There are services in existence which make their living rating, or really forecasting, how well some physically, well-framed kid may or may not pan out as a college athlete. Tons of parents lose sleep over their opinions, openly wage warfare with the pundits on social media platforms, and come away from the process both embittered and cynical.
We tell our children to “not judge a book by its cover;” then colleges buy the figurative book without ever cracking it open. Major college football programs tend to both judge and assess an athlete’s future ability to play the sport of football based mostly off of the characteristics the athlete did nothing to develop. One can work really hard to gain in power, explosion, and even speed. One can’t work his tail off and get any taller or longer.
Well, we here at KPGFootball have good news, or at least we think we do. The good news is people who can actually play football will get an opportunity at some level of competition to play in college. Regardless of the level at which they play, they can still achieve their wildest dreams, even if they don’t end up playing in college football’s highest division.
Don’t believe us? Have you heard of two guys named John Cominsky and Kahzin Daniels?
John Cominsky entered the NCAA, Division II, University of Charleston as a 215-pounder who registered on exactly no-one’s radar as a high school prospect. He came to a very prestigious school in West Virginia’s capital city and earned a degree which is among the most coveted college diplomas one can ever hope to obtain and has now been drafted in the fourth round of this year’s NFL draft. After four years in Charleston, West Virginia, Cominsky is a 285-pound DE who looks and plays like a FBS, power-5-guy. Ratings services, when he was coming out of high school, didn’t know his name. He was what we call a no-star.
There is another difference between Cominsky and many other draftees who just realized their own NFL aspirations upon leaving their FBS, power-5 schools. Cominsky is also leaving with a degree from a school with a total enrollment of 1,881 or so students which routinely ranks among the Southern Region’s Best Universities according to US News, the top rating service for such things. What’s that worth? We think quite a bit!
Another UC Golden Eagle, who is getting a chance at the NFL, is Kahzin Daniels. Daniels is reportedly anywhere from partially to completely blind in his right-eye, which was reputedly unknown to both his teammates and coaches in high school. He, like Big John, was also “a no-star” coming out of high school. Daniels collected 34.5 sacks, over his career at Charleston, and has signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an un-drafted free agent.
So, you see, good football players are found, wherever they may be, by the best in the football business at finding players for the NFL. NFL scouts and GMs don’t care about anything other than can you play. Where you are actually good at playing football, you’ll get a chance whether you played in college for the Ohio State Buckeyes or the Oberlin College Yeomen. Having a degree from a UC, or a Hanover College, or an Oberlin College isn’t a bad thing back on which to fall if that football-thing should happen to not work out for you quite the way you hoped.
Reporting for KPGFootball, this is F.W. Long reminding all of you ballers out there to PLAY THROUGH THE WHISTLE.
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