Travis Cross, 1L
Sept. 26, 2014 – Travis Cross has taken his critical thinking skills to the University of Houston Law Center and his athletic ability to the football field.
An offensive lineman, number 68 is a first-year student following his dream of playing college ball and then developing an energy practice with a downtown law firm. Cross has been playing football since he was 8-years-old, he said. “I enjoy football, but I know it won’t last forever, for that reason I find joy in other things such as the time and effort I put into the law school.”
He earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Oklahoma State, but it was a logics class and guidance from his mom, a practicing attorney, that steered him toward law school.
As a full-time graduate student in a demanding program and a football player, Cross must carefully balance his time between law books and the gridiron. “Other players ask ‘why are you reading? We have practice in 30 minutes,’ ” Cross said, but his parents taught him to always have a backup plan; so he responds by saying, “I know the game plan. I don’t know this. Football is easy; it is life that’s hard."
"Football has given me the opportunity to pursue what I wanted,” he said. “I’ve experienced what it’s like to be a lawyer watching my mother deal with her clients and when it gets tough, I just think about how it will be when I am a lawyer. I just have to persevere and rise above it all, with an eye toward going on to the next big thing.”
