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OU DAILY PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CAITLYN EPES/THE DAILY
Redshirt junior defensive tackle Dillon Faamatau, senior offensive lineman Dru Samia, sophomore cornerback Tre Norwood, redshirt senior linebacker Curtis Bolton and redshirt junior offensive lineman Bobby Evans in the red room Oct. 1. Faamatau, Samia, Norwood, Bolton and Evans all have tattoos with significance to them.
SOONER INK
Five OU football players show off tattoo pieces with special meanings, stories behind them ABBY BITTERMAN • @ABBY_BITTERMAN
The Sooners have a lot of ink on them. Many of the players on Oklahoma’s roster have tattoos, and many of those tattoos have stories behind them. The Daily set out to find the stories behind some of the most interesting and meaningful tattoos on the team.
TRE NORWOOD
CAITLYN EPES/THE DAILY
Left: Sophomore cornerback Tre Norwood in the red room on Oct. 1. Right from top to bottom: Norwood got this tattoo in memory of his grandfather, who he is named after. Norwood’s mother, Shea, said the bottom tattoo is “a mother holding her infant child.”
Tre Norwood’s mom never wanted a tattoo. But one day, Norwood suggested to his mother, Shea, the two get matching tattoos. They went and got it done two days after Norwood’s 18th birthday, just a few months before he had to head to college. “When a child comes to you, there’s no love like that that you have for your child, and so, without any hesitation, I was just in. I was absolutely in,” Shea said. “I just thought, ‘wow’ — that’s the best way to really say it. My son — you don’t ever doubt that your kids love you — but wow, he really loves his mom.” Shea, a nurse, wanted to get something simple, so they got a symbol that means mother and son on their wrists. The big half circle is the mother holding the son, the smaller half circle. “My mom, after we had established that we were going to actually do it, she looked up some ideas,” Nor wood said. “And
this is one that she likes, and of course it’s what my mama likes so I’m going to go with it.” Norwood, a sophomore cornerback, has several other tattoos on his left arm, including one in remembrance of the man he’s named after. W h e n Sh e a wa s p re g na nt with her first child, a boy, her husband wanted to name him Michael after himself, but she wa nt e d t o na m e h i m Ca l eb because there were already Michaels in her Catholic family. But then, Shea got a call from her father-in-law — also named Michael. “He always felt like Tre was going to be great, so he wanted somebody to carry on his name as a grandchild,” Shea said. “He’s such a man of strength and humility, he’s one of the smartest men I’ve ever met. It just instantly changed my mind.” So the Norwoods named their son Michael Wayne Norwood III, and he goes by Tre.
Norwood and his grandfather, known as Pawpaw, were “thick as thieves,” Shea said. Pawpaw put a football in Norwood’s hospital crib when he was born and was the principal of his school from seventh to ninth grade. When he died in June 2015 from bladder cancer, Norwood wanted to do something for the man who meant so much to him. When Norwood’s uncle spoke at the funeral, he ended it with “Be like Mike.” Norwood decided to get that as his first tattoo, along with the tattoo he got with his mom. Norwood and his father both got “Be like Mike” tattoos the same day he and his mom got their matching tattoos. “ W e w e r e s u p e r c l o s e ,” Norwood said. “I miss him all the time, think about him all the time. He was a great role model, great leader. He was always in my life, and he just taught me a lot of things within sports and just life in general.”
The tattoo took eight hours, and Faamatau sat through it with no breaks. Wuki drew the lion freehand. Faamatau wasn’t worried about how the tattoo was going to turn out though, having seen the work his cousin had done on his brothers. Faamatau also has Samoan tattoos on his arms, but the designs aren’t finished yet, and he said he can’t tell the story behind them until they are done. “The meaning is not completely done until the tattoo is complete,” he said. As for the meaning of the lion, Faamatau has some ideas about why his cousin picked it. “I feel like he probably chose the lion because, like they say,
the lion is the king of the jungle,” Faamatau said. Faamatau has a thick, curly head of hair framing his face in a way that almost resembles a lion’s mane, but that’s not all he wants to have in common with the animal. Faamatau’s goal is to be as respected as a lion is. “He’s respected by many, and also feared by many,” he said. “I don’t want to say that’s my motto, but I kind of live by that. I don’t want to have many fear me, but I just want to be respected by many.”
DILLON FAAMATAU
CAITLYN EPES/THE DAILY
Left to right: Redshirt junior defensive tackle Dillon Faamatau in the red room on Oct. 1. Faamatau’s cousin Wuki gave him a tattoo of a lion since he thought it represented him.
D i l l o n Fa a m a t a u s a t a n d watched two of his older brothers get tattooed by his cousin Wuki when he decided it was his turn. “Hey, can I get a tattoo?” Faamatau, now a redshirt junior defensive tackle, asked. “All right, well this one, I’m going to make it mean something,” Wuki said. Faamatau, who was heading into his junior year of high school at the time, wanted his cousin to choose something that he thought represented him. His cousin came up with a lion. “I asked him to give me something that he thought resembles me,” Faamatau said, “And he chose to put a lion on my arm.”
See TATTOOS page 2