There is a cinematic flair to Ron Dixon’s story. He tells it well enough that you’re surprised Hollywood hasn’t told it first.

In the late 1990s, too much of Dixon’s time was spent at a gas station near his Wildwood, Fla., home. He already had flunked out of several colleges, never feeling the need to go to class. Traditional education was not for him, he had decided: He wasn’t getting anything out of the class, so why go?

He knew he was talented. Some of the players he had shared a football field with — longtime NFL running back Duce Staley and nose tackle Jason Ferguson were Itawamba (Miss.) Community College teammates — were going places, and he could run with any of them. But without a college platform, no one could see the ability that was being wasted in a gas-station bathroom.

That’s where Dixon worked in 1998, a maintenance gig that could pay some bills about two years after he last stepped on a college football field. The way he remembers it, on this day he was behind the cash register, but his manager told him the bathroom needed to be cleaned. He grabbed the cleaning supplies and walked into the grimiest scene he could imagine.