“Football was my first passion, Dallas Cowboys are my team!”: Dennis Rodman hadn’t started to play basketball until his 20s as his first love was football

Dennis Rodman admitted to not even having played basketball until his 20s and how football was his first passion with the Dallas Cowboys being his favorite. 

Dennis Rodman was a uniquely motivated man. With his mother having to take a plethora of jobs to support him and his siblings due to an absent father, Rodman knew he had to make it big to help contribute to him and his 2 sisters (Rodman claims to be the oldest of 47 children but he wasn’t in contact with all of them). 

With him being merely 5’8 or so in high school, basketball never really crossed Rodman’s mind as a ticket out. While attending South Oak Cliff High School, his basketball coach, Gary Blair, remarked that Rodman was ‘unable to hit a layup’. 

 However, as time went on and the future Piston entered his twenties, he started to grow. Like David Robinson and CJ McCollum, to name a few, Dennis Rodman grew to quite the height.

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At around 20 years of age, Dennis was 6’7 or so. By the time he was 21, he was lighting up teams while attending Southeastern Oklahoma State University. He averaged 25.7 points and 15.7 rebounds in 3 years at the college and the rest is history. 

Dennis Rodman on football being his first love. 

Before getting drafted to the NBA as the 57th pick, before becoming a star collegiate athlete in basketball, Dennis Rodman wasn’t a good basketball. Hell, he wasn’t even a basketball player. He knew he had athletic gifts and so his first love in the sports world was football. 

Growing up in Dallas after moving there from his birth state of New Jersey, Rodman was a big Dallas Cowboys fan. Why wouldn’t he be? The Cowboys won the Super Bowl in ‘71 and ‘77, prime years of Rodman’s upbringing.

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He would admit his love for the Cowboys and football in general on a podcast with BTM. 

“It was forced upon me to play basketball because I started to grow when I was 20 years old. Football was my first passion. I lived in Dallas you know, the Cowboys, my team right. all of sudden I picked up basketball and people said, ‘Dennis, you’re pretty good.’”[at the 1:00 mark]

Everything would come back full circle (kind off) when Dennis Rodman would finish his career as a Dallas Maverick. He played 12 games for them in the 1999-00 season where he averaged 2.8 points and 14.3 rebounds.