YPSILANTI, Mich. — Good news for Greg Kelley: He has been offered a full-ride scholarship to play football for Eastern Michigan University.
Kelley announced his scholarship on Instagram on Saturday, thanking the school for giving him "the opportunity to play the game I love." Kelley said in the post that he will "pad up" this week.
Kelley's path back to the football field has been an intense one. In 2013, then-18-year-old Kelley – a former Leander High School football star – was accused of sexually assaulting two children. In 2014, a judge sentenced Kelley to 25 years in prison for child sexual assault.
But new evidence caused his case to be reopened in 2017, and his conviction was overturned in November 2019. Kelley spoke with KVUE from New York moments after the State's highest criminal court overturned his conviction.
Shortly after his exoneration, Kelley went before the Cedar Park City Council to call for the firings of now-former Cedar Park Police Chief Sean Mannix and Sergeant Chris Dailey, who investigated Kelley's case. In May 2020, Kelley filed a lawsuit against the City of Cedar Park, Mannix and Dailey.
A five-part Showtime docuseries called "Outcry" chronicled the three years after Kelley's conviction, the support he received and the major players on both sides of the appeal process. "Outcry" premiered in July.
In December 2019, Kelley announced he had been admitted to the University of Texas at Austin. Earlier this year, Kelley participated in a walk-on tryout for the Texas Longhorns but, according to ESPN, he was informed this month that Texas would not be adding any new players to the roster this fall.
Eastern Michigan plays in the Mid-American Conference (MAC), which postponed football until spring 2021.
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