Auburn offensive lineman lives his faith, on and off football field

AUBURN, Ala. — Jorrell Bostrom took the long way from Idaho to Alabama.

Bostrom, 25, a 6-foot-3, 320-pound senior offensive lineman for the BCS' No. 1-ranked Auburn University Tigers, didn't even start playing football until the eighth grade in Nampa, Idaho, where he grew up the oldest of six adopted children.

"I was adopted when I was like a month old," Bostrom said. "All my siblings are adopted — all six of us are. It was interesting growing up. Our parents were white and then my siblings are all black and I'm Tongan. It was all a mix."

Bostrom said, "I didn't really know the rules (of football). I was just a big body out there."

But he learned the rules quickly, and it didn't take long for him to make a big impact.

In high school, he moved up to varsity as a sophomore and was named to all-conference teams as a defensive lineman before moving to the offensive side of the ball.

After he graduated from Nampa High School in 2003, things started to get interesting as he saw his older friends return from missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"When I was in high school I really hadn't thought about (serving a mission) much," he said. "By the time I graduated, all my friends were getting back from their missions, and it seemed like the right thing to do. I could recognize a change in them."

For a year, Bostrom worked for the Nampa school district delivering food to public schools. He then left to serve in the Tacoma Washington Mission.

After he returned from his mission in 2006, he went to Bakersfield College, a two-year school in California, with a friend, Jacob Bower, who got home from his own mission at the same time.

Bower, a quarterback, had gone to Brigham Young University before his mission but decided to go to Bakersfield and urged Bostrom to go there, too. "Bower is my best friend," Bostrom said. "I've known him since first grade.

"It worked out pretty good."

After Bakersfield, Bower went to the University of Tulsa to play quarterback for the Hurricane and told his offensive coordinator about Bostrom. A series of coaching contacts and changes would lead Bostrom to Auburn.

Jeff Grimes, an assistant coach at Colorado, had been at BYU when Bower was there, and Bostrom sent film to Grimes. "Initially, I was thinking of maybe going to Colorado," Bostrom said.