYU, where he would have been a teammate to his cousin, Cougar running back Fahu Tahi. Instead, he changed his mind and decided to accept Utah coach Ron McBride's scholarship offer.