Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive lineman Stevie Tu’ikolovatu is far from your average rookie. He played football at Utah and was a graduate transfer at USC.
But Tu’ikolovatu moved to Southern California before he was officially enrolled at USC. That created something of an issue.
“The problem was that until Tu’ikolovatu was officially enrolled at USC, NCAA rules prohibited the school from giving him benefits, such as housing. But he wanted to get out to Los Angeles to begin working out. So, away he went, no real plan,” Martin Fennelly of the Tampa Bay Times detailed. “He wound up sleeping in his car. For two months. His idea. Eventually, his parents delivered his mom’s 2004 brown Chevy Suburban to Los Angeles. They didn’t know their son would use it as an apartment.”
Indeed. A man who checks in at 6-foot-1 and over 330 pounds was living in a car and completely by choice. Shortly thereafter, he was joined by his wife, Kalo.
The two lived by the beach. So, despite the cramped quarters, things could have been worse. As was detailed by Fennelly, Tu’ikolovatu had the option of staying with friends, family or teammates, but he opted to live a more independent lifestyle.
Naturally, though, the big man isn’t sad that he’s out of the car. “I don’t miss it at all,” he said.
His wife, however, is a different story.
“I miss the car,” Kalo said, per Fennelly “There was always something to do, meeting new people, making new friends.”
If nothing else, the Tu’ikolovatu family knows that it can survive living a very modest lifestyle.