BYU plays host to 150 potential football recruits

How would you like 150 potential football recruits dropped right on your doorstop on a near perfect summer day?

Well, Michigan and Ohio State experience "it." So do Miami, LSU, Stanford and USC. Penn State coach Joe Paterno once complained when "it" didn't return to his campus, a place way out of the way.

"It" is called a Nike Training Camp and it's for high school football players, a key step in getting labeled as a two-, three- or four-star recruit. After 10 years of lobbying hard to host one of these, BYU finally got one on Saturday.

It's a coveted event. Nike schools like BYU are candidates. Reebok or Adidas or Under Armour schools need not apply. Sorry, Notre Dame.

This one in Provo was small by Nike standards. The Stanford or USC camp can draw more than 600 athletes. But the BYU camp is one of the last in the circuit, and because of that, it drew campers from all over the country who wanted to get noticed just one more time heading into their junior or senior years next fall.

"This just didn't drop in our lap," said BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe. "Our relationship with Nike goes way back with LaVell Edwards and Phil Knight. We earned it."

Like most things this side of Tiger Woods irons and golf balls, Nike decides things.

"They pretty much tell us where to go," said Brian Stumps, the national football director for Studentsports, a marketing firm contracted by Nike to stage such camps that draw the top high school players in the nation to various venues each year.