Huskies Get In Line with Offer to 4-Star Louisiana Defensive Lineman
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Besides the richest TV contract and the most championship trophies, they say the biggest difference between the SEC and the rest of the college football landscape is the overly dominant defensive lineman.
They have the best ones down South. They have huge and powerful players ready to tear people limb from limb, and their demolition efforts tend to draw high individual ratings and top-level team rankings.
From the size of his offer list, Jowhar Franklin Jr. from New Orleans seems to fit that bill.
As of Friday, the 6-foot-6, 300-pound prospect from John Curtis Christian High School and the class of 2024 held 32 scholarship proposals, with the most recent one coming on Thursday from Kalen DeBoer's University of Washington staff.
Good luck to anyone trying to reach this 4-star kid on his cell phone a second time.
Franklin, on a recruiting podcast titled "Next Up," said he was motivated to be great after being underrated — and he's been pegged as the No. 8 DL prospect nationwide.
Huh?
"Because I'm not No. 1," Franklin said.
To follow his recruitment on Twitter is like watching a reality TV show.
A year go, he proudly proclaimed how he was up to 340 pounds. Apparently someone got back to him and changed his line of thinking. He's now a svelte three bills.
In mid December, Franklin lamented how he'd texted 300 coaches and received zero responses. Of course, all who were working for the better college programs were getting ready for bowl games at the time.
He wished everyone a Happy Mother's Day with a photo of a cemetery plot, with it unclear if that described his family situation, not a good thing at all for a 17-year-old if it did.
Franklin had one of the recruiting sites do a graphic indicating he'd narrowed his choices to six schools — Cincinnati, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Miami, Tennessee and Texas A&M.
He next posted how he had lost all of his recruiting contacts, was no longer at his high school (though it appears he still is) and temporarily shut down his recruitment for mental health issues.
The day before the Huskies came calling, he posted his supposed final three choices — Clemson, Ohio State and Tennessee.
Note that local LSU and Tulane don't appear among his early stabs at pruning down his selections, though he's visited Baton Rouge and posed for publicity images. For the record, just four of his 32 suitors so far are SEC entries.
Franklin played for a John Curtis Christian team that went 12-2 and won a state championship. He finished with season stats of 29 tackles, including 5 tackles for loss, and 2 forced fumbles, which seemed somewhat modest, yet his highlight footage showed him double-teamed more often than not.
For sure, he appears to be one of those athletically gifted ones at that coveted and game-changing defensive-lineman position, plus he's somewhat of a character, an impressionable teen and a philosopher, all in one.
"I tell myself good times take time," he said on that aforementioned podcast, "and hard times don't last forever."
Let his intense college football recruitment continue.
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