Imani Christian grad Kenny Robinson acknowledges mistake, ready for NFL

If you didn’t know the story behind the young man, you would think his was just another name flashed across the bottom of the TV screen during the last day of the NFL Draft.

But Kenny Robinson’s story is different — sad, embarrassing even. But it’s one he doesn’t run from, a story that, he said, has taught him a lesson and changed his life.

Robinson, who grew up in Wilkinsburg and went to Imani Christian Academy before an abbreviated two-year career at West Virginia, was drafted in the fifth round Saturday by the Carolina Panthers (No. 152 overall).

But he took a circuitous route to get there.

A safety with remarkable ability to track a football in flight, he was twice named All-Big 12 — honorable mention as a freshman in 2017 and first-team a year later — while picking off a total of seven passes.

Meanwhile, his mother, Danielle Hudson, was back home in Pittsburgh where she suffered two strokes and was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Then, when he asked a friend to do a classroom assignment for him in spring 2019, WVU officials caught and expelled him.

Two days before the draft, he wrote a piece for The Players’ Tribune (“A Letter to NFL GMs”), telling the entire story in detail.

“I have no problem admitting it. I cheated. I got caught,” he wrote. “I made a stupid decision, and I don’t have any excuses. I had the opportunity to do the right thing, and I chose to do the wrong thing. That’s it. I own that.”

When he was questioned by reporters Saturday, he continued to be transparent about the situation.

“A lot of people who have had problems don’t own up to their mistakes, and I felt like I need to make that a point that I owned up to my mistakes,” he said.

“I know it was a mistake, but I learned from it and I was moving on and becoming a better person.

“Just owning up to the whole situation and learning from it, I felt like I became a better man and it will just help me in the back end.”

After leaving West Virginia, he considered transferring. He wrote in The Players’ Tribune that he talked to Pitt and Florida.

But he didn’t want to sit out the 2019 season, per NCAA transfer rules. So, he joined the XFL and played this season for the St. Louis BattleHawks.

“It was kind of a long process, just trying to figure out what was the best decision for me and my family,” he said. “My first intention was to go back to college. As time went on and I figured things out, the XFL ended up being the best decision for me.

“Once I made that decision, the XFL benefited me in so many ways like just preparing you to be a professional. I was a professional football player for the last few months before anyone else could be.

“With the way they treated me in the XFL, made me do things on my own, put in extra work and do things on my own time. My time-management skills have matured, and I’ve grown.”

When the XFL went bankrupt and ceased operations this spring, Robinson became eligible for the NFL Draft because he had college eligibility remaining when he joined the league.

The best news is Robinson said his mom is recovering.

“She’s actually doing fine lately,” he said. “About two weeks into the (covid-19) quarantine, she was released from the hospital for the last time and they said she was completely cancer-free.

“So now we’re just working on helping her recover from her past strokes. Lately, she’s been healthy and moving around the house. She’s been in a good mood and, actually (Saturday), she’s in a great mood.”

He said his mom was “very excited, very excited” when the Panthers called.

But what about her son?

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I was almost shaking.”