As Brandon Aiyuk juggled everything the junior college experience thrusts upon a football player -- school, recruiting and football -- his road out of it featured the precise implementation of two conflicting traits: patience and urgency.

First, the patience.

Aiyuk arrived at Sierra College in Rocklin, California in 2016. Right away, he was forced to sit. Isaiah Bailey, a near-1,000-yard receiver who caught 14 touchdowns the year before he wound up at Alabama A&M, had experience and the starting job.

But Aiyuk’s outlook was different than most. He didn’t question his decision to go to Sierra. He didn’t bombard coaches about his playing time. Instead, he observed it as simply waiting his turn -- and while standing in line, he could prepare for the time when he arrived at the front.

“(I) sat behind him, learned a lot of good things from him and then my second year I was able to do a lot of good things and get here,” Aiyuk said.

Aiyuk’s ‘wait my turn’ personality isn’t matched by most receivers, he’s not a huge talker. To coaches, his patience isn’t looked at as an unwillingness to play but rather someone who understands what’s best for the team in that given moment.

Upon arrival at Sierra, he understood Bailey was going to garner more playing time. So he took it upon himself to try and get involved in other ways.

“He told us from day 1, ‘Coach, I want to be a punt returner,’” Sierra offensive coordinator Daniel Diaz-Romero said. “I just think you’ll find there are more guys that have that skill set that are willing to do a kick return. There are not many guys that are brave enough to want to do a punt return when there’s always that chance that you may get lit up.”

That wasn't a concern to Aiyuk. Diaz-Romero joked that if Aiyuk had even an inch of space he wasn’t thinking about calling for a fair catch.

“I used to play running back so I just if I see a little bit of green I think I can take it to the house,” Aiyuk said. “Punt return, kick return -- especially when getting recruited that’s a big part. It’s nice on film but it’s a big part of the game. I feel like I can change games with my return ability.”

Diaz-Romero noted Aiyuk’s return ability was the No. 1 things coaches were interested in. He had to wait to put it on full display, though, returning just three punts his freshman year before his speed was unleashed upon the California Community College Athletic Association the next year.

Aiyuk averaged 38 yards on his 11 kick returns and 22.4 yards on his 14 punt returns, adding three combined touchdowns that Diaz-Romero said should really be like “5 or 6” if not for a few “pretty questionable calls.”

Aiyuk has not been catching punts during the Sun Devils’ practice but said he gets to practice early every day to work with special teams coordinator Shawn Slocum at catching punts and kicks. If ASU needs him in the return game, he’ll be ready.

Throughout his sophomore season, Aiyuk was the man. He’d reel off a 30- or 40-yard return, and stay on the field, and going to the Z-receiver position where doubled his reception numbers from his freshman campaign.

“His explosiveness is very rare and his ball control, his hand-eye coordination is pretty unbelievable,” Diaz-Romero said. “You put on some of his highlights and some of the things he does, the way he catches the ball, it’s like out of a video game or something.”

Diaz-Romero recalled one play where Aiyuk caught a quick 5-yard slant against the College of San Mateo and within seconds was celebrating in the end zone 60 yards away. He added an additional 59 receptions and 13 touchdowns his sophomore year.

The patience was paying off.

Now at Arizona State, where he’s been taking a significant amount of second-team reps sprinkled in with a handful of snaps with the first-teamers, he’s taking the same approach. Redshirt junior Terrell Chatman and redshirt sophomore Frank Darby are ahead of him at the Z position. But both their names may as well be Isaiah Bailey.

“That helped me a lot here so it wasn’t like a thing where I came here and I’m not first obviously so I didn’t get impatient or overwhelmed with that stuff,” Aiyuk said of Bailey. “Frank, T-Chat, they’re good. So I look at it the same way -- I can learn from these guys and obviously I want to help but I feel like God gotta plan.”

Wide receivers coach Charlie Fisher expects Aiyuk to contribute but said the junior needs to sharpen up his fundamentals that weren’t a problem in junior college but are imperative at a DI school.

“He’s doing good, he’s learning,” Fischer said of Aiyuk. “There’s a lot. It’s a big learning curve coming from that level but what he does have is he has a great skill set and he’s learning the plays so he’s having to work through that, work ethic, character, hard-working, good kid, tries real hard. He’s going to be OK.”

Alright, now the urgency that allowed Aiyuk to get to Tempe.

The old “Cs get degrees” motto doesn’t exactly apply to junior college football players. After three semesters, Aiyuk found that out the hard way. After racking up “a lot of Cs,” he was forced to complete 21 credits and needed a 3.5 GPA his last semester to ensure he wouldn’t have to take summer classes and he could play at ASU right away.

“It was just signing day,” Aiyuk said. “I signed my papers and these people trusted me to get it done so it was just like, I don’t want to let these people down, and I want to play here, I want to be here in the summer and I want to play football. So it was on me to get all that stuff done.”

What made the near-impossible task even harder for Aiyuk was imbalance it jammed into his schedule. After his commitment, he needed to handle some things relating to ASU. Filling out loads of paperwork, continuing to train and work out ate up hours that most could have spent on school. And as Aiyuk was quick to point out, Sierra College is “nothing close” to what many picture junior colleges to be through the Netflix show “Last Chance U” lens.

There was no Brittany Wagner helping him with his schoolwork every day. Finding and contacting tutors was his responsibility. There was no time for patience.

“That semester I had to buckle down. I took math, English, and all my core classes,” he said. “I had a math tutor and I had a lot of tutors that helped me out but that was stuff I had to reach out and get on my own.”

On Monday night, Aiyuk had a smile across his face as he relieved his success in the classroom, the benefits of which he was able to reap just minutes before. “I was on President’s Honor Roll my last semester,” he said with a wide grin.

“To see him complete that and to see him now -- I just talked to him on FaceTime the other day and he’s in his dorm at Arizona State and is just really loving it over there so I couldn’t be happier for him and just his overall approach to the process,” Diaz-Romero said.

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