I started covering the USC football team when I was still a teenager, as a student at the university. It was no ordinary amateur sports situation. Back then, there was no NFL team in the area, and USC was weathering controversy after controversy. After free-wheeling Pete Carroll left just as the last decade began, Lane Kiffin soon arrived and began to institute the restrictive rules that were becoming commonplace in college football a decade ago.
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Practices were often closed to the media. On the occasions they were open, reporters had to agree to not disclose injuries that happened in front of their eyes. At one point, Kiffin decreed that reporters could not even ask him about injured players, precipitating a terrifically awkward moment where he exited a scrum when asked about a player who was returning from injury. Freshman players, too, were prohibited from talking to reporters.
But in 2010, an 18-year-old freshman named Nickell Robey spoke thoughtfully and regularly to reporters. Robey was a tiny cornerback from a tiny town in Central Florida. He happily corrected anyone who pronounced his name like the coin or the defense, showing how the emphasis was on the second syllable. And many times he carefully explained how he had ended up at USC.
At first, he would say, he thought he would play close to home for Georgia. Then the coach who recruited him left, and he refocused on Tennessee, where Kiffin was in charge and the legendary Monte Kiffin recruited him. When both Kiffins left for USC, Robey followed them across the country, with the approval of his mother Maxine. She asked only that he promise to graduate. Two weeks after he signed his letter of intent, she died of a heart attack at 44.
With his family upended, Robey followed through on the move, resolving to remember her throughout each day. He tapped his wrist whenever he thought of her. He incorporated her infectious spirit into his life. And he excelled on the field. According to USC, he was the Trojans’ first true freshman cornerback to start a season opener after World War II. He started every game thereafter. Over his three collegiate seasons, all of which I covered, teammates consistently described him as the energetic center of the team.
Those USC teams were not good ones, despite the program’s pedigree, despite Kiffin’s restrictions. Through it all, Robey was unrelentingly honest with reporters about his and the team’s failings. Once, after USC fell in the rankings after unimpressive victories in three consecutive weeks, Robey volunteered that he might lose his starting role. His unfettered honesty was unusual then, and it remains memorable to me now after a decade in the business.
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In 2013, Robey declared a year early for the NFL Draft. He did not yet have his degree in policy, planning and development, but he reasoned that he could get it later. And, further, his family could use the support now. He had his track record in his favor, but not the popular metrics.
He measured only 5-foot-7 at the scouting combine and ran a relatively slow 40-yard dash. He went undrafted but signed with the Buffalo Bills and quickly became their nickel cornerback. He played 69 snaps in Week 1, played each of the next 63 games the Bills played and signed with the Rams when he reached free agency, once again playing his home games in Los Angeles.
Robey also started returning to USC in the spring semesters to knock off remaining classes. And nearly a decade after he made his promise, he completed the necessary coursework to graduate. By then he had changed his surname to Robey-Coleman to incorporate his late mother’s maiden name. On May 10, 2019, he walked at the university’s commencement.
“I’m going to be honest,” he told the Los Angeles Times that week, “I think I’m going to cry.”
He did not cry, but he said he could not think of anyone but his mother throughout it. “The whole ceremony I was just like, “Wow,’” he told the Rams’ website. “‘What if she were in the flesh looking at this?’ I think she would probably pass out.”
He had done what he set out to do: graduated college and succeeded in the NFL. In January, Pro Football Focus wrote that “Robey-Coleman continues to solidify himself as one of the league’s best slot cornerbacks.” In March, he signed with the Philadelphia Eagles after three years with the Rams.
Oh, and Robey-Coleman also was involved in one of the more controversial plays in NFL history, when officials failed to penalize him when he interfered with New Orleans Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis in the 2019 NFC Championship Game.
Of course, he admitted immediately after that game that he had committed a penalty. He has never stopped being honest.
(Photo: Kevin Terrell / Associated Press Photo)