The annual ritual of National Signing Day arrived last Wednesday, complete with a deluge of coverage on the Internet and ESPN, and school assemblies where the future stars of college football announced their choices.
Beyond the ESPN spotlight and under the radar, Bowie State University football coach Damon Wilson and his staff quietly went about their business last week, putting the finishing touches on the NCAA Division II school’s latest recruiting class. For small colleges like Bowie State, signing day is a low-profile event. Like a struggling business trying to navigate a difficult economy, Bowie State’s football program seeks to do more with less as it competes for players in a region that has increasingly become a recruiting hotbed.
Football fans are quick to rank high school players by a simplistic conventional wisdom: All-state players go the BCS schools, all-county players go the mid-majors and to I-AA programs, and the rest are left to Division II coaches such as Wilson. But the Bowie State coach doesn’t subscribe to that mentality.
“We do a decent job of recruiting I-AA caliber players,” Wilson said. “You hear people talk and say, ‘What is a Division II player?’ I’m not familiar with that term. We recruit football players. They have to be able to compete at any level.”
ndeed, Bowie State has had players move on to pro football, including running back Isaac Redman, who recently finished his second season with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Outside linebacker Delano Johnson, a senior on the 2011 team, has drawn pre-draft attention from NFL scouts and could get a call this April.
Wilson acknowledged that some high school players simply want the experience that comes with playing college football at the highest level. But he doesn’t back down from making a sales pitch to the area’s many high-caliber players. All but four members of Bowie State’s 2011 team were from Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. Read Full Article Gezzette
