Bloom Where You're Planted

Nobody wanted Josh Allen. Not Fresno State, the hometown school his family had rooted for since he was small. Not a single D-I FBS program across the country. He was 6’ 3”, a hundred and eighty pounds, throwing 90 from the mound and putting up points on the basketball court in a farm town outside Fresno nobody had heard of. Elite quarterback camps? No sir. 7-on-7 circuit? No mam. While the rest of the country was busy manufacturing single-sport prodigies - kids shipped to camps, traded between schools, polished like show ponies - Firebaugh couldn't afford that luxury. The boys played whatever sport the season handed them, because there weren't enough of them to do it any other way So Josh threw a baseball in spring, drove the lane in winter, and slung a football in fall. In between, he worked. He worked the family farm. He worked his mother's restaurant. He grew up with dirt under his nails and a family that believed that was a fine thing. When the bigger Central Valley programs came…