Bobby Okereke

My parents were very strict growing up.

Education was number one.

If you got a bad grade, which is probably a C or less, you're not going out on the weekend.

I didn't tell my parents too much about really playing freshman, junior, sophomore, junior year.

It'd be funny.

My parents would be at the grocery store.

My mom's like, people would come to my mom and be like, wow, your son had such a great game.

And she's like, he had a game yesterday?

When did he play?

I think my parents got on board when I got my first scholarship when I was a junior in high school.

And I told my mom I got an offer.

And she was like, what's that?

I said, it's a scholarship.

She said, oh, how much?

I said, oh, it's a full ride.

Oh, I think we like this football thing.

And football was the first time that I was able to be as creative, as violent, as sporadic as I wanted to be.

And I was really, you know, celebrated for it.

So I leaned into that.

I really had to get internal and kind of build like almost a little force field around me and just feed myself positivity, feed myself conviction and not listen to anybody.