He brushed off attempts at small talk in the interest of signing as many ticket stubs, jerseys and programs as possible — “Robert Griffin III #10,” he wrote — until he came to a Dallas fan wearing a blue-on-white Cowboys replica No. 82 jersey of tight end Jason Witten. The fan, 22-year-old Connor Farquharson of Fort Worth, was pointing to his chest. Griffin suddenly looked up.
“You want me to sign it right here?” he asked incredulously.
A series that follows Robert Griffin III during the 2012 season as he adjusts to life in the NFL — all at the age of 22.
Farquharson nodded, and Griffin smiled as he ran his Sharpie across the young man’s jersey — directly above his Cowboys-loving heart — with a flourish, each pillar in “III” growing longer than the last until the signature took up the entire top half of the jersey.
“I love the Cowboys,” Farquharson explained a few moments later, “but I don’t know — this guy is from here, and I’ve never seen anybody throw the deep ball like him. He’s just different. It’s impossible for me to hate him.”
Friday: Visiting former teammates
Griffin doesn’t like to watch NFL analysis during the season, but had he turned on ESPN’s “First Take” on Friday morning in his hotel room, following his four-touchdown performance against the Cowboys the day before, he would have heard the talking heads debating whether he was a legitimate MVP candidate. Had he switched to the NFL Network, he would have heard the analysts pondering whether Griffin was in the process of putting up the best rookie season in league history.
He doesn’t like to read the sports pages during the season, but had he picked up a copy of the Dallas Morning News at the gift shop, he would have seen a photo of himself, both index fingers raised to the sky after another touchdown, dominating the front page of the sports section, under a headline reading, “Power of III.”
The USA Today on the doorstep also featured his photo on the front of the sports section, and Liddicoat, unburdened by the same need to avoid media praise and hype at all costs, grabbed that one and stuck it in her suitcase.
“He tries not to look at any of it, which means I rarely see any of it either,” said Liddicoat, herself a Baylor alum. “But I saved that one.”
While most of the team had flown back east after the game, Griffin and Liddicoat kept their room at the Four Seasons and had a late Thanksgiving dinner at the hotel with their families — Liddicoat’s parents, Ed and Laura, had come in from Boulder, Colo. — and Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and his family.
“That was one of the best parts of the weekend,” Liddicoat said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do that with both our families.”
Now, on Friday, with everyone else gone, Griffin and Liddicoat’s mission was to lay low. Their biggest outing all day was a visit to the hotel spa for massages and mani-pedis.
But early Friday evening, Griffin had an appointment to keep. He had been asked by Baylor Coach Art Briles to address the Bears on Friday night at the team hotel, and Griffin was happy to oblige.
Griffin’s place in Baylor’s history is secure, having brought the program more glory during his 3½ seasons there than it had enjoyed in the previous quarter-century. His old locker at Floyd Casey Stadium is now encased in Plexiglas, a museum piece, and Baylor officials say the school’s new football stadium (sometimes called “The House That RGIII Built”), due to open in 2014, will almost certainly feature a statue of him out front.
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