A tear streamed down Ondre Pipkins’ face as he sat on a black metal folding chair inside the lobby of Texas Tech’s practice facility.
The 6-foot-4, 310-pound Red Raider defensive tackle thought back to his childhood — sleeping in a dark blue Pontiac Grand Am or Extended Stay hotel and leaving his home in Saginaw, Michigan.
Pipkins remembered the countless hours his single mother worked at two jobs and the hard times they faced as a family — being displaced and not having a place to stay, the lights and utilities being cut off and the constant moves across the country to Kansas City, Rochester Hills, Atlanta and Ann Arbor.