They all wanted him to stay home. Couldn’t understand why a South Florida kid would want to leave and play football a half a country away.

A decade ago, when Bret Bielema first introduced me to Alex Collins at Arkansas, there was clearly something unique about him.

And it had nothing to do with football.

More than just the 5-star running back from star-laden South Florida who ignored family pleas to stay home. More than the 18-year-old who could’ve played anywhere, but chose the unknown of a school that may as well have been in the middle of nowhere compared to Fort Lauderdale.

“Did you fly in?” Collins asked me that day in the fall of 2013. “Then you saw what I saw. Grabs your soul. Have you driven around this campus and talked to people? Do you know Coach B?”

I looked at him with a curious nod, and he flipped back dreadlocks that long ago reached well past his shoulders — then smiled wide like a guy who just experienced his first majestic Ozark sunset.

“It’s a life decision,” he said. “My time here will change me forever.”

Alex Collins, 28, died Sunday night in a motorcycle accident in Lauderdale Lakes, Fla., a tragic end to a life full of promise.

While Collins played 5 seasons in the NFL with 2 teams, his football home was always Arkansas. A home that almost didn’t happen.

I reached out to Bielema on Tuesday because I knew what Collins meant to him. The memories came flooding back.

“So many emotions,” Bielema said, his voice cracking over the phone. “A great young man full of love.”

Bielema invests in players and their lives beyond football, always has. He grew up on an 80-acre hog farm in Prophetstown, Ill., where they take care of each other, where family is who and what you trust and love and pour into.

More than a decade ago, it was a running back he first began recruiting as the coach at Wisconsin. Collins was a sophomore in high school who already was dealing with a difficult family home life, and was at one point living with his high school coach, Doug Gatewood.

But Collins had built a bond with Bielema and then-Wisconsin assistant Charlie Partridge, and he was intrigued by Wisconsin’s run-oriented offense and Bielema’s track record of developing players for the NFL. Then Bielema left for Arkansas.

“I got a call from (Gatewood) who said Alex came out of his room crying because he didn’t think Arkansas would recruit him,” Bielema said. “I go down there for a final visit, and Alex didn’t live in the best area. I like to walk with kids through their neighborhood. You can get a good idea of who they are. It was late at night, and he says, ‘Don’t worry, Coach. You’re with me.’

“So we’re done walking and I look at him and say, ‘Arkansas is a totally different environment.But sometimes young guys need totally different to get where they want to be.’”

But his recruitment wasn’t done. Collins wanted to be part of what Bielema was building at Arkansas, but his family — specifically, his mother Andrea McDonald — had other plans. Collins arrived at South Planation High School on National Signing Day in 2013, dressed in a suit and prepared to announce he would choose Arkansas over Miami.

McDonald arrived at the high school an hour before Collins’ announcement, and tried to talk Collins out of leaving home. Collins wouldn’t budge, and McDonald left the school — with the letter of intent.

A player under the age of 21 must have a legal guardian sign the letter of intent for it to be considered valid. So Collins got his dad to sign, and after initially hiring a lawyer to contest the NLI, McDonald would later speak of the “smart decision” Collins made in choosing Arkansas.

“His appreciation for all things Arkansas was through the roof,” Bielema said. “He loved the Razorbacks. It was all Pig Sooie for him.”

It didn’t take long to see how important Collins would be to the program and the community. On the field, he became the 1st running back in SEC history to rush for more than 100 yards in his first 3 games — and had 3 1,000-yard seasons before leaving for the NFL.

Off the field, he was the beaming, optimistic face of what Bielema was building. Of how good things could be after the nightmare of Bobby Petrino’s implosion, and John L. Smith’s disastrous bridge season.

He brought a sense of normalcy on the field and off it, and the rabid Arkansas fan base gravitated to him through the tough early days. The Hogs lost 9 straight to finish that first season in 2013, before finally getting it turned in 2014.

There was a point in that 2014 season, after their first SEC win since 2012 and back-to-back shutouts of LSU and Ole Miss, where it all fell in place. Arkansas had qualified for a bowl for the 1st time since 2011, and the Texas Bowl invited former bitter Southwest Conference rival Texas as the Hogs’ opponent.

By the end of the game, after Arkansas brutally punished Texas on both sides of the ball, the Hogs kneeled on 3 straight plays to end the game.

“Borderline erotic,” Bielema famously said after the game — and after getting doused with water in a postgame celebration. One of the players handling the bucket was Collins, who found a way to make it out of a difficult childhood and into the waiting arms of Arkansas.

Not long after Collins arrived at Arkansas in 2013, he used one of his first Pell Grant checks to buy a motorcycle. He didn’t have a license and didn’t know how to ride it.

“But he wanted it, and wanted to ride it,” Bielema said. “I told him, park that thing until you learn how to ride it and get a license.”

Bielema clears his throat, and the memory of it all comes rushing back. So does the call from Gatewood on Monday to tell Bielema that Collins had died in a motorcycle accident.

“The foreshadow of that now,” Bielema says, his voice halting, “Is a lot to overcome.”