Sarah Spain

So he was sort of like, oh, I'm just not good enough.

That guy graduates, and all of a sudden he gets a lot more touches and is blowing people out of the water as a senior.

Bob Stoops is trying to come after him.

Jim Trestle.

Guys who are now essentially Hall of Famers, but were at the beginning of their careers.

There's this moment, too, for him where he's deeply embarrassed by his family's situation.

He understands how hard it is for his mom, but he also...

is so embarrassed to have these big-name coaches in his living room where they have a giant orange extension cord snaking out of the house, through the window, and into their neighbors to borrow electricity because they can't afford it.

They don't have hot water.

He doesn't have a phone until his senior year, which becomes very important as he's taking recruiting calls that they actually do have a working phone.

So he's sitting in class, and he looks out the window, and he sees this cherry-apple-red Mercedes

And a moment later, he gets a pink slip to go to the office, and the guy that came out of the car was actually there to see him.

sherman smith had played for the seahawks and stayed after to coach and had just left seattle for miami of ohio to go coach at his alma mater and he drove out this car that he bought from an up-and-coming rapper named sir mix-a-lot oh my god i'm flabbergasted that sir mix-a-lot is in this story yeah yeah me too i like

But yeah, he goes to the office and meets this guy Sherman and he realizes that this aura is coming from someone who had really made it, was from Youngstown, was like him, but had gone on to the NFL.

And now he was talking to a guy that had been a star at the highest level and who believed that he might be that too.

Well, Sherman drives back to Youngstown to pick them up and then takes them there over Christmas break.

And a lot of folks are home, but there's a couple of teammates around, introduced him to the rest of the coaching staff, walked him around.

He loved the school, the facilities, the campus.

And then also the character that Sherman showed Adele, Dillon's adoptive mom, just a good guy who cared about his education, wanted to be a good role model for him.

That really impacted them too.