Just curious EKU, what took you so long to get to the party? You know the time to invest in a company going public is before the IPO!
During periods of economic disparity in America, some people would go down to the train station and “hop on a freight train” to afford travel to distant places. Hell, it was free.
This was called freight-jumping and the people prone to do it became known far and wide as “hobos.” Of course, one had to get there before the freight train heading where they wanted to travel left the station.
We thought of this when we heard of EKU’s recent offer extended to Darion Dearinger. Darion is a 6-3, 260-pound player which one of our chief rivals listed on its site as a TE. We’ve been writing about him for years, they just heard about him and apparently not too accurately.
Those of you familiar with the site know one of our favorite players is Anderson County’s Dearinger. The hulking, Class of 2021, TE-DE (mostly DE) prospect is really hot on the recruiting trail too with three Division I offers, two in the FBS (Bowling Green, Marshall) and one in the FCS (Eastern Kentucky University). The third, not the first-one to offer was FCS’s, EKU.
That brings us to our point this morning. What is taking FCS teams, like EKU, so long to get to the party on an instate and proximately located player like Dearinger, whose dad happened to play there?
It is not like he is a recent discovery to the coaching staff at EKU. We happen to know he camped there between his freshman and sophomore years and the staff thought so much of him they came up into the stands to find his dad, Justin, to make sure the Dearingers felt sufficiently welcomed.
Our friend Justin, and we, all thought EKU would pull the trigger then, not now, after two FBS programs have hopped on board. This begs the question, has this freight-hopper (EKU) arrived at the train yard too late? Has the Dearinger-train already left the station?
We suppose only Darion can answer that. We can tell you, in talking with Dearinger’s dad, Justin, the fact Bowling Green was Dearinger’s first offer has resulted in his having stronger feelings for the Falcons than other schools presently.
It is sufficiently advantageous to be the first one to pull the trigger on a prospect. Lots of athletes have selected a school and sited the reason chiefly being that school had offered them first, before any of the other suitors.
Tennessee Tech’s being the first to offer Da’Rick Rogers, many years ago, worked out well for the FCS-school. Rogers, a 5-star rated player out of Georgia initially went to Tennessee.
After a stellar season in his second year, which saw him selected first-team All-SEC, he was dismissed from the team for rules violations. He then went back to his first offer (Tennessee Tech) and caught 61 passes for 893 yards and 10 touchdowns in his lone season in Cookeville before declaring for the NFL draft.
The point here is Tennessee Tech’s being the first to offer made them the landing spot when Rogers needed one. It was a gamble for a FCS school to float an offer to a 5-star rated player out of Georgia, but it paid HUGE dividends.
In fact, Rogers may be the only former 5-star rated player to ever play in Cookeville. None of it happens if they hadn’t been brave enough to pull the trigger.
So, we are thrilled Darion is heating up on the trail. The first day of school, this term, will be Darion’s first day in high school as a junior. Dearinger is hardly done fielding offers.
Strangely, once the first offer comes in, the offers start coming in droves. Why colleges have to wait for someone else to invite you to the dance before they find you pretty enough to date is worthy of its own article.
For now, we will leave it at this…Eastern Kentucky was probably the first to determine Dearinger was a Division-I player. That discovery led to exactly no action taken whatsoever.
The Colonels being among the first to evaluate Darion gave EKU an opportunity it passed on taking. Opportunity knocked and no one was home to answer the door.
Instead, EKU decided (we think foolishly) to wait and see what others did with the same information, once they had it. These other schools elected to act and acted immediately.
What the Colonels did here with Dearinger was eerily similar, in financial terms, to learning of a company’s going public and waiting until after the stock’s value has inflated to invest. They slow walked him until two bigger programs, both (our opinion) more prestigious and playing at a higher level of D-1 football, offered.
EKU has certainly arrived at the station late. They arrived at the station late in spite of being the first school to see the train and be able to evaluate where it was certainly headed.
Have they gotten to the station too late? Has the train already left the station? I suppose only time will tell.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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