Wonderful, Wonderful Story

SI.com:

The first time Michelle Nash ducked away to avoid crying in front of Cardale Jones was on the day they met, in fall 2008. Ginn had realized that the then 15-year-old Cardale needed one-on-one attention. Nash had run a day-care facility, Little Blessings, for 12 years before moving to the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Corrections Office, where she works with 18- to 21-year-olds who’ve committed violent crimes. She had been recommended by a parent of one of Ginn’s former players, Rams defensive back Christian Bryant.

Cardale and Nash got together after practice one day, and as they went to get something to eat, Nash couldn’t get over the sight of Cardale’s giant feet spilling over the ends of his flip-flops and hitting the pavement. After stopping at Subway, she took him, against her better judgment, to Foot Locker. “I know you shouldn’t do this when you first start mentoring,” she says, “but I couldn’t let him walk around like that.”

She let Jones pick out what he wanted, and he chose one of the least expensive options: a $69.99 pair of simple white Nike hightops. When the attendant asked his shoe size, Cardale told him 10. The guy laughed skeptically and measured Cardale’s feet: 12. Cardale turned to Nash and flashed that smile; he couldn’t remember the last time he got a new pair of shoes. That was it for Nash. She bolted from the store just before she began sobbing. “I’m a little emotional,” she says, “but it hurt my heart so bad.”

She continued to build a relationship with Cardale and even bought him a cellphone so they could stay in touch. (“He acted like I’d given him a million dollars,” she says.) About a month after they met he called her at 2 a.m., saying, “Ms. Michelle, will you come get me? I don’t want to live like this no more.”

Thinking Cardale’s stay would be temporary, Nash bought an air mattress and, she says, spent the next few weeks leaving messages with Cardale’s mom without hearing anything back. (Flo Jones, 52, denies this and says she walked around “plenty of nights” looking for Cardale. There is considerable tension between her and Nash, 47.) Eventually Nash purchased a bedroom set for Cardale and decorated his room with football and basketball paraphernalia. The night she unveiled it, he told her that he’d never had a bedroom of his own. Nash, who had found out at 17 that ovarian cysts would prevent her from having kids, walked out of the room and bawled her eyes out.

Cardale soon found that the perks of having a bedroom, cellphone and new shoes came with a curfew, mandatory homework and earlier bedtimes. “Michelle gave me a different structure because when I lived with her, she could take things away,” he says. Flo says she did her best to provide for her kids and says she’s “grateful” for what Nash did. “He needed to be somewhere he could be focused.”

Cardale struggled, though. Friends teased him about his new guardian: “Is that, like, your Sugar Mama?” He would eventually give Nash a nickname, Crybaby, and even start calling her Mom, but at the time he didn’t know how to introduce her. He became self-conscious that they looked nothing alike — he’s 6’5″, 245 pounds, and she’s 5’1″ and petite. He felt as though everyone knew she couldn’t be his mother. The awkwardness was illuminated on Senior Day at Glenville, when fourth-year players traditionally walk onto the field with their parents. Cardale was the star of the team, but when Flo showed up, he hid in the locker room and didn’t participate in the ceremony. Flo says she was told he didn’t fill out the paperwork for her to walk out with him. “That was the worst thing in my life he’d done to me,” she says “He hurt me. You know how I felt when I had to leave the football field?”

Cardale later apologized, and he maintains a relationship with his mother. But he does point out that she has never visited his dorm room or his apartment at Ohio State. She did attend the Big Ten title game. “My mom started really coming around when I was successful at football,” he says, “and I’m not a dumb-ass kid.”