This Division III Standout WR Has Stood Outside New England’s Gillette Stadium For Over A Month Looking For A Tryout

A former Division III standout wide receiver is looking to join the likes of Cecil Shorts, Fred Jackson, and Stephen Hauschka, all players who have donned an NFL uniform coming from the lowest division the NCAA has to offer.

His name is Abiola Aborishade, a former receiver for the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. For over a month now, he has stood outside New England’s Gillette Stadium almost every morning at 6 am with a sign portraying his offerings in hopes to catch a break. Abiola arrives at the stadium a couple hours before his day shift at Enterprise Rent-A-Car and returns in the evening for a few more hours.

Despite being a DIII guy, Aborishade ain’t no scrub–according to Fox Sports, he made history at UMass Dartmouth in 2014 by tallying 84 receptions — 15 more than the previous school record of 69 receptions in a single season — and averaged 112 yards per game over his three-year collegiate career.

Last week, Patriots corner Malcolm Butler–who was plucked from his job at Popeyes a month before making the biggest play in Super Bowl history–posted a photo of Abiola after leaving practice, sympathizing with the struggle of keeping a dream alive.

Abiola told Masslive.com that he even worked security for Gillette in 2013:

He met many of the Patriots that summer. Tim Tebow was “awesome.” He saw Gronk and Stevan Ridley all the time. He often worked a 1-9 or 2-10 shift, noting that Bill Belichick was “always the last one to leave.”

“Tom has actually shook my hand,” he says. “He said hi to me. I’ve seen Gisele. She said hi to me.”

Really gotta tip the cap to this dude. As Andy Dufresne once said in Shawshank, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

The dude is fucking dirty.

[h/t FTW]

Matt Keohan Avatar
Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.