Small school stars dream big before NFL draft

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They are a small army of ones.As in one here, one there, scattered well beyond the interstates on the football map. The ones chasing their NFL dreams, hoping someone, anyone, will just take a chance."But really, you only need one team, one person, really," San Diego Chargers and former University of Northern Colorado receiver Vincent Jackson said. "One coach, one scout, one general manager, just one person in one place who believes in what you did."I'm proof. I've always said it. I'm proof nobody really knows how things are going to turn out."In a league that leans toward chasing glamour players from glamour teams in glamour conferences, there still is room in every draft for the NFL's other guys.They're the ones who can remember the first time they passed an NFL scout in the hallway who had their name at the top of the list."It doesn't matter what level they start at," Kansas City Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson said. "It's like we say in the NFL, it's not where you begin, it's where you end up.""Again, I'm the proof," said Jackson, who led all players during the postseason with 300 receiving yards. "A lot can happen in four years. You may not leave anything close to the player you came in as."And those who once were shunned by the football factories, passed over, shoved aside for being too short, too slow, too big a problem, just too something, still can emerge four or five years later as somebody with professional football in his future."I believe if you've got it, you've got it," said Xavier Omon, a 5-foot-11, 228-pound running back from Division II Northwest Missouri State. "If you have the ability to play, no matter where you are, the NFL is going to find you."Omon's resume shows he rushed for at least 1,500 yards in four consecutive seasons and had 93 career rushing touchdowns. Nebraska wanted Omon to wait a year to get a scholarship, but he wanted to play, so that's how he ended up in Maryville, Mo.There is Josh Johnson, a quarterback from the University of San Diego."No, not San Diego State; I get that a lot, so you say that right away -- just San Diego," he said.San Diego plays nonscholarship football, which means Johnson has played do-whatever-you-need-to-do football -- applying for student loans, finding grants. He went 30-4 as a starter in college and last season threw 43 touchdown passes and one interception."And I don't care who you're playing against, buddy, you throw one interception and 43 touchdown passes, that's pretty good," Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden said.But Johnson knows the whispers, and he knows the screams, too, that come in the baggage of those making an unexpected journey."It's always a what-if type with a small-school guy. I mean, we can produce a lot, but it's always going to be because you're playing against smaller competition," Johnson said. "But when you come out and look at the player as players, you can compare a little more, but most of all, you want to look at how he played with his team."Mount Union College receiver Pierre Garcon admits his transcript likely scared away some college football powerhouses from John I. Leonard High School in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he was academically ineligible for two seasons and was able to play only his senior year.So after a year in a Vermont military prep school, he did his own legwork, e-mailed Mount Union coach Larry Kehres and offered himself to the program."I went to them, basically," Garcon said. "I mean, I Googled it a couple times before I went there."And while Mount Union, with nine Division III football championships to go with 55- and 54-game winning streaks in its history, is no neophyte to winning football games, the Purple Raiders usually win them with players the NFL only gives a passing glance.So, Garcon said he approached his pre-draft work with the idea "you can be a hero or you can be just another guy in a 40 time. It is a real big experience. You can become the talk of the town or just another bum who had a shot at it."So here they come again, the ones, the hearty souls who were the big men on the smaller campuses."Nobody came in with a five-star tag on them," Johnson said. "No one was highly recruited. We were all paying for school, and we all just wanted to play football in college and we worked real hard for it."(Jeff Legwold writes for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver)