Bleu Star
Bye Felicia!
- Messages
- 33,925
- Reaction score
- 19,920
I love the perspective. Rico has become my next pet cat. I've seen many a pet cat graduate from cat to lion. Guy like.... Doug Free, Terrell Owens, Orlando Scandrick, Cole Beasley. All not given proper chances by the Cowboys faithful and all beat those odds to excel.
Then there's also my boy Tashard Choice but we won't go there.. lol
Love,
Bleu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SEAN TOMLINSON
APRIL 22, 2016
When you ask Rico Gathers to choose his first love between basketball and football, the answer is instant. It comes without a beat of hesitation.
"Football."
Then when you ask him about the last football game he played, the details flow from a memory that’s etched deep.
"My last game was the junior high championship game," he told Bleacher Report. "It started out with me scoring four straight touchdowns in the first half. They basically all came on the same play. We just kept going to it, and then suddenly it was 28-0."
This is when you stop, and do a double or triple take if you know little about Gathers. Something doesn’t quite add up with that timeline.
And maybe you don’t know much about him. Maybe you’re only a casual college basketball follower.
Let’s have Gathers introduce himself a little more then.
"I’ve studied as much film of Antonio Gates, Jimmy Graham, Rob Gronkowski and Tony Gonzalez as I can," he said. "I studied them all because I feel like I fit the same frame."
That’s just a peek into Gathers’ mindset as he prepares to take his own unique journey down a well-worn path, but one still filled with career quicksand.
The former Baylor power forward is trying to shimmy through the basketball-to-football tight end pipeline, a trail blazed long ago by future Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez. The San Diego Chargers’ Antonio Gates followed, and so did the Seattle Seahawks’ Jimmy Graham, among others.
Those are the names that slide off Gathers’ tongue immediately when discussing his own tight end ambitions. They’re also the names that usually flash in your mind right away when naming successful basketball-to-football tight end transfers.
But Gathers is different. Among a group of triangular-shaped basketball pegs trying to fit into square football holes, he’s the rectangle.
He’s the outcast in a group of outliers, with Gates the only real historical comparison to fall back on. Graham at least played one year of college football and was invited to the Senior Bowl, and Gonzalez logged three seasons for the California Golden Bears, recording 500-plus receiving yards in the last two. Gates, meanwhile, didn’t take the field once at Kent State, and instead stayed focused on basketball before holding a private workout prior to the draft.
Where did Gathers’ last football snap take place, along with those four touchdowns? East St. John Elementary. That’s certainly not some SEC football powerhouse—unless conference realignment takes a truly radical turn someday.
Gathers hasn’t played competitive football since he was on a middle school field at the age of 14. In the years since, he shifted his athletic focus to the hard court, and in 2011 he was named Louisiana’s Mr. Basketball. The award given to the best high school basketball player in the state has also been handed to Glen "Big Baby" Davis and three-time NBA All-Star Paul Millsap.
But even as Gathers kept bruising bodies down low over four years for Baylor while leading his conference in offensive rebounds during the 2015-16 season (128) and in total rebounds the previous year (394), he always had his first love in mind.
The NFL knew it, too. That’s why the talent gem search often took scouts to a foreign place with squeaks and shot clocks. They were there to watch a chiseled athletic specimen who stands 6’7” and weighs 278 pounds.
They were there to watch Rico Gathers.
Follow the > link < for the rest of the story.
More video:
Then there's also my boy Tashard Choice but we won't go there.. lol
Love,
Bleu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SEAN TOMLINSON
APRIL 22, 2016
When you ask Rico Gathers to choose his first love between basketball and football, the answer is instant. It comes without a beat of hesitation.
"Football."
Then when you ask him about the last football game he played, the details flow from a memory that’s etched deep.
"My last game was the junior high championship game," he told Bleacher Report. "It started out with me scoring four straight touchdowns in the first half. They basically all came on the same play. We just kept going to it, and then suddenly it was 28-0."
This is when you stop, and do a double or triple take if you know little about Gathers. Something doesn’t quite add up with that timeline.
And maybe you don’t know much about him. Maybe you’re only a casual college basketball follower.
Let’s have Gathers introduce himself a little more then.
"I’ve studied as much film of Antonio Gates, Jimmy Graham, Rob Gronkowski and Tony Gonzalez as I can," he said. "I studied them all because I feel like I fit the same frame."
That’s just a peek into Gathers’ mindset as he prepares to take his own unique journey down a well-worn path, but one still filled with career quicksand.
The former Baylor power forward is trying to shimmy through the basketball-to-football tight end pipeline, a trail blazed long ago by future Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez. The San Diego Chargers’ Antonio Gates followed, and so did the Seattle Seahawks’ Jimmy Graham, among others.
Those are the names that slide off Gathers’ tongue immediately when discussing his own tight end ambitions. They’re also the names that usually flash in your mind right away when naming successful basketball-to-football tight end transfers.
But Gathers is different. Among a group of triangular-shaped basketball pegs trying to fit into square football holes, he’s the rectangle.
He’s the outcast in a group of outliers, with Gates the only real historical comparison to fall back on. Graham at least played one year of college football and was invited to the Senior Bowl, and Gonzalez logged three seasons for the California Golden Bears, recording 500-plus receiving yards in the last two. Gates, meanwhile, didn’t take the field once at Kent State, and instead stayed focused on basketball before holding a private workout prior to the draft.
Where did Gathers’ last football snap take place, along with those four touchdowns? East St. John Elementary. That’s certainly not some SEC football powerhouse—unless conference realignment takes a truly radical turn someday.
Gathers hasn’t played competitive football since he was on a middle school field at the age of 14. In the years since, he shifted his athletic focus to the hard court, and in 2011 he was named Louisiana’s Mr. Basketball. The award given to the best high school basketball player in the state has also been handed to Glen "Big Baby" Davis and three-time NBA All-Star Paul Millsap.
But even as Gathers kept bruising bodies down low over four years for Baylor while leading his conference in offensive rebounds during the 2015-16 season (128) and in total rebounds the previous year (394), he always had his first love in mind.
The NFL knew it, too. That’s why the talent gem search often took scouts to a foreign place with squeaks and shot clocks. They were there to watch a chiseled athletic specimen who stands 6’7” and weighs 278 pounds.
They were there to watch Rico Gathers.
Follow the > link < for the rest of the story.
More video:
