Gold mine: Colorado rolls out the college football recruits

State's population growth has sweetened talent pool

By B.G. Brooks, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 28, 2008 at 6 p.m.

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Photo by Linda McConnell/Special to the Rocky

CU's Ryan Miller.

The mountains remain prominent, the air is relatively fresh and the streams and lakes comparatively pristine. But look again; Colorado isn't what it used to be.

From 1980 to 2008, according to statistics from the state demography office, the population has swelled from 2,907,526 to 5,013,812, a protracted growth spurt that might be in its infancy.

If that jump crams more cars into the Interstate 70 corridor and deepens the brown cloud, it also helps pack more potential into the state's high school football programs - and Division I head coaches and recruiters along the Front Range have taken notice.

Not that recruiting Colorado ever has been an afterthought for the major in- state universities - Air Force, Colorado, Colorado State, Northern Colorado - and neighboring Wyoming. Current rosters at all five schools feature talent developed in Colorado, as do their respective recruiting coordinators' "wish lists" for the class of 2009 and beyond.

Under third-year coach Dan Hawkins, CU hasn't locked down the borders, but the Big 12 Conference school is on an undeniable two-year roll in making the state's top prospects feel very comfortable beneath the Flatirons.

In 2007, Hawkins' sales pitch struck a chord with massive Columbine offensive lineman Ryan Miller, whose choice of colleges included all of the usual superpowers. In 2008, Hawkins struck another responsive chord with Ponderosa linebacker Jon Major, whose list of adoring suitors was a cut-and-paste copy of Miller's.

If Hawkins and the Buffaloes make it a clean three-for-three, they will land Legacy High School's Nick Kasa, a 6-foot-7, 250- pound defensive end who apparently is weighing, among other academic/football interests, the merits of Colorado sunshine vs. Florida sunshine.

Of course, the other Front Range schools would love to have Kasa on their campuses. Realistically, they abandoned the chase long ago.

But at CSU, where Steve Fairchild is preparing for his debut season as head coach, the goal is to give top-tier national recruits, such as Kasa, good reason to take a second look at Fort Collins.

"Whoever comes into this state is going to recruit the same athletes as Colorado," Rams offensive coordinator/recruiting coordinator Greg Peterson said. "As we continue to build this program and win football games, sometimes recruiting goes hand in hand. We want to get the great players in the state."

All of the coaches find it difficult, or impossible, to turn a recruit bent on attending an out-of-state/region school.

Conference affiliations play a large role; Hawkins concedes that recruiting to a Bowl Championship Series conference, such as the Big 12, has more appeal to prospects than recruiting to the Western Athletic Conference.

Different bird

Air Force is a different bird, with its military requirements putting Falcons recruiters all over the map and carrying a list of prerequisites foreign to the other Front Range schools.

UNC, a Division I newcomer, still carries the "small school" label and, unjustly or not, CSU long has carried the tag of sorting through CU's "leftovers."

Then there's Wyoming, where coach Joe Glenn watches recruiting in Colorado from a unique vantage point. Glenn's resume includes a very successful tour of duty at UNC (11 seasons, two Division II national championships).

"I just think the level of play down there (in Colorado) has been good," Glenn said. "I mean, there were maybe 15, 20 kids at Northern Colorado that we recruited that didn't get Division I offers that went to the league (NFL).

"Did they all stay? No. But is Aaron Smith still playing after a dozen years and making $27 million or more? Yeah."

Glenn said he and special teams coach Chris Knutsen "heard about this tall basketball player at Sierra High School (and) were the only two guys" actively recruiting Smith, a former UNC defensive end now with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

"So, there are guys out there. You might not get the finished product, but I've always said there are a lot more Division I football players than there are scholarships."

Miller believes

Miller, who moved into CU's starting lineup midway through his freshman season, also is a huge - he's 6-7, 310 - believer in Colorado talent.

"Anywhere you go in Colorado, you see kids to watch out for, kids that if you were a senior and were playing against a freshman, you would say this kid's got potential," he said. "They're all getting bigger, stronger at a younger age."

While an undeniable factor in the improvement of state high school football, Colorado's population boom and the production of Division I talent still is relative to states with already large population bases in metropolitan areas.

During the past five recruiting classes, 2004-2008, Colorado produced 171 Division I signees, according to rivals.com. But even the cumulative total from that five-year span couldn't come close to matching the 2008 Division I signees from Texas (361) and California (249), underscoring the major reason Front Range recruiters must look out of state as well as in.

"You're looking at a geography in Texas that has so many people and so many football programs . . . you take the Mullens of the world and those types of really good programs, they're all over the place down there," said former CU walk-on Jeff Campbell, an in-state receiver/return specialist who spent five seasons in the NFL and now lives a couple of punts from one of the Texas mega-programs, Southlake High School.

Still, establishing an in-state base is paramount for CU, CSU and UNC, but not so much for Air Force. And Wyoming, with fewer prospects to peruse than Colorado, annually looks south for a large number of its recruits.

When Bill McCartney began reshaping Buffaloes football in the early 1980s, his formula relied heavily on keeping homegrown talent at home. Eric McCarty, a Boulder linebacker who was one of the state's top prospects in 1983 and now is CU's director of sports medicine, recalls McCartney urging him and a score of other high-profile Colorado recruits to save their last official campus visit before national signing day for a gathering in Boulder.

McCartney wanted a home-is-where- the-help-is bonding to occur among Coloradans - and he got his wish.

"All of us had played with or against each other, and we looked around and said, 'Hey, this could be something special if we all signed (with CU),' " McCarty said. "And that's how it turned out."

If McCartney wasn't trying to create an obligation among in-staters to believe they should stay/play at home, he at least was planting a seed.

Numbers game

CU's most recent pair of top Colorado signees, Miller and Major, said they haven't been prodded by Hawkins to reach out to top in-state prospects.

And Hawkins said he won't pose that kind of outreach as an obligation for his players: "I don't want to put that on them. What I do is espouse what it's like to be a Colorado guy playing for your hometown school. That's an experience that's very unique to them."

Major, who will miss the 2008 season because of a knee injury, said early in the recruiting process, "It didn't really matter whether I went in or out of state. But through the whole process, when I went on visits, I kind of noticed how most of the students wanted to go home, wanted to be home or were transferring home.

"So I think you kind of take (staying in state) for granted at first. I'm glad that I'm here, especially being able to go home."

Added Miller: "I talked with Brian Daniels (former Buffs guard from Mullen) during my recruiting, and it was nice to hear the calmness in his voice about, 'This is home for me, this is why I stayed here.' That was just a huge relief for me."

At Boise State for five seasons before CU hired him, Hawkins faced recruiting in a similar state (Idaho) that offered fewer prospects on the radar screen.

"A lot of it comes down to population - just numbers of kids to choose from," he said. "But I think the (high school) coaches in this state do a really good job."

Hawkins, hardly a proponent of the recruiting services' "star" rating system, believes there is little difference in a highly regarded prospect from Colorado, Texas, California or wherever.

"If you're a good player, you're a good player," he said. "We're starting to get there, where the best players want to be here, want to come here and have that sense (of in-state pride). But I think that it's also incumbent on us to help develop that and those relationships and make it a special experience."

STATE OF RECRUITING

CU's active roster includes 28 Coloradans, with five projected as starters. The other four Front Range Division I schools and their Colorado connections.

* AIR FORCE

Colorado players on roster: Six.

Projected Colorado starters: Three.

Inside the Falcons' in-state recruiting: "We think Colorado is one of the best places to recruit. Individual coaches have states, but all 13 of our coaches recruit Colorado. . . . One thing about recruiting Colorado kids, they know the academy. . . . You've probably been on campus two or three times as a kid growing up or probably been to our football camp. It makes an easier recruiting job. When I go to Georgia, where I recruit, I'm asked if it's a boot camp." - Capt. Charlton Warren, recruiting coordinator/secondary coach.

* COLORADO STATE

Colorado players on roster: 51.

Projected Colorado starters: Eight.

Inside the Rams' in-state recruiting: "The most important thing we can do about the football program is try to keep every high school Colorado player in Fort Collins. We know this state is recruited nationally. If we could get every young man in our program out of the state of Colorado, that would be tremendous. Now, is that realistic? Maybe not, but we have to try and lay the foundation here." - Greg Peterson, recruiting coordinator/offensive coordinator.

* NORTHERN COLORADO

Colorado players on roster: 68.

Projected Colorado starters: 17.

Inside the Bears' in-state recruiting: "Every coach on our staff has an area, a zone, in Colorado. He has a good number of schools that he is responsible for staying in touch with and talking with coaches. We try to cover every school in the state. It is a big emphasis for us. When we go into recruiting season, if we have four weeks of recruiting, we always have at least four of our coaches in Colorado." - Scott Downing, coach.

* WYOMING

Colorado players on roster: 30.

Projected Colorado starters: 11.

Inside the Cowboys' in-state recruiting: "We've been doing a great job recruiting down there. What happens for us, we might offer 16 scholarships for four positions, and I think just the proximity of the Front Range, and the familiarity with it, those guys seem to commit sooner than guys from somewhere else. It's a good fit, to be honest. They're close to home, they're the kids that stick around a little longer, do better in school - stuff like that." - Marty English, linebackers coach/chief Front Range recruiter.

Jim Benton, Pat Rooney and Austin Ward contributed to this report.

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