OT Chris Freeman

Husker_Power said:
A player of his size has to have more offers than Nebraska and he does. Name a top Division-I program and he has an offer from it. Penn State, Florida, Kentucky, LSU, Michigan, Miami, North Carolina State and Nebraska are some of them. You can expect Ohio State will end up being in the picture at some point in time.

Link
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Oh to be 6'7" and young:

Has played one high school game. Recently declined to be measured at camp. Eye-balled at 6'7" 300 lbs

Ohio State fans are providing their usual calm, level-headed analysis:

Trotwood kids don't get offers from Ohio State.

 
Ohio Pete said:
Husker_Power said:
A player of his size has to have more offers than Nebraska and he does. Name a top Division-I program and he has an offer from it. Penn State, Florida, Kentucky, LSU, Michigan, Miami, North Carolina State and Nebraska are some of them. You can expect Ohio State will end up being in the picture at some point in time.

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Oh to be 6'7" and young:

Has played one high school game. Recently declined to be measured at camp. Eye-balled at 6'7" 300 lbs
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Size isn't everything ;) .

I'm a solid 6'5 280, and you'd never want me to play football for good ol' NU!

 
Being the first-offer and Bo being from the area should help here. He would be a real coup and could help us get more guys from Ohio. Getting him in for a visit is very nice step. Hope he is impressed with what he sees.

 
Here is the video highlights from his one and only game Scouting Ohio.

Seems to be able to move and pass block well. Trotwood Madison is a pretty good team, and the fact that they started him at left tackle in his only game speaks to his natural talent for the position. With proper coaching, could be a great one.

 
DeathCultArmaggedon said:
Has anyone heard anything on this guy? I would think that he would have been more highly touted by now, given his physical skills.
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Found this article link on Buckeye Planet:

WVU on offensive lineman's list

By Mike Casazza

Daily Mail sportswriter

MORGANTOWN - There is something mysterious and borderline mythical about Chris Freeman, who quite suddenly has become one of the nation's most coveted offensive tackle prospects.

He has received no less than 20 scholarship offers, including one from West Virginia University he holds in high regard.

Jump on the Internet and search for facts about the mammoth lineman from Trotwood, Ohio, and it won't take long to learn there aren't too many tangible truths out there.

The list of colleges that reportedly have offered scholarships to the rising senior at Trotwood-Madison seems too good to be true, especially for a kid who doesn't have a traceable history in the sport.

His height ranges from 6 feet, 3 inches to a full six inches taller and his weight is listed anywhere from 290 pounds all the way to 350.

"There are a lot of articles I've read that say he's 6-7," said Freeman's father, Mike, who was a standout basketball player in Charleston in the early 1980s. "He was 6-6 in the eighth grade and he's grown since then."

Whether Chris would be a star never really was a concern. His mother, Mia, was a winner on the track at Charleston High.

"She," Mike said, "is the athlete in the family."

Mike was no slouch. He averaged 14.4 points per game as a senior at Charleston High, where his father, John, was the athletics chaplain. Mike graduated in 1984 with a scholarship to Cedarville University, a small NAIA school in Ohio. He scored 1,558 points in four seasons there.

Chris chose basketball first and had a bunch of scholarship offers from Mid-American Conference schools.

Now, though, he has football offers from WVU, Marshall, Nebraska, Miami, Florida, LSU, Texas Tech, Penn State, Michigan, Alabama, Oregon, North Carolina State, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Illinois and UCLA.

This is where things get interesting.

"He never played football before this year," Mike said. "Not once."

Chris was working out with the basketball team last summer when the Trotwood-Madison quarterback caught a glimpse. In awe of the combination of size, speed and mobility, he passed along an invitation for Freeman to come to football practice.

"I'd never played it, but I fell in love with it right away," Chris said. "It's the best decision I ever made."

In his first practice, he lined up across from Jamiihr Williams, a defensive end/linebacker who has signed with Michigan State. Chris pancaked Williams on three of the first five plays.

"That's what my coach told me," he said. "I don't want to sound cocky, but I was like, 'That's what I've got to do?' I started doing it to everybody.' "

The school's football coach, Maurice Douglass, played defensive back for 11 seasons in the NFL with the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. He assured Chris' parents football was the proper path for the future.

"I'll be honest, I didn't like it," Mike Freeman said. "He'd played basketball all his life and had always been on the elite AAU teams, the very best teams out of Ohio. He was getting a lot of offers, so this wasn't something at the time my wife and I really invited."

Then they saw the way their son controlled the line of scrimmage, the way he transitioned the basketball skills to the football field and the way colleges took note.

One of Bo Pelini's first moves as the Nebraska coach was to offer Chris a scholarship.

"I'd trusted Chris' coach, who was a former NFL player, and I respected his judgment," Mike said, "but that first offer is what convinced us."

Chris said he's 6-9 and 330 pounds and that his height actually is a concern.

"I don't know of any 6-10 or 6-11 tackles in the NFL or in college," he said.

"Everyone tells me I've got good size, but I want to get down to 315 or 320 pounds to be one of the quickest left tackles in the nation."

His other recruiting vitals also are largely unknown, but mostly because he hasn't been around long enough to do the recruiting combines and summer camps. He said he benches 330 pounds and squats 525 and generally is timed between 5.0 and 5.15 seconds in the 40-yard dash.

Freeman, who is being recruited at WVU by safeties coach Steve Dunlap, already has visited Michigan, Ohio State and Florida for its spring game. He figures he'll visit a few more schools, including WVU, during the summer and then take official visits during and after his high school season.

Before that, though, he'll trim the long list to a handful of finalists.

"Patience is the key to everything," he said. "I don't want to rush anything. I don't want to give a verbal (commitment) early and then pull it back and do something different on signing day. When I make a decision, that'll be it until signing day."

The Freemans still have friends and family in the Charleston area. That combined with Chris' fondness of the spread offense makes WVU "a place I will always keep in my mind," he said.

"To be honest with you, no matter how this ends, we really look at it as a blessing," Mike Freeman said, "because if you look at it logically, it doesn't make a stitch of sense."
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Latest rivals says he'll be visiting Wisconsin, Illinois, Miami, Florida State, Florida, and Tennessee

 
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His coach has just been suspended:

High school football: Trotwood-Madison coach suspended for recruiting attemptsFriday, July 18, 2008 6:03 AM

A high school football coach has been suspended for trying to recruit players enrolled at other schools, the Ohio High School Athletic Association reported.

Trotwood-Madison coach Maurice Douglass, who played for the Chicago Bears and New York Giants and is a graduate of Independence High School, is prohibited from coaching in practices and games for weeks three, four and five of the regular season.

The penalties against the football program at the suburban Dayton school also include the dismissal of an assistant coach, and two senior students have been declared ineligible from participating in sports for one year at any school that is a member of the association.

The program also was placed on probation for two years.

The penalties, which followed a seven-month investigation, were agreed to by OSHAA and the school.

Trotwood-Madison was 8-4 last season and made the Division II regional playoffs. In his tenure, Douglass' teams have sent several players to Division I college programs and many more to lower divisions.
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This is very interresting. When I was in High School and played football it seemed to be the same situation in Sioux City, IA as far as Heelan High was concerned. I can't really say this happened and I certainly hope not. But, it did look to me and many others, that alot of the area athletes playing in different sports ended up there. Even when they went to schools across the river in South Sioux City, NE. I always wondered about this. Now I don't want to be sued or anything so, I want to make this very clear. This was just my observation and it was a topic of discussion in the area. I certainly have nothing against Heelan. It was just very strange to me.

 
In Scout's latest he says:

- he is still wide open

- Darrell Scott and Doug Rippy have been recruiting him for Colorado and he is interested. (You'll recall Doug Rippy got recruited to play for Trotwood-Madison last year with Freeman, decommitted from Nebraska, and likes dudes who wear skirts.)

- he hopes to visit Oklahoma

 
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recently listed Wisconsin, Colarado, Missouri and Tennesse as his top 4.

Visited Colarado last week, cancelled his Wisconsin visit for this week and is instead going to MU. Tennesse is scheduled for next weekend.

 
Somehow missed that he signed with Missouri. I guess Pinckle will get a chance to find out about kids from Trotwood-Madison. Good luck fro. If all else fails, he'd be a menace on the basketball court.

 
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