They only allowed a small number of official visits during your junior and senior years. You needed to make every one of them count. My goal was to visit the best possible programs. This camp would help open doors for me.
Quaid Rudd got us together and we went to meet Coach Mason. The last time I saw Quaid, he’d been on the worst Florida team since 1979. They had finished 4–8. Last year had been better. They improved to 7–5, but it wasn’t enough to keep their head coach. The bad news for Quaid was he’d lost his starting job in the spring game. It was hard to fathom that Florida had won National Championships in 2006 and 2008, and in the last two years had gone 11–13.
Coach Mason waited for us in one of the conference rooms.
“David, congratulations are in order for your performance at Elite 11.”
“Thank you, Coach,” I said.
“Quaid and I have had the chance to watch film on all of you. We’re going to work on specific exercises that have been customized for each of you.
“Ben, you look great one moment, and then I don’t know what happens. If I were to guess, I would say you aren’t staying focused.
“Kyle, you are also having consistency problems. You have a high ceiling if we can get that worked out.
“Chuck, we need to work on your mechanics. You have this big windup that’s going to kill you when you get to higher levels. You’re getting away with it in high school, and you might get away with it in college. The pros will eat you up.
“David, you’ve made great strides since I saw you last. I was going to hammer you about your footwork, but from what I saw from the tapes of you at Elite 11, it seems someone helped fix that aspect of your game. I still have a lot to teach you. I think your goal is to be special. We’ll work to get you there.
“I don’t believe in doing a bunch of drills. I want to see you in live action. Go get in your pads and meet me on field three in fifteen minutes.”
We went back to the locker room to get dressed.
“What do you think he means by ‘live action’?” Chuck asked.
“He’s going to run this like a real practice. Instead of shorts and t-shirts, we’ll be fully suited-up. It’ll be live action with tackling and everything,” I said.
I don’t think they believed me.
I LOVED HOW BUD MASON ran a practice. There was no standing around. You took the ball and ran the play; then it was the next guy’s turn. If you were messing up, you went to visit Quaid, who worked with you one-on-one to help you learn the concept or technique Coach Mason wanted you to learn. Then you got back into the rotation.
Houston in the middle of July was hot, and today it was broiling, with the humidity going through the roof. Only Kyle seemed to handle it well. He was from central Florida, after all. I remembered last year I hadn’t stayed hydrated and had cramped up. I made sure to keep drinking fluids as the day wore on.
There was one thing that had changed this year: we had a lot more people watching us. They had set up temporary bleachers on the side of the field so everyone could see. I figured this couldn’t be any worse than ESPNU following me around with a camera crew, so it didn’t bother me. The other three guys struggled with the increased scrutiny. Coach Mason could see they were having problems. I was surprised he didn’t get on them very hard. He would talk to them quietly for a moment and then send them over to Quaid.
I was a different story.
“Gawd damn, Dawson! Where do you need to put the ball?” Coach Mason’s voice boomed.
What the heck? I’d completed the pass. What was he mad at?
“Sir?” I asked, confused.
“If you were going to throw the perfect pass to your receiver, where would you put the ball?”
“I’d hit him in the numbers,” I said without hesitation.
“What do the rest of you think?” Coach Mason asked.
They all agreed with me.
“Wrong! You want the ball at eye level. A receiver has to look the ball into his hands. You don’t want him looking down, you’ll get him killed that way. You want his head up so he can keep track of what’s around him. Now run it again,” Coach ordered me.
He would teach me many little things I needed to know. I’d always thought it was best to put the ball on my receiver’s numbers. When I thought about it, I had to agree with him. What I found when I started to do it his way was that the receivers were using their hands to make the catches. What I mean by that was sometimes a receiver would use his body to trap the ball against his chest. Bad things can happen when you let that happen. A ball hitting football pads tends to cause it to bounce and go in unexpected directions. The second consequence was they sometimes fumbled around to get a grip on the ball and to tuck it correctly. This gave the defensive back an opportunity to strip the ball.
When you throw the ball at a guy’s head, his natural reaction is to get his hands up to keep from getting smacked. Receivers are taught to catch with their hands for good reasons. I found this subtle change helped my receivers to actually catch more balls.
I HAD A GOOD DAY THROWING the ball. The other three guys seemed to get over their jitters by midafternoon and were better able to showcase their talent. When Coach Mason finally called it a day, he held me back after the others had left.
“Remember last year when I was able to keep the press away from you?” he asked.
“Yes, and I really appreciated it.”
“Not happening this year. We’ve been directed to the media center that’s been arranged for camp. Normally the coaches give their observations of how their players performed today. I was told your presence has been requested.”
“Should I go shower first?” I asked.
“Only if you promise to come back.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I confessed.
I went inside the Methodist Training Center and took my shower. I put on shorts and one of the jerseys the camp had provided for me. Quaid waited to show me where to go. I think his real purpose was to make sure I didn’t take off. When I walked in, Quaid led me over to Coach Mason.
We listened as one of the coaches talked about his charges. I was surprised at how technical the discussion was. The questions asked were surprisingly on target. Then I looked closer at the crowd. They had the scouts up front, asking the questions. In the back were football coaches from the various universities. This wasn’t your normal sports reporters’ press conference. These were football junkies!
Coach Mason was next. He had me go up with him and we sat behind a table with microphones and with the Nike logo hanging on the back wall.
Coach Mason: “I’ll make comments about my players and then we will answer questions. I have with me David Dawson who was recently named Co-MVP of the Elite 11 camp. David is currently the number-one rated quarterback in the junior class ...”
Coach Mason did a summary of each of us. He must have complete dossiers prepared by the FBI. He rattled off stats, injuries, and then a summary of his observations about each of us. He saved his observations about me until last.
Coach Mason: “David made considerable progress in his development between his freshman and sophomore years. Amazingly, he has made a similar jump just this summer. He hired Bo Harrington to prepare him for his upcoming junior campaign. Coach Harrington enrolled David for a week’s training at the Sports Training Institute of Chicago.
“This summer David has been working with his high school team five days a week to prepare for the upcoming season. Participation is nearly 100% from team members. He has attended football camps at both Ohio State and Alabama, where he received offers from both schools. David also holds offers from Kentucky, Northwestern and Oregon, and is currently undecided.
“David’s ceiling has virtually no limit. He has the size, skill and leadership to be an impact player at the next level and beyond. Right now, David’s biggest problem is competition: he won’t be playing against hard-enough competition. I’m sure that will be solved the day he enrolls in college.”