Las Vegas, Nevada — Kansas senior Jereme Robinson grew up in Montgomery, Alabama and has spent the last four years playing football in Lawrence, Kansas.
Neither is particularly close to Las Vegas, so it made since that this week’s trip to the desert was Robinson’s first visit to Las Vegas, where he and three teammates represented the Jayhawks at Big 12 Media Days in the desert.
By all accounts and in all ways, he loved it.
Robinson spent a few minutes with R1S1 Sports on Wednesday and took us through the journey from Lawrence to Las Vegas and everything that went into it.
“We came straight out of Lawrence,” he said, noting that the players and coach Lance Leipold took KU’s private jet to the event.
Robinson said his first thought when he boarded the KU plane was simple.
“Dang; it’s a small plane,” he recalled with a laugh. “I don’t really like the private life like that. It was a small plane, but once we got rolling it was all good.”
The journey in the air was one of the easiest parts of the week for the 6-foot-3, 260-pound D-End.
“Oh, I’m asleep,” he recalled with pride. “I slept the whole time.”
After landing on Tuesday, it didn’t take long for him to feel the aggressive, 120-degree heat that Las Vegas had waiting.
“You felt it when the door opened,” he marveled.
With Kansas slated to meet the media on Wednesday, the Jayhawks had a little free time on the front end of their trip.
They ate dinner at The Palm inside Caesars Palace. Robinson had steak and lobster. And then he and his teammates made their way down to the famed Las Vegas strip to check out the sights, sounds and spectacle that is Sin City.
Asked to complete the following sentence: Las Vegas is _____, Robinson immediately reference the huge crowds on the strip.
“There’s so many people here, man. So many,” he said. “It is beautiful, though. The lights are good. The fountain in front of the Belagio is real cool.”
Robinson knew a little something about that, having seen it before a few times in movies and television shows. But standing there in front of it, watching the water dance, was a wild experience.
“I was just thinking, ‘Dang, I’m really standing at the Belagio right now,’” he said. “It was good.”
After calling it a night, Robinson went to bed ready to wake up and take on the world.
He said he was honored to have been chosen to represent the program at an event like this. And Leipold said that Robinson was chosen because he’s been such a steady and consistent, hard-working teammate who has put up work in the KU rebuild from the beginning.
He might not have the flash and fame associated with Big 12 stars Devin Neal and Jalon Daniels, who joined him and Mello Dotson on the trip. But that, Robinson said, was the coolest part about it.
Being on the trip gave him the opportunity to put his name out there a little more. He’s hoping his play this season will do the rest of the work.
“It’s been great here,” he said. “It’s a great experience I wouldn’t say I was nervous. Our coach, he puts a lot of confidence in us – just speak our truth. We know the standard and we just tell you all about it.”
While he wasn’t nervous in any way, Robinson acknowledged that there was a little anxious energy associated with the start of KU’s day on the big stage.
“There was a little of that feeling of, ‘OK, let’s knock this out and get through it.’ The photo shoots were pretty fun. Hanging out with JD and Dev, Mello, just the whole experience has been a nice time.”
He said the video promos the players had to do for the various television stations and networks, which will be used all season before games and in commercials, were “way different” that anything he had ever done before.
And he found it particularly fun to watch his teammates tinker with the new EA Sports college football video game. He didn’t grab a controller, but he saw himself — No. 90 in blue — in the game and thought that was pretty cool.
“I’m in it,” he said. “But I just watched. The game was pretty nice.”
While the overall experience of getting to mingle with the best of the best in the Big 12 and meet media members and people from all over the country was, in general, his favorite part of the experience, Robinson said there was one specific moment that was also pretty cool.
“Just listening and soaking it all in, even to the other coaches,” he said. “We got some time to step by and talk to coach Deion (Sanders) and he just dropped some dimes to us even though he’s on the other side.”
Coach Prime, as he prefers to be called, led off Wednesday’s time at the podium and was a popular attraction throughout the afternoon, making the rounds at several radio and television set-ups inside Allegiant Stadium.
So, too, did players and coaches from all 16 programs represented there this week. And for Robinson, just being in the building was the best part of the whole experience.
Walking the field. Seeing the stadium and all the seats. Checking out the locker rooms. All of it put him that much closer to the NFL experience, which is the place that all of these guys are working toward reaching one day.
“The most memorable part was probably just walking in here, looking at this stadium, taking it all in,” he said. “This is where you want to be at, and we get another chance to do that at the Chiefs’ stadium.”
With its own stadium in the middle of a major makeover, KU will play four of its six home games this season at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.
And now that Big 12 Media Days has come and gone, the start of that season is creeping ever closer, with Game 1 (vs. Lindenwood at Children’s Mercy Park) now jus 49 days away and preseason camp opening in 19 days.
— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com
