Editor's note: We're counting down the days until the start of college football by taking a look at 25 of the most interesting people in the game. Click here to find the rest of the series.

Patrick Amara sat on a park bench, staring up at the dimly lit sky. Darkness never fully saturates the night in a city like Philadelphia, a faint comfort for a homeless 16-year-old surviving his first night on the street.

He spent hours on the bench, trying to count down to 6 a.m. Earlier that night, a man Amara likened to an uncle kicked him out of his home, unwilling to take in a child to whom he had no legal obligations. Paranoia paralyzed Amara's mind as he wandered the park, duffel bags in tow. He wasn't going to be able to keep the angst at bay and wait long enough for a friend to wake up so he could knock on his door.

"I stayed out from midnight until like 4 [a.m.]," Amara said.

That would be the last time Amara spent the night on the street, but he bounced around from house to house for another year before a man Amara spurned three times finally took him in. Now, there are still sleepless nights for Amara, but, as a freshman safety at Pittsburgh on full scholarship, they're now much more reflective than restless.

It wasn't until a few years ago that Amara learned his mother's name. He filed it away as a mere fact about the woman who bore him rather than a crumb on a trail leading to her. He has just a single picture of her and has spoken to her brother only a handful of times. Amara has never tried to contact her.

"It's like 'OK, that's her name.' Like, I really didn't care," Amara said. "I didn't know anything about her growing up. My dad never spoke about her. Knowing you don't have a mother, the woman who brought you into the world, that's dead wrong."

Patrick Amara racked up scholarship offers from all over the country before signing with Pittsburgh in February. Courtesy of Patrick Amara

Amara's father, Patrick Kwegor Amara, is adamant that he doesn't want to speak about his son's mother. He offers occasional small glimpses into his past relationship with her but never elaborates.

Patrick and his father share a name that's known throughout their native Sierra Leone, where Kwegor Amara said he was "part of the 1 percent of society." Kwegor Amara was a major in the Sierra Leone military and helped stage a coup in 1992 during a volatile period in Sierra Leone as the country was engulfed in a brutal decade-long civil war.

As Sierra Leone entered a period of transition from military rule to democracy in late 1995, Kwegor Amara left to pursue a college degree in the United States. He brought his infant son and Patrick's mother with him.

Poverty defined the family's first few months in the Philadelphia suburbs, and Patrick's parents' fracturing relationship reached a breaking point when their newborn son had to be admitted to intensive care. A complication during delivery left Patrick with a respiratory condition that caused him to stop breathing as he slept. Doctors were forced to remove his tonsils, and he was in the hospital most of his first two months in America.

"My mother wasn't there one day," Patrick said.

When Patrick was discharged from the hospital, his respiratory equipment came with him. His mother had fully deserted him and his father, who was a full-time student at West Chester University during the day, had a full-time job in the evening and played full-time nurse at night.

"I literally had to keep my eyes open so he wouldn't roll over and hit the machine off," Kwegor Amara said.

Patrick's respiratory condition eventually subsided, but he and his father were still living destitute in the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby.

Kwegor Amara graduated with a bachelor's degree in 2000 but remained at a minimum-wage job. A single parent with a 5-year-old to provide for, he abandoned his master's degree pursuit. Each paycheck left him more in debt.

The idea of three meals a day was a fantasy throughout his adolescence, Patrick said, and just a single meal was a luxury. He routinely went days without eating. The times he ate, he and his father shared cream of corn or a can of sardines.

"When you're hungry, they taste good as hell," Patrick said. "Then you see your friends ordering out and you have to eat sardines, it's like, 'Why do I have to eat this; what the hell?'"

The low point came when the water and electricity were turned off. Patrick still needed light to do his homework; he was one of the high school's brightest students. So Kwegor Amara lined their apartment with extension cords, stealing electricity from the hallway sockets. The neighbors called the police, who took pity on the Amaras and asked the electric company to restore power.