He’ll let you know the summer workouts under the sweltering Texas sun were brutally warm for a kid from the Bronx.

But like everything else throughout his college football career, Ramon Jefferson adapted to the heat.

“It’s been a journey, but I’m beginning to appreciate it,” Jefferson, the standout Sam Houston junior running back, said.

Prior to earning All-Southland Conference honors this spring, he previously starred for Maine in the Colonial Athletic Association when he was a freshman and helped the Black Bears reach the national semifinals.

This Saturday, Jefferson is again slated to play for the right to advance to the FCS championship game. His second-seeded Bearkats host No. 3-seed James Madison for a 2:30 p.m. kickoff at Bowers Stadium in Huntsville, Texas. Sam Houston won the Southland to earn its way into the playoffs and the Dukes, a perennial national power out of the CAA, earned an at-large berth.

“I’ve made it to the Final Four before and we took a loss to Eastern Washington,” Jefferson said while explaining why that setback he suffered with the Black Bears still fuels him.

“So, for me personally,” he said, “not everyone gets to say they played in the national championship game and that’s something I want. [Sam Houston] Coach [K.C.] Keeler talks about it, too. We want to win a national championship because our program is based on that, based on winning and a family atmosphere.”

Those are the reasons he said he took Keeler up on his scholarship offer. Sam Houston State was the first school to give Jefferson a Division I opportunity following the 2019 season, which he spent at Garden City Community College in western Kansas.

Jefferson said an off-the-field issue at Maine was never resolved by the school between his freshman and sophomore years, so he decided to leave in order to have a chance to revitalize his career. With Garden City, a program ranked regularly in the JUCO Top 10, he rushed for 994 yards and 13 touchdowns only proving his stellar 1,000-yard rushing season in the CAA was no fluke.

“What a great player, and what a great kid,” Keeler said about Jefferson.

The seventh-year Bearkats coach said Sam Houston offensive coordinator Ryan Carty, a former New Hampshire assistant, got glowing recommendations from friends on Maine’s staff regarding Jefferson when Sam Houston was recruiting him.

Jefferson said his time at Garden City was valuable and propelled him to be where he’s at now.

“JUCO is a dog-eat world,” Jefferson said. “And instead of D-I where you’re competing with four or five other running backs, we had 13 running backs on the roster. But obviously, Garden City is a well-known JUCO and it helped me out a lot. I was stressed out with what my next step was, but I believe in God, man, and I put my faith in him. … We won games and worried about the recruiting, and it was like I was back in high school again.”

Maine coach Nick Charlton, the Black Bears’ offensive coordinator in 2018, and his assistants didn’t have a problem vouching for Jefferson. Charlton said he loved coaching Jefferson.

“Ramon is a very talented player,” Charlton said. “But he was a great student-athlete here and was an outstanding teammate and was extremely coachable, so he’s somebody we’re pulling for as his career continues.”

JMU has a solid feel for what Jefferson can do, too, and that certainly has Jefferson’s attention going into Saturday. Dukes defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman and cornerbacks coach Matt Birkett were in the same roles at Maine in 2018. Jefferson said he’s eager to see Hetherman and Birkett again, even if that means playing against their defense.

This spring, Jefferson has carried for 596 yards and six touchdowns.

“All those guys on the Maine staff,” Keeler said, “they could just not say enough [good] things about Ramon. They thought he’d probably be a captain there and just loved his physicality, his explosion. And I’ll tell you, I don’t think we knew how good he was until we got into real, live game situations because were trying to not get hurt [in practice]. So, it was a whistle and he was tackled.

“Then we played Southeastern Louisiana and some of the tackles he broke, and how he just ran by everybody, I was like, ‘Wow. He’s as good as they told us he would be.’ So, he’s really added a factor.”

JMU coach Curt Cignetti said: “[Jefferson] is just a very elusive player. He’s fast. He’s hard to tackle. He’s got good hands and he can be used in a lot of ways.”

Jefferson’s Sam Houston teammates have enjoyed his presence, too, since he joined the program.

Sophomore wide receiver Ife Adeyi said Jefferson brought his experience and an edge to Sam Houston.

“He’s someone we can feed off of,” Adeyi said. “He motivates people and that’s even when he’s not having the best game. He’s going to motivate somebody else, so when you see that in the locker room, that’s somebody you want to have around.”

A strong performance from Jefferson could have him and the Bearkats destined for a trip they want to take – a 200-mile bus ride north through the Lone Star State to Frisco, Texas for the national championship.

It’d also mean one more week for Jefferson without having to concern himself with the nearing summer workouts in preparation for the fall season.

“The thing about that is I feel like once you’re in the heat and you train for it, you get used to it,” Jefferson said with a laugh. “And when I was in Kansas, Kansas was actually hot. Kansas was the dry heat. It’s all the different heats. Dry heat, no wind. Texas gets hots, so I got a gist of it in Kansas, but the Texas weather took some getting used to. I’ve been out here for about a year now, so I’d like to say I’m kind of accustomed to it.”