It’s possible that one of the most famous 19-year-old college football players learned his best moves from his dad.
Just watch UPS driver Tyrone Mathieu, age 44, manuever a package car through the tricky streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans. And deliver a package with a bright smile, much the way his celebrated son, Tyrann, delivers the football to a ref when crossing the goal line after one of his astonishing punt returns.
Tyrone has run packages for UPS in New Orleans for 20 years. His son Tyrann, aka The Honey Badger, has run down receivers and outrun punt coverage the past two years for the Louisiana State University Bayou Bengals, the No. 1-ranked college football team in the nation. Tyrann has proven so talented as a cornerback and punt return specialist that he’s a finalist for the 2011 Heisman Trophy, awarded yearly to the best player in college football. This year’s ceremonies take place Saturday evening in New York City.
The youngster’s purple and gold LSU colors look especially good with a brown background.
“You bring the values of UPS home to your family,” says Tyrone, who married his high school sweetheart and has raised five kids with her in their east New Orleans home. “There’s no question that UPS helped shape our family.”
The accolades for Tyrann shower down. Officials with the 2011 SEC Championship Game named him MVP of that contest, primarily for a couple of dazzling punt returns – one for a touchdown – that stole momentum from Georgia and sparked an LSU win going away. The youngster is a finalist for the 2011 SEC Defensive Player of the Year, for the 2011 Walter Camp Player of the Year Award, and so on. How else do you say it? Tyrann Mathieu is the best player on the best team in college football.
The cheers come for dad, too, along Magazine Street and Chartres Street and the other narrow alleyways of the French Quarter where he delivers the goods for UPS customers. (Tyrone claims attention in his own right – he won election as King Zulu 2009 for one of the city’s best-known Mardi Gras krewes.) When Tyrone walks in a store wearing the UPS uniform and bearing a package, customers proudly introduce him to shoppers – that’s the Honey Badger’s dad!
Fans at LSU nicknamed Tyrann the Honey Badger after linking his feisty, outsized performances on the football field (Tyrann stands just 5’ 8” tall and weighs just 175 pounds) with the fighting prowess of a small but ferocious animal called the honey badger. The weasel-like creature is tireless in combat and wears down larger foes with incredible speed and unlikely strength.
The rules have always been simple and clear at the Mathieu household.
“We never put athletics ahead of the rest. Our philosophy is God first, family second, academics third,” Tyrone says. “It’s just like the way we set goals at UPS. You have plan A. You plan for that goal. You don’t give up.”
Tyrone says UPS matured him and helped him distill the values he has brought home from work to his family for the past 20 years.
“I was 24 years old when I started with UPS,” he says. “For me, it was like the Marines in brown.
“I learned really, really good discipline with this company. I learned that you work hard and it counts for something. I learned to be respectful, because we serve customers and they expect a respectful attitude. And you bring all that home, those same values, to help guide your kids.”
LSU faces the University of Alabama for the national title on January 9 at the Superdome in Tyrann’s hometown of New Orleans.
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