Georgia senior fullback Bruce Figgins only thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
A six-game marijuana-related suspension heading into his junior season and silence on the speakerphone in coach Mark Richt’s office. His mother was on the other end, waiting for Figgins to explain in his own words why they were calling.
Growing up in Columbus, Figgins was a self-proclaimed mama’s boy. He had her eyes, her smile, and her propensity to worry. Kim Figgins also was the disciplinarian of his parents, a secretary at an elementary school on Fort Benning and much more outspoken than his father, Bruce Sr., a high school math teacher at Carver.
She figures she spanked B.J. (Bruce Jr.) 179 of 180 school days — “He probably didn’t get one on the first day of school,” she jokes — encouraging him to be respectful, make good grades, and understand she was doing it out of love.
So it was all the more devastating when two years of college freedom had led to this phone call. Figgins’ only consolation was he didn’t have to look her in the eye as he told her.
“Bruce is not the child that I sent to Georgia,” Kim Figgins said then.
Today, when she says that, she means it in a much different way. That’s because entering his final regular-season game Saturday against Georgia Tech, Figgins finds himself in a much different place. And on this Thanksgiving holiday, he’s actually thankful for that experience.
“I figure God put me through some things early on here at Georgia in preparation for this,” Figgins said. “So I can be able to overcome this as well.”
“This” is breast cancer. His mother was diagnosed in March.
She didn’t tell Figgins about it for several months, until she already had begun chemotherapy. Even she didn’t realize how far her son had come and what he was capable of handling.
Bright beginnings
In 2007, Figgins became the first freshman to start at tight end for Georgia in at least 43 years. He caught a touchdown pass that day against Oklahoma State. But the charmed existence didn’t last long. Figgins would catch only three touchdown passes over the next four years.
In the fall of 2009 came the suspension, a subsequent redshirt season, and for the first time since he was 5 years old, no football.
It was also the first time in Figgins’ life that he knew his parents couldn’t get him out of this jam.
“That was a time I couldn’t be saved,” Figgins said. “I had to go through it myself and I had to learn. I had to be my own friend some nights and be my own cheerleader some nights and be my own counselor, doing the talking and walk myself through it. But I did.”
He kept to himself a lot, not wanting to answer questions about what “violating team rules” meant, or face people who knew of reports about a failed drug test and assumed the worst about him.
The hardest times were Friday afternoons, when the team bus left campus. That also was the time Figgins’ mother would arrive in Athens, joined by his father and twin sister Patience the following morning. They would try to fill the void by spending all Saturday with Figgins, going to the store, out for a meal, anything but watching football.
Little by little it got easier. But even when Figgins was eligible to play again, football didn’t assuage him like he thought it would. He had been buried on the depth chart at tight end.
“I wasn’t the player I wanted to be,” Figgins said. “... I felt like that guy that had it in him but was just waiting, waiting, waiting. I was tired of waiting. There it goes again, just consequences of decisions.”
Heading into workouts last spring, Georgia coaches told Figgins they wanted him to move to fullback. He didn’t say anything at the time, but he didn’t like it.
“I took it as like they’re just moving me out of the way,” Figgins said. “I’m thinking, ‘I didn’t come to Georgia to play fullback.’”
He knew he could play tight end elsewhere, but it was too late to think about transferring. So he started spring practice resigned to learning a new position for his senior season.
That was about the time his mother went in for a follow-up mammogram after a small growth showed up on her yearly test.
“I really wanted to tell him in the beginning, but this was an important year for Bruce,” Kim Figgins said. “This is Bruce’s last chance at Georgia. I didn’t want to put that on him.”
Coping well
While his mother was focusing on her recovery, Figgins focused on football. And by the time preseason practice rolled around, he was starting to get the hang of fullback.
He had long since changed his social habits, how much time he spent in downtown Athens, who he hung out with, and his attitude about how to make good decisions.
This time he applied it to football as well.
“I took it as maybe I could excel at if I put my heart into it, put my mind into it,” Figgins said. “God could be showing me something else that I don’t see and leading me down a different path that will work out for me. Just do the best I can do. And things will be fine.”
Just before camp started, Kim Figgins told her son she had Stage I breast cancer. She told him doctors had caught it early, and she had every belief that she’d beat it, but that she’d require surgery.
Figgins kept quiet about it at first, worried, and fell into an old habit of keeping to himself. He didn’t tell even his closest teammates why he rushed home to Columbus after a game to spend time with his mother before her surgery.
But something came over Figgins the night before Georgia played Mississippi State on Oct. 1, when it was his turn to lead the team devotional.
He started talking to a banquet room full of teammates about claiming what they wanted by being specific in prayer, about speaking something into existence. If Georgia wanted to beat Mississippi State, to win an SEC championship, to become national contenders, it would have to first believe it would happen.
Figgins quoted a Bible verse about how belief raised a dead man from the grave. Then he veered off from his notes.
Figgins started talking about his mother, her battle with cancer, and her belief that she would be cured.
“She expects the best,” he said. “She’s preparing for the best. She assures us, her family, that everything is going to be fine. And I believe it, she believes it.”
His teammates were shocked, especially some of his closest friends, who hug his mother every week during the pregame Dog Walk, but had no idea. They approached Figgins afterward, comforted him. One told him of his aunt who had beaten breast cancer.
Richt got wind of the revelation during the players’ only meeting, and the Bulldogs wore “KDF” initials and a pink bow for breast-cancer awareness on their helmets the next week against Tennessee.
“It’s great to know you’ve got people that have your back,” Figgins said.
He still wears those stickers on his helmet and will as Georgia’s starting fullback in the SEC championship game, Georgia’s first trip back since 2005.
Figgins helped get the Bulldogs there with a touchdown catch against Auburn. He’s on track to graduate in December. He’d love a shot at the NFL, even if it’s only a brief one. He wants a career in coaching if that doesn’t work out.
His mother is feeling good and awaiting a follow-up appointment in January. One thing she doesn’t worry about these days is her son.
“I said two years ago ‘Bruce is not the child that I sent to Georgia’ with a heartache,” Kim Figgins said. “I said that with pain. And now I say it with pride because the things he has gone through have made Bruce the man that he is now. And I truly believe he’s a good man.”
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