Cordaryl Campbell really shouldn’t be here.

He should be in jail. Or working the streets. Or dead.

There’s really no way that Campbell, at 25 years old, should be sitting in a restaurant talking candidly about his rough past and bright future. No way he should be closing in on a college degree, or a future in professional basketball, or any sort of success story.

The Rosedale native’s life has been a veritable minefield of poverty, crime and opportunities that were dangerously close to slipping away, yet he’s sidestepped each trap and kept moving forward to escape it all.

“Just the thought of my past, what I went through as a kid, I never want to go back to it,” said Campbell, who is playing this season for the Jackson Showboats of the American Basketball Association.

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Campbell was born in Rosedale, a Delta town of less than 2,000 residents. It’s part of Mississippi lore as the place where bluesman Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical talent.

Johnson’s exchange has often been romanticized, but the reality of Rosedale is bleak. Nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. It’s one of the poorest cities not just in Mississippi, but in the United States. Campbell is the oldest of six children and knows well the dangers that come with living in that environment.

“It’s mostly gangs and the streets. If you’re not playing a sport or working a good job, you’re stuck,” Campbell said.

Campbell played basketball while growing up, but was still stuck. Like many children his age, he fell into a dangerous pattern of petty crime that often leads to more serious issues later.

At the age of 16 he drove the getaway car after some friends committed a burglary. They were quickly caught, and Campbell was charged as an accessory to robbery. He spent that weekend in a jail cell where, alone with his thoughts and scared, he vowed to turn his life around.

“I was heading down the wrong road, made bad decisions. That gave me the chance to think about it,” he said. “That time in there, I knew I had to make a transformation. I refused to be locked up in cages. It’s not what I wanted to do.”

Campbell was let off with a slap on the wrist — just two months of community service — and learned his lesson. He still had to find a way out, though, and that proved to be much more difficult than escaping serious jail time.

Sports was Campbell’s outlet for his anger and frustration. He was a decent basketball player at West Bolivar High School, but mostly a nondescript player for a nondescript program. West Bolivar won the Class 2A championship in 2010, yet never finished over .500 while Campbell played for them.

He had to spend an extra year in high school before graduating in 2008. He quit basketball once, and several times nearly made the bad decisions that would have led him astray. He credited an uncle for keeping him on the straight and narrow.

“There were a couple of times I was straddling the line,” he said. “I had one role model who I could talk to, and he put me straight and helped me.”

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After graduating, Campbell was once again in need of direction. He’d played for several coaches in high school, none of whom he said did much in promoting him to college coaches. It was then that Campbell got the first in a series of breaks that gave him the opening he needed to escape Rosedale.

His best friend’s mother was enrolling at Coahoma Community College and knew basketball coach Ira Peterson. Campbell got a tryout and made enough of an impression to earn a walk-on spot.

The 6-foot-3 guard and forward earned a scholarship after his freshman year, then missed the 2010-11 season with a broken hand. He came back strong to average nine points and six rebounds per game in 2011-12, and earned another scholarship — this time to Tougaloo College in Jackson.

As he climbed the ladder in college basketball, Campbell continued to get better. He averaged 17.1 points per game, earned All-Gulf Coast Athletic Conference honors in both of his seasons at Tougaloo, and was among the NAIA national leaders in several categories.

“Coach (Harvey Wardell) took another chance on me. I showed I could complete the task,” Campbell said. “It all happened for a reason.”

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Although he excelled on the NAIA level, it was no surprise that Campbell didn’t attract attention from professional scouts as his career wound down. His playing career was over, but he still had his scholarship to Tougaloo and is on track to graduate in May with a degree in health and recreation. After graduation, he’d like to “teach or open youth centers. Basically trying to be a better role model,” he said.

Before he gets on with life, though, Campbell still has one nagging little side project that won’t go away — basketball.

Last spring, Campbell was introduced by a Tougaloo teammate to Jackson Showboats general manager Grant Worsley. The Showboats play in the American Basketball Association. It’s a loose-knit confederation of nearly 100 semi-pro teams scattered around the country. Players earn only a couple of hundred dollars per game. The opportunity to play and gain exposure to better-paying leagues is the main draw.

Worsley has had success placing several former Showboats players in leagues overseas and in higher-tier minor leagues. In Campbell, he saw a talented player from a small college with a strong work ethic and plenty of potential — exactly the kind of guy the ABA loves.

Worsley said Campbell’s background made him tailor-made for the league.

“It makes for what this league is about, to go through the grind. If you get things handed to you, how many of those guys have sat on an NBA bench and never done anything? Worsley said. “Sometimes guys in this league can fight and stay hungry. It tastes better when you get to earn it.”

True to form, Campbell did exactly that.

In June, Campbell joined about 30 other players for the Showboats’ summer league in Vicksburg. It was the first time Worsley had actually seen Campbell play, but certainly not the last. After a string of impressive performances, the guy who had spent most of the previous decade defying the odds did it one more time and earned a roster spot.

Worsley said Campbell’s maturity, as much as his talent, was what carried him.

“He invested his time wisely and got where he needed to be. He got in a position where he earned his spot,” Worsley said. “If you don’t have it between the ears, you don’t have it. He has it.”

For Campbell, making the regular roster was sweet validation that all the hard work he’d put in had been worth it.

“I never had anybody take me to different camps or workouts. I only had one camp in my senior year in high school. To be on the same team with guys who had that stuff, for me to come in and play with them made me feel better,” he said. “Coming from a school like Tougaloo, we never had a chance to get that exposure. Now we’re getting a chance to play different people from different cities. Everybody doesn’t get a second chance. When you do, you’ve got to take advantage of it.”

Campbell said he realizes how fortunate he’s been since spending that long weekend in a Bolivar County jail cell. How many times his life could have hit the skids, or his basketball career could have come to a premature end.

He and his girlfriend now live in Carthage, where they have a 2-year-old son and another on the way. Whether his basketball career takes off and he’s able to land a lucrative roster spot overseas, or he quietly fades away, Campbell’s future seems bright. He’s eager for the opportunity to make it even brighter.

“For me, dreams really do come true. It’s how hard you go after it. I’ve got a lot to fight for,” he said. “Life is just, basically, you have to take care of things one day at a time. I’m about being patient and having faith.”