Canzano: A college football story we all need to hear

A Greyhound bus. A shelter. A mother's love.

Jaden Robinson has a story to tell — and football is a small part of it. (Photo: Naji Saker)

I heard Jaden Robinson tell the story of his young life once before. But I wanted you to hear it, too, so I asked the Oregon State defensive back if he wouldn’t mind doing it again.

A Greyhound bus.

A housing shelter.

A mother’s bravery and love.

Robinson was living in Oakland, Calif., and was in the first grade when he and a friend made a bad decision. They ditched class and walked to a convenience store in a neighborhood known for shootings and crime. They stole a bag of Cheetos. His mother found out that night.

“And that was that,” Robinson said.

Kashann Brown packed suitcases for Jaden, his younger brother, and herself. She had $800 in the bank. They bought Greyhound bus tickets and made the two-day trip to Seattle.

“Never heard of Washington,” Jaden told me, “didn’t know where that was.”

Brown would eventually work two jobs there, pouring herself into her two sons. Jaden would go to school, become the caretaker of his little brother, play football and basketball, and later become The Seattle Times Male Athlete of the Year his senior year in high school. But long before all that, the family lived for a few months at the corner of N 45th Street and Woodlawn Ave. in the Broadview Emergency Shelter.

Robinson describes that time in his life as “a blur.” It was all he knew. “I didn’t know what was going on,” he told me. “I was just kind of going with the flow, taking care of my brother. I was just focused on being the best brother and best son that I could be.”

Oregon State’s football season opener is less than a month away. The Beavers are playing in a two-team conference. The fan base is anxious. The terrain is tricky. The climb will be difficult. Is there anyone who wants to bet against Jaden Robinson this season?

Robinson, a redshirt senior at Oregon State, is in camp for the seventh time. He’s got degrees in Communications and Sociology. He’s working on a couple of minors now, including Spanish. He’s got a soft spot for special-needs children and wants to work with kids who have challenges when he’s done playing football.

“You treat everybody the same as you want to be treated,” Robinson told me. “You don’t just treat people differently because they are different.”

The Beavers have a first-time, first-year head coach in Trent Bray. They’ve got two new coordinators. They’re in a critical season, where they can’t afford to disappear from the public as a program. It’s why veteran players such as Robinson, a versatile defensive back, know it’s time to lead.

“We’ve got a lot of young guys who haven’t been through it,” he told me last week, “who don’t have those battle scars.”

I’m going to stop right here and acknowledge the true star of this column. It has to be Robinson’s mother — Kashann Brown. She put her children first and took what must have felt like a terrifying leap into the unknown. Taking the first step in a major journey, particularly when you can’t see the rest of the staircase, is a scary move.

John Steinbeck called that kind of inductive leap “the greatest mystery of the human mind.” Brown knew the promise of her two sons, saw looming trouble, understood the struggle of her own life, and feared the negative influences in that Oakland neighborhood. She knew what must be done.

As Steinbeck once wrote about taking that kind of leap: “Dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion, and the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain.”

In researching Robinson, I read a quote from his mother in a story written by The Seattle Times when he was still in high school.

Kashann Brown said: “It was hard. I was working two jobs and had to give him a cell phone at age 8 because he was also responsible for his brother after school. This was foreign to me, but for my boys, it didn’t matter. I’ll do anything for them.”

She did everything for them, didn’t she?

Jaden Robinson used words such as “brave” and “courageous” to describe his mother. No argument here. Both of her children went to college. One has already graduated, and the other is still in school. She’s become a strong Oregon State football supporter on social media, too, posting frequently on Twitter about how proud she is of her son and his teammates.

“She did her job,” said Jaden of his mother, “now, I’ve got to let her sit on what she built for us.”

Football season is here. The stakes are high. OSU’s fan base is nervous about what lies ahead with conference affiliation. Amid all that, I keep thinking about Robinson’s journey to Corvallis and how much he’s been through.

The Greyhound bus.

The shelter.

His mother’s love.

It’s a story we all needed to hear.

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