Summer football tidbits

By Drew Champlin

Published: June 17, 2008

Had a chance to stop by the Troy facility today before I covered some summer league baseball. Apologize for the lack of blog updates this summer, but information is hard to come by. Maybe this will make up for it.

I’ll be running Q and As with Troy football players for the next five weeks starting Thursday. The first will be with DuJuan Harris, then Boris Lee, then Michael Taylor, then TBA-TBA. I talked to QB Jamie Hampton for a good while today, but may turn all that stuff into a story.

***Boris Lee is now 6-foot, 228 pounds. This guy was a first team All-Sun Belt player at 200 pounds. This guy could be the best defensive player in the conference right now and he’ll have my vote for Preseason Defensive Player of the Year. I’ve decided to stop proclaiming that a guy’s going to have a big year, etc., but Boris Lee was very good at 200 pounds. He could be a monster at 225. He gained all the weight (and believe me, it’s not all fat) after having his tonsils taken out in January.

Lee and fellow linebacker Bear Woods are calling themselves the “Killer B’s.“ Embrace that.

***DuJuan Harris was almost 175 at this time last year. This year, he’s 190. He’s only 5-foot-7, but that won’t make a difference. He might be listed a couple of inches taller, but Calvin Dawson of ULM was the best back in the league last year and he was the same height.

***Jamie Hampton is a legit 6-foot-2-and-a-half and 215 pounds now. He wants to get to be around 220 so he can take some more pounding. Interesting, his arm always carried him until he broke his ankle as a high school sophomore. He said he ran a 5-flat then in the 40-yard dash. Somehow, after the ankle was fixed and healed, he started getting faster, down to a 4.8, a 4.6, and if I remember right, he said he’s run a 4.58 in the 40 this summer.

***Michael Taylor got some pretty decent offers to come kick, but he picked Troy. One reason why? His mother and stepfather had just had a baby, and he was excited about being a brother. Being at Troy, he’s much closer to Pensacola than he would have been otherwise, and he can see 2-year-old Jordan more often. He’s got four years just like former kicker Greg Whibbs did, but he said if he breaks a school record, he wants it to be for extra points. Why? It means the offense is doing its job and scoring touchdowns. “Seven is more than three,“ Taylor said.

***Jerrel Jernigan won’t be No. 82 this year. He’ll be No. 3. Dion Gales is No. 98, up from 99 last year.

Here are some newcomers’ numbers. Bear in mind that offensive and defensive players can wear the same numbers, as long as they are not on the field together.

7-Demarcus Robertson (CB)
8-Chip Reeves (WR)
13-Corey Robinson (QB)
14-Jorrick Calvin (CB)
17-Dan Parker (QB - listed as Dantavious Parker, saw him today. Some people think he’ll play this year. “He doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh, he just takes care of business,“ someone told me today. He was also compared, personality-wise, to former WR Gary Banks. That’s a very good thing, in case you’re wondering.
17-Michael Ricks (S)
24-T.J. Mitchell (RB)
25-Chris Anderson (RB)
26-Maurice Greer (RB)
27-Bryan Willis (CB)
29-Kedric Manning (CB)
39-Daniel Sheffield (S)
56-Jacoby Thomas (LB)
59-Kanorris Davis (LB)
79-Tony Davis (DE)
85-Tebiarus Gill (WR)
93-Tim Lamb (DT)
94-Chigozie Nwankwo (DT)
96-James Searcy (DE)
99-Mario Addison (DE)

There will be a few new walk-ons this fall. Here’s some, not all, but some that I saw and wrote down.

41-Rod Winston, 6’2, 220, DB - Columbus, Ga.
57-Brannon Bryan, 6’0, 210, LB - Andalusia
70-Ben Thompson, 6’2, 275, OL - Milton, Fla.
79-Marlon Quinn, 6’3, 295, DL - San Antonio College (Soph.) via Etiwanda, Ca.
82-Rob Byrd, 6’3, 185, WR - Alexandria, Va.
87-Donnie Crosby, 6’2, 256, TE - Arizona Western CC via Millbrook
88-Chris Davies, 6’6, 244, TE - Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

Any questions, feel free to ask.