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f o o t b a l l f e a t u r e : r i c a r d o a l l e n Never Satisfied BY STACY CLARDIE SClardie@GoldandBlack.com R icardo Allen wanted to help. His mom had just gotten home, exhausted from a day working two jobs to support her four children. His brother, Adrian, was coming in the door after a grueling football practice. So when Mom asked if Ricardo was hungry, he lied. Even though his stomach was rumbling, the seventh-grader knew they'd had harder days and got to making dinner. But the simple, heartfelt gesture went horribly wrong. In one moment, Ricardo remembers cooking hamburgers on the Sights on NFL, Allen always working Tom Campbell Ricardo Allen has one aspiration: To play in the NFL. The dream is fueled, in part, by tragedy and guilt, but Allen won't let up until he's triumphant. skillet. The next, being jarred awake by Adrian's screaming. Ricardo had fallen asleep, and a grease fire started. Adrian tried to put it out by racing to the faucet and dousing the pan with water. "It blew up on his arm," Ricardo says now, quietly relaying a rarely told story. "He ended up keeping his arm. But he had second-degree burns. He was an honor roll student and starting running back for our school. He ended up having to sit out for two years and then he went on a bad streak. He ended up getting locked up for four years. 50 • Gold and Black IllustrateD • volume 23, issue 6 "I always feel like if I would have never cooked those burgers, what would he be right now? Would he be in college? Because he didn't graduate from high school. I feel like my brother was the one who was going to be supporting us, and I took that away from him." That tragic moment changed the course of Ricardo's life. It made him re-evaluate his purpose. It made him alter his dreams. It started him on an intense path of unwavering work, devoting and exerting every fiber of who he was into being great, with the singular GBIprint.com GoldandBlack.com