May is graduation month and the principal who greeted the seniors on stage at Jefferson Davis High in Montgomery, Alabama last Saturday was Mr. Bobby E. Abrams, Jr.
That’s right. We in the NFL knew him just as Bobby Abrams, who signed with the Giants as an undrafted free agent in 1990. Young Bobby played with the Giants (and has a Super Bowl XXV ring to prove it) and two other teams during his six-year NFL career. Football was his passion then, but education was his future.
“I’ve known what I wanted to do since I was in college,” he says. “When I enrolled in the School of Education at the University of Michigan, I had the opportunity to coach and mentor children during the summers. The feeling I had working with them, seeing how they responded to my teaching, led me to want to get into education.”
Bobby Abrams is finishing just his second year as principal at Jefferson Davis but he has served in that same role in four other schools in Alabama during the last 13 years.
“I wouldn’t trade my role now for anything in the world,” Abrams says. “I love coming to work every day. Football was a part of my life that provided a good foundation financially for my family but this what I was born to do.”
The school’s motto is “Those Who Stay Will Be Champions.” Bobby Abrams—the school’s principal—already has proven to be a Champion both on the field and in the classroom. We wish him, his teachers and students a healthy and safe summer!