Bijan Robinson's NFL Journey Started at Church
It's fitting that the Falcons rookie running back will be playing on Sundays
One day when Atlanta Falcons running back Bijan Robinson was little, he sat in his room scribbling on a stickie note. He must have been nine or ten. He was day dreaming, making goals, and sticking them to the wall so he wouldn’t forget. “God,” he wrote on one, “take me to the NFL.”
He looked at it and thought it was missing something. “First round,” he added.
Then one more: “Make me special.”
The NFL season starts this week, and—along with our own joy that we can finally, as I overheard someone say at the grocery store yesterday, “Watch football ‘til my eyes fall out”—Week One remains a special date on the sports calendar because of stories like Bijan’s. Week One, by its nature, is a beginning, but it’s also the ending of hundreds of other individual stories, as rookies realize a lifelong dream to make it to the pros. Those first games, first plays, and first touchdowns are also the conclusions of goals come fruition, the answers to prayers that were once scribbled onto stickie notes in a 10-year-old’s bedroom.
It's never just one person’s story, either. Bijan, who will play in his first NFL game on Sunday, was raised by a single mother and his grandparents. His grandfather, Cleo, was a ref in the Pac-10. Whenever Cleo worked a game, he would review the tape at home, scrutinizing his own mistakes, and Bijan would climb onto the couch and watch with him, soaking in the action. Before long, while other kids toted stuffed animals, Bijan carried a football. Every Christmas and every birthday, Bijan would ask for a new football, and it would come with him wherever he went: to his first haircut, to school, to dinner. At home, Bijan, clad in a helmet and jersey, would tuck his football in his arm and run up the halls, screaming, “Come tackle me!”
Sometimes, his grandpa Cleo would oblige. Bijan would run and pass and try to catch the ball—in the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, anywhere. Eventually, his grandmother filled two boxes with the vases, lamps, and picture frames that errant throws had broken. “Bijan,” she told him, “When you make it to the NFL, you’re going to pay me back for everything you’ve broken.”
But there was one place that the football wasn’t allowed: church. Bijan could bring his football in the car on Sundays, and the second services finished, he could grab the car keys to retrieve it. But when the preacher was speaking? His football could wait.
Then, one day, somehow, Bijan snuck the football inside. It could have been fine just sitting there tucked in his arm—perhaps nobody would have noticed it—but for once, Bijan fumbled. The ball rolled out of his arms and started to tumble down the aisle. The preacher was in the middle of his sermon. The whole congregation stared. Bijan gulped.
After the services, Bijan’s grandmother pulled the young running back aside to scold him for breaking the rules. The pastor approached. Bijan gulped again. His grandmother expected him to reinforce her lesson.
Instead, something different happened. “Leave that boy alone,” the pastor said. Bijan could have the ball. It was fine. Look at the joy it brought the kid! After all, the pastor told the Robinsons, football “is embedded in him.”
It doesn’t get more Religion of Sports than that.
🎾 Have you been watching this incredible US Open? Earlier this week, you might have watched Americans Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton face off in the quarterfinals, who won to advance to face Novak Djokovic today. Careful readers of The Word would recognize both Tiafoe and Shelton: We’ve shared each of their stories here over the past year. Read about Tiafoe here. And Shelton right here.
🗞️ One more US Open story that’s particularly delightful: get to know the stay-at-home dad who covers the Open like nobody else…for just about every local paper across the country.
✡️ In our series Destination NBA: A G League Odyssey, we followed Ryan Turell, a college basketball star who’s attempting to become the first Orthodox Jewish player in the NBA. In the Washington Post this week, Zach Buchannan introduces us to Jacob Steinmetz, who is looking to become the first Orthodox Jewish player in the MLB.
🤯 UTSA and week one Cinderella Texas State face off this weekend. For Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, Mike Craven recounts the wild connection between Roadrunners coach Jeff Traylor and Bobcats coach G.J. Kinne. As the headline teases: “How a single bullet, [and] love of East Texas football brought Jeff Traylor, G.J. Kinne together two decades before UTSA, Texas State clash.”
⚾ 26 of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball source their infield dirt from a single spot in Pennsylvania. Here's a fun video from the Wall Street Journal explaining how that dirt gets to the Big Leagues.
