May 24, 2007

Original Story

Posted on Mon, May 21, 2007


Fleet feet lead to Chiefs


Wide receiver Ryan, a former track star, hopes to follow athletes from
other sports who have made it in the NFL.


By RANDY COVITZ


The Kansas City Star


"He can run fast. He's a guy to take a shot on."

-- Chiefs coach Herm Edwards


Wide receiver Titus Ryan played in just seven college football games. He
caught only six passes. And that was at the NAIA level.

So why will Ryan be in the Chiefs' offseason program alongside
first-round draft pick Dwayne Bowe and veteran Eddie Kennison? Check the
stopwatch. When Ryan runs, he's an absolute blur.

Ryan was a track star in junior college before playing one season of
football at tiny Concordia College-Selma in Alabama and is one of a
growing number of athletes trying to cross over to the NFL.

Before the NFL draft, Ryan, who had another year of college eligibility,
showed up at pro days at the University of Alabama and at Tuskegee
University. He blew away the Division I and Division II guys.

"When he ran a 4.28 in the 40 at a pro day, we knew he was out the
door," Concordia coach Shepherd Skanes said.

The Chiefs had scouts there and put Ryan through extensive workouts.
After the draft, they signed Ryan, a 6-foot, 193-pounder, to a two-year
contract with the hope he can follow others such as Antonio Gates,
Marcus Pollard and Stephen Neal, who became NFL standouts without
playing college football.

Gates, a power forward who led Kent State's basketball team to the NCAA
Tournament's Elite Eight in 2002, is a three-time Pro Bowler with the
San Diego Chargers. The Seattle Seahawks' Pollard, who played basketball
at Bradley, is in his 13th season as an NFL tight end, mostly with
Indianapolis. Neal, a two-time NCAA wrestling champion at Cal State
Bakersfield, is a three-year starting guard for the New England
Patriots, including the 2004 Super Bowl champions.

The New York Jets invited two former college wrestlers, Cole Konrad, a
two-time NCAA champion at Minnesota, and Tommy Rowlands, a two-time NCAA
champion at Ohio State, to their rookie mini-camp. They signed Virginia
Commonwealth's Jesse Pellot-Rosa, a guard on the basketball team that
upset Duke in the first-round of the NCAA Tournament.

The Jets looked at Konrad as a guard, Rowlands as a linebacker and
Pellot-Rosa as a wide receiver.

Jets coach Eric Mangini, a former high school wrestler, was on the New
England staff when Neal made the transition to football, and that's what
attracted him to Konrad and Rowlands, who also are competing for the
same spot on the U.S. Olympic team.

"When we were going through the process looking for tryout candidates,
we obviously went through the traditional mode of guys that hadn't been
drafted and played college football," Mangini said, "but we did look in
a lot of different areas, decathletes, wrestlers, track athletes, that
have very good college careers, foreign players, basketball players,
pretty much anything we could think of where there may be transferable
athletic characteristics.

"If they have core characteristics, good work ethic, intelligence, the
things that we look for, then it is our job to teach them and their job
to take advantage of the opportunity."

Chuck Cook, the Chiefs' director of college scouting, compared Ryan to
Willie Davis, who was unearthed at Central Arkansas and spent some time
on the practice squad and in NFL Europe before blossoming into as
productive receiver during 1992-95. Davis is now a Chiefs scout.

"It took Willie a couple of training camps, but he made it," Cook said.
"If they can catch the ball and scare people deep, you've got
something."

Ryan, who is from Tuscaloosa, Ala., still holds the Alabama state high
school record in the 100-meter dash with a time of 10.44 seconds and was
ranked by some as the fifth-best football prospect coming out of high
school in 2002. However, because his ACT score did not qualify at the
University of Alabama, he went the junior-college route.

Competing for Wallace State-Hanceville of Alabama, Ryan won the long
jump at the national junior college indoor meet in 2003-04, and that
spring placed second outdoors in the 100-meter dash (10.38) and second
in the 200 (21.21). Then, he decided to give football another chance at
Concordia-Selma, and now he's in an NFL camp.

"At the pro days, I showed them I had good hands and impressed a couple
of people," said Ryan, who strained a hamstring during the Chiefs'
rookie minicamp. "I just have to work hard and pray to make it."

More often than not, these experiments fail. A few years ago, the Chiefs
tried Olympic sprinter John Capel as a wide receiver, but he washed out.
Minnesota tried turning pro wrestler Brock Lesnar into a defensive
lineman, but he did not survive training camp.

Denver turned Mercer University basketball player Wesley Duke into a
tight end in 2005, and he even started the AFC championship game but was
waived last year. In fact, tight end seems to be the most popular
positions for college basketball players, but teams soon discover there
are just so many Tony Gonzalez-type players out there.

Last year, Jai Lewis, who led George Mason to the Final Four, went to
camp with the New York Giants, and Long Beach State's Onye Ibekwe tried
out with San Francisco, but neither made it.

Chiefs coach Herm Edwards has seen enough in Ryan to invest time and
effort into developing him.

"He can run fast," Edwards said. "He's a guy to take a shot on. You know
guys like this have a learning curve, and you hope they can learn it
within two or three years and get better. If not, then you've got to
move on. You can't hold on to them too long or you detract from the
ability to bring another guy along. That's the key. How long are you
willing to wait?

"And you hope what doesn't happen is you let the guy go, and you coached
him three years for somebody else, and he goes to some other team and
makes it, and you say, 'Man, what just happened?' "


PHOTO: Members of the Wallace State track team with Titus Ryan, center.

  Kristen Holmes
  Director, Communications and Marketing
  Wallace State Community College
  P.O. Box 2000
  Hanceville, AL 35077
  256/352-8118
  E-mail: Kristen.Holmes@WallaceState.edu