Tyjon Lindsey has never settled in. Not really.
A feeling of disquiet stays with him as defenders rarely can. One moment he thinks of getting into sports broadcasting — or maybe general business — after his days of playing football are over. The next he’s wondering how a person can major in fashion design, especially someone with so many ideas about streetwear for a generation of teenagers and young adults.
One of the country’s top wide receiver prospects in the 2017 class and Nebraska’s highest-rated recruit in six years prefers to call his an “active” childhood. With his father rarely around and his mother often working through drug addiction, Lindsey bounced from home to home, mostly in California. Usually he was with his grandmother and more than a half-dozen of his cousins she adopted. He’s lived with other family members too, and even strangers.
Lindsey knows what it’s like to move around on the football field, sporting the kind of elite athletic ability that lets him blow by defenders in a footrace or shake them with explosive double moves. Off the field, he’s never lived in one place longer than two or three years.
“Learning how to mature on my own has been my biggest challenge,” Lindsey said. “I’ve been on my own since I was a little kid, around 4 years old. From living with my sister, my brother, my grandma, I’ve never been in a stable household. To be able to accomplish the things that I have without some support from my family members is huge for me. It’s really big.”
