Illinois State Football

College recruiters had to have the name repeated, sometimes more than once, when Lawrence High School football coach Dirk Wedd would read it to them. Not because it was complicated—the name is spelled exactly how it sounds.

But because it was just so hard for them to believe.

"Kobe, with a K. Buffalomeat. One word."

It's the name his older brother, Anthony, caught flak for. The name people sometimes mistake for a nickname. The name the 18-year-old Kansan has to clarify is indeed his real name every time he meets someone new. The name that every opposing student section for the rest of his senior basketball season won't leave alone.

Kobe Buffalomeat is living through his 15 minutes of fame after signing with Illinois State on Wednesday's national signing day—complete with his own Twitter moment, an interview spot on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and a shout-out from comedian Jordan Peele, from Comedy Central's Key & Peele.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC_MxTsfAoE

On Wednesday, Buffalomeat signed his name on whiteboards in classrooms and took pictures with classmates he barely knew. For the rest of the week, when he left the training room, he guarded his face as to hide it from fake paparazzi.

"I never thought my name would be so popular," he said. "Growing up, people would just be like, 'Oh, that's unique,' but never make such a big deal about it."

He had two siblings with the same name who came through Lawrence schools before him. His name rarely catches anyone's attention in Lawrence. Wedd, the town's longtime football coach, always called the Buffalomeat kids "Meat," but most of Kobe's teammates call him "Buff."

Buffalomeat is his father's name, and its origins come from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes in Western Oklahoma. Kobe is also one-fourth Choctaw and one-fourth Cherokee. On the Southeast side of Lawrence, about two miles from Kansas' historic Allen Fieldhouse, sits Haskell Indian Nations University, one of 32 tribal colleges. Many Native Americans in Lawrence have finished two years of college then stayed, just as Buffalomeat's parents did.

At his high school, there's a cross-country runner named Carson Jumping Eagle, and another student named Damian WhiteLightning. Both are of Native American heritage.

That's why the internet storm—the Kobe Buffalomeat infatuation—caught everyone in Lawrence off guard.

Wedd had just left jury selection when he turned his phone on for the first time in hours. Then it buzzed like he had never seen before. The 64-year-old was worried it was broken, so he called his daughter, a teacher in the district, who told him that Kobe Buffalomeat was trending. Wedd has a Twitter account but didn't know exactly what his daughter meant.

Buffalomeat saw the retweets and likes roll in. The tweets mentioning his name haven't stopped coming since Wednesday. Most of his family learned of his popularity through a morning text from his mother, Paula Buffalomeat, telling everyone that Kobe was going to be on ESPN.

"Someone from ESPN said, 'We choose a best name at the end of [national signing day],'" said Wayne Postoak, Buffalomeat's grandfather. "He said, 'It's early, but it's over, it's already over.'"

A year before, Buffalomeat wasn't even sure he would play football. Back issues gave him trouble after his freshman year of football, forcing him to stay out for a year. But when college coaches came to Lawrence last season to see Amani Bledsoe, one of the top defensive ends in the country, they noticed Buffalomeat in gym class. At 6'7", 285 pounds, he was hard to miss. "He's a basketball guy," Wedd told them.

But Buffalomeat aged well, and his back healed, so he decided to play offensive line this past fall. And he found himself enjoying football so much that he shed tears after Lawrence's final game of the season, a rare occurrence for the typically stoic high school senior.

The Kobe Buffalomeat who conducted interview after interview in the days following his signing was laid-back and calm. Light-hearted enough to laugh at his name, sure, but most of those close to him wouldn't describe Buffalomeat as someone outwardly emotional.

Even in the closing seconds of tight games as Lawrence basketball's starting center, while other players showed signs of panic during timeouts, Buffalomeat would lean back in his chair and focus on the coach. It was he who had to calm his mother's and brother's nerves before a four-minute spot in front of Jimmy Kimmel's live audience.

Kobe played golf with his grandpa before going to preschool, so the fondness for sports has always been there, but the football field was the only place where he felt comfortable showing emotion while competing. He liked the feeling of consistently working toward something, even if it meant 7 a.m. workouts four days a week during the summer.

But internet virality is not something that one works slowly to build over time. How is Kobe Buffalomeat handling his recent ascent to the top of the trending list?

"He likes it a lot better than I do," Paula Buffalomeat said. "When it all hit, it kind of made me nervous, more so just because he's 18, and I don't want him to say something that might offend somebody, not realizing that he's even saying anything wrong. But he's done really well."

His cousin Peyton Postoak Ferguson is seven years old and has Down syndrome. Though her mind develops differently than most children, she always remembers the name of her cousin. When he comes in the room, she yells his name and jumps on him. He's her 6'7" jungle gym.

"To her, Kobe is just Kobe, and all the [internet buzz]—I don't think she really has an understanding at all," said Penny Postoak Ferguson, Buffalomeat's aunt and Peyton's mother. "But that's her Kobe."

Today, there is a segment of America, this strange overlap between sports, the internet and pop culture, that will not forget the name either. Maybe they'll hear it again in 2022—after Kobe spends five years at Illinois State (he's gray-shirting, or postponing his enrollment until the winter term of his freshman year)—when it's called during the NFL draft.

Christian Hardy is the managing editor for the University Daily Kansan, the student paper at the University of Kansas. He's covered Kansas basketball, football, and Sporting Kansas City and has written for the Kansas City Star. From Derby, Kansas, Christian is a music head and a Dallas Cowboys fan.