It wasn’t a surprise. The Abdullahs had a pretty clear line of athletic success by then, but Aisha, who works for the Head Start Program in nearby Bessemer, prized education more than the rambunctiousness of young boys. She told all of her children to get a bachelor’s degree for her and then “everything else is yours.” When Ameer graduates in December, all nine of the Abdullah children will have fulfilled their mother’s request and earned at least one degree. His diploma will go on a wall full of them. This is a family of high achievers.

Halimah set the tone. The oldest daughter earned two degrees and is a writer and producer for CNN. After his playing career, Muhammad earned a law degree from Alabama. Sisters Aisha and Kareemah both work for major telecom companies, Ruqayyah for one of the largest banks in the U.S. Khadija went to law school at Arkansas, then returned home to become the executive director of the Alabama branch of Teach for America. Madinah, the sibling Ameer calls the best athlete in the family, was the 2009 SWAC Volleyball Tournament MVP for Alabama A&M. Kareem, the second-youngest brother, recently graduated from Auburn.

It’s an impressive precedent for a youngest child. There could either be immense pressure to succeed, or the dividends of hard work could appear so tangible as to seem like the natural order of things. Ameer says it’s the latter.

Still, it can be tough to stand out in a family like that, but Ameer’s father, Kareem, noticed a difference in his youngest son right away.

“Ameer was very perceptive,” he says. “He didn’t talk as much as the others. He was just always observing.”

Kareem also saw that Ameer needed athletics. What was at first just a diversion in Aisha’s eyes was essential in Kareem’s view. So Ameer played baseball, basketball and boxed briefly. But it was football that really took hold.

He started playing in pick-up games with his brother, Kareem, who was three years older. That continued in the youth football leagues, where the smaller, younger running back found a way to gain an advantage.

The Abdullah family looks at childhood photographs of Ameer at the family’s home. Photo by Alyssa Schukar

Lailah Carmichael, 8, holds a picture of the Abdullah family at the family’s home. Carmichael’s uncle Ameer. Photo by Alyssa Schukar

“He studied all the positions,” his father says. “He knew the blocking schemes, knew where every player should be.”

Thanks to that knowledge, Ameer moved around a lot as a young player. He played some quarterback, wide receiver, corner and safety, whatever the team needed, but he always knew he was a running back.

Others weren’t so sure.

Homewood High School is smaller than most of the football powers surrounding Birmingham. Kareem and Aisha moved out there for the quality of the education and so did a lot of others. The Patriots had won five state titles playing 5A football, but shortly before Ameer enrolled, Homewood grew so large it had to move up to the state’s largest classification.

“We kiddingly, as coaches, called it the SEC West,” former Homewood coach Dickey Wright says. “That’s what it felt like we were going up against every night.”

Over 30 years as an assistant and head coach at Homewood, Wright had supplied those SEC West schools and others with his share of recruits. But Homewood was the second smallest school in 6A and success became something of a numbers game every week. Schools like Hoover, Vestavia Hills, and Mountain Brook didn’t just have more players, they typically had a handful of college prospects each season. The Patriots had two — Ameer and his friend, a slight wide receiver by the name of Aaron Earnest.

Wright didn’t see a future Heisman candidate in Ameer right away. He simply saw a dedicated, but small, player who could squat a tremendous amount of weight.

“The thing we were concerned about was would he be big enough to take the pounding in our particular league,” Wright says.

It wasn’t an uncommon question, but Ameer finally settled in the backfield full-time as a junior, rushing for 1,045 yards and 14 touchdowns. Then he hit the camp circuit.

Ameer enjoys time with his family, including, from left, his sister Aisha Carmichael, his 18-month-old nephew Eli Carmichael, his sister Ruqayyah McPherson, his brother-in-law John Carmichael and his sister Kahadijah Abdullah at the family’s home. Photo by Alyssa Schukar

He dominated at a Nike camp in Baton Rouge following his junior season, taking home camp-MVP honors at running back. He beat out Jeremy Hill, who committed that weekend to play running back at LSU. A month later, at a similar camp in Tuscaloosa, it was the same result. Ameer was named MVP of a running-backs group that included Demetrius Hart, the nation’s top-ranked high school back. Alabama signed him.

Scholarship offers started to trickle in after that. Vanderbilt and Texas A&M were first. South Carolina and Texas Tech weren’t far behind. As Ameer went on to rush for 1,795 yards and 24 touchdowns as a senior in 2010, more offers came. He visited Tennessee during the season and, when Lane Kiffin bolted Knoxville for USC, Ameer suddenly had an offer to play for the Trojans, too.

But there was still the perception that Ameer wasn’t built to be an every-down back. He was good, clearly, but something else. The Birmingham News used a Christmas-themed layout for its All-Metro team that year, with the players’ head shots laid out as ornaments on a tree. The star at the top, player of the year, was Leeds defensive back Jonathan Rose. He’s a cornerback at Nebraska now, after spending one season at Auburn. One of the quarterbacks honored was 2013 Heisman winner Jameis Winston, then a junior. Ameer made it as an “athlete.” Unless you’re a close follower of SWAC football, you haven’t heard of the three guys listed that year at running back.

Late that December, Ameer was selected to play in the Offense-Defense Bowl in Myrtle Beach, S.C., an all-star game for high school seniors. Despite not playing the position for more than a few snaps in 2010, he had to play cornerback for the East. He had eight tackles and picked off future Texas starting quarterback David Ash twice. A writer for Rivals.com said Ameer had the best cover skills of any player there. The other defensive backs on his team signed with Alabama, Ohio State, Ole Miss, Florida and Mississippi State.

The notion that Nebraska landed Ameer because it was one of the only schools promising a shot at running back isn’t entirely accurate. Nebraska landed Ameer because it didn’t promise anything, actually.

Offensive coordinator Tim Beck was the first to visit the Abdullah household, but it wasn’t until early January. The Huskers were a latecomer. Beck laid out the situation. Nebraska already had Aaron Green, a 5-star prospect out of Texas, committed in that class, and there was a chance that Braylon Heard, an All-Ohio running back who had committed a year earlier but failed to qualify, would be a true freshman in 2011, as well. If Ameer was OK with that, he was welcome to come to Lincoln for a visit.

He went two weeks later, convincing the Huskers to take a look at his friend, Aaron Earnest, who went on the visit, too. Nebraska didn’t offer Earnest. Instead he accepted a track scholarship to LSU and, in 2013, was an All-American sprinter.