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Former UMass Dartmouth wide receiver Abiola Aborishade has stood outside of Gillette Stadium every day since April 21 hoping the New England Patriots will give him a tryout.

(Submitted Photo/Abiola Aborishade)

FOXBOROUGH -- Well before 6 a.m. Friday, Nick Caserio, the Patriots' tireless director of player personnel, has arrived at Gillette Stadium to begin the week's final workday.

This is according to Abiola Aborishade, who can tell you when many Patriots employees get to work, and this is despite the fact that Aborishade is not actually employed by the Patriots. He just wants to be. Very, very badly.

So badly that he has beaten Caserio to the stadium Friday, and so desperately that he stands here -- under the bridge at the intersection of Route 1 and Patriot Place -- with a sales pitch written on a poster board, and the poster board duct taped to one of the bridge's concrete pillars.

Abiola Aborishade, a former standout receiver at Division III UMass Dartmouth, seeks a tryout with the Patriots. That is all.

He is dressed as if Friday is the day: neon green cleats tied around his neck, dangling at his chest; dark running shorts; leggings; a red sweatshirt; and a Patriots winter hat. He is totally prepared if Friday is the day Caserio or Bill Belichick asks him to run a 40, or run some routes, or run an errand.

Alas, Friday is not the day. A silver Audi coasts southbound on Route 1, hangs a left into Patriot Place at 6 a.m. on the dot, and Aborishade pauses his story to say, "And there's Bill right there."

Belichick, of course, does not pause. So Aborishade returns to his story: He has been out here practically every weekday since April 21, logging approximately 130 hours under the bridge or on the ramp to Route 1 north. He is, essentially, begging for a tryout. He's cranking out two-a-days with his poster board, which reads "talented hardworking athlete hoping for a chance to prove myself."

He has seen the Patriots come and go so often that he now recognizes dozens of players and staff members from their cars. There's Jonathan Kraft, there's Edelman, there's Nate Solder, there's Tom.

Since late April, he has arrived at the stadium in the afternoon following his shift at Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Norwood, about seven miles north of Gillette. Recently, he began coming early, too -- at or before 5:45 a.m. -- so he could catch Belichick's attention as the legendary coach pulls in to the stadium. Aborishade will stay Friday from 5:45 to 7, when his shift at Enterprise starts, and then he'll return after his 1 p.m. punch out.

He says Matthew Slater and James Develin wave when they drive past him. He says Jordan Richards, Rob Ninkovich and Malcolm Butler have stopped to talk. This past Thursday, Butler posted a photo of Aborishade to his Facebook, writing in the caption, "This is the attitude you must have if you really want something...#NEVERGIVEUP."

"I honestly was thinking three things could happen from this. The first thing is that they see me so often that they get sick and tired of me," Aborishade says. "So they almost give up, give into it, because I'm not giving in. So they give in and they say, 'OK, let's see what this kid can do.' The second thing is the people who drive around here, who work around here see me so often that they almost say, 'hey, we want to see what he can do.'"

"And the third thing is they just leave me out here," he says, laughing.

A 6-foot, 194-pound slot receiver, Aborishade obliterated UMass Dartmouth's single-season catch record when he hauled in 84 passes as a senior in 2014. He ranked fourth nationally with 9.3 receptions per game, and he finished his three-year career averaging 112 all-purpose yards per game. He spends much of Friday morning detailing why he played only three years, and why he ended up at UMass Dartmouth.

At Attleboro high school, Aborishade was a receiver in a Wing-T offense; he used to half-jokingly feed his coaches a Boobie Miles line: "Let Abi spin." According to MaxPreps, Attleboro ran the ball on 75.5 percent of its offensive snaps in 2009, Aborishade's senior year. Then about 170 pounds, Aborishade didn't factor into the team's rushing attack.

Aborishade went to college with no intention of playing football. And he went to college extremely young; when he immigrated with his mother to America from Nigeria, he took a placement test and skipped fourth grade. He was 16 years old for his entire senior season of football.

"I was like hitting puberty in 2010 and 2011," Aborishade says.

He spent those years -- his first two of college -- lifting weights, playing lots of pickup basketball, and missing football. As a kid, he'd watch Saturdays from Lee Corso's opening rant to the conclusion of whatever West Coast game ESPN carried. "Football is really what I do," he says. As a young college student, he couldn't bring himself to watch anymore because he so desperately missed playing.

He joined UMass Dartmouth's team in 2012, and saw his annual reception totals leap from eight to 34 to 84 in his three seasons, over the course of which he played with seven quarterbacks. Five of them were freshmen or sophomores.

Aborishade took an extra semester just so he could be on the team in 2014, when he erupted for 84 receptions. Although he had one year of eligibility remaining in 2015, he couldn't afford another semester. He already had earned his degree in political science, and he had student loans to pay off, and he needed a job.

He did, however, hold firm in a belief he'd kept private since he started playing at UMass Dartmouth: I'm good enough to play in the NFL.

"A lot of people have a Plan B," he says, keeping his eyes toward Route 1 as the Patriots report to work. "I don't really believe in Plan Bs. I believe that if you have a goal, go at it as hard as you can. Once you've done everything you possibly can to reach that Plan A, even if it doesn't work out the way you want to, then you move on to another Plan A."

He sometimes interrupts himself to point out who's coming. At 6:18: "There's Steve Belichick." Two minutes later: "There's the cornerback they drafted, Cyrus Jones."

As a Division III player, Aborishade knew that getting drafted was never a realistic possibility, but he nonetheless emailed every school in the area looking for a spot at a 2015 Pro Day. None said yes. He then showed up at Brown University's football office, and asked the coach if he could participate. A week later he did, running in front of scouts after a winter spent shoveling out a narrow path in Attleboro's Horton Field so he could run in front of nobody. The pro day was solid, but not spectacular enough to earn a tryout or free agent contract.

A year later, Aborishade repeated the cycle, emailing schools for Pro Day invites, this time to no avail.

Several months into his job at Enterprise this past fall, Aborishade saw a viral Instagram post of former NFL receiver Joe Anderson standing outside of NRG Stadium in Houston holding a cardboard poster that read, "Not homeless...but STARVING for success. Will run routes 4 food." Anderson eventually signed with the Jets practice squad. This inspired Aborishade's idea.

"There are a lot of talented people out there who haven't been discovered yet, and that's because they haven't separated themselves from everyone else," Aborishade explains. "You have to put yourself out there -- literally put yourself out there."

Abiola Aborishade brings this poster board to Gillette Stadium with him every day,

So on April 21, Aborishade showed up at Gillette in a shirt and tie, carrying the same poster board he has with him Friday. On his first day, he set up shop right outside the stadium. Security told him to move. On the second day, he stationed himself at the edge of the parking lot. Security wasn't cool with that, either. Aborishade was informed that he must be completely out of the stadium's confines, not even in front of the bridge. Later, security found his car in the Gillette parking lot and threatened to tow him if he continued to leave it there.

What's funny: Aborishade worked security at Gillette in the summer of 2013. He patrolled the players' parking lot in an orange jacket, making sure to keep random fans out of the restricted area. He met many of the Patriots that summer. Tim Tebow was "awesome." He saw Gronk and Stevan Ridley all the time. He often worked a 1-9 or 2-10 shift, noting that Bill Belichick was "always the last one to leave."

"Tom has actually shook my hand," he says. "He said hi to me. I've seen Gisele. She said hi to me."

At 6:33, Brady passes by in a sports car, and Aborishade mentions, "He wasn't driving that a couple of weeks ago."

At 6:41, Jonathan Kraft rolls through, decelerating on the turn to glance at Aborishade.

He says Robert Kraft once waved to him, his favorite moment in the month that he has been outside of Gillette.

One week it rained almost every day, so Aborishade laminated his poster board. He brought an umbrella but never used it.

He doesn't really pace around or get antsy. He just kind of stands there. He brings with him hardly anything: his poster board, a gallon of water (the jug half-full on this Friday), a neon green string backpack holding a Fiber One bar -- breakfast -- and a roll of duct tape.

Sometimes he brings headphones.

"I might as well listen to music," he says, "because I'm probably going to be out here for a lonnng time."

The jug is half-full because he needs to stay hydrated, and he needs to stay hydrated because he needs to stay ready for a tryout. The roll of duct tape is thick because he knows he'll probably go through a lot of it.

It's 7:03 in the morning, and Belichick has already been at work an hour. Caserio has been there almost an hour and a half. Aborishade needs to get to Enterprise. He pulls the duct tape from the bridge's pillar, grabs his poster board and jug, and starts across Route 1 to his car.

He's eager to return this afternoon, and then Monday morning, and then many, many Mondays after that.