Sunday Special: Bri'onte Dunn gets 'The Call'
By Todd Porter
CantonRep.com staff writer
Posted Sep 20, 2010
While Bri?onte Dunn hasn?t made an informal college commitment yet, the GlenOak High School running back is a bit giddy at the moment. Dunn, who has 1,088 yards rushing and 12 touchdowns in four games, got the call he had been waiting for all summer.
Jim Tressel called Golden Eagle head coach Scott Garcia on Wednesday to let him know the Ohio State head coach would be offering Dunn a scholarship. Colleges can?t formally offer high school juniors a scholarship until Sept. 1. However, overtures can be made among coaches, such as was done with Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati with Dunn.
But Ohio State is the one Dunn had been waiting on. He might have feared it wouldn?t come. Ohio State currently won?t have more than 15 scholarships for its 2012 recruiting class, and Tressel already has one commitment from a running back. Columbus DeSales? back Warren Ball has committed.
Dunn hasn?t committed, but said he planned to sit down and talk with his family about his options this weekend. A verbal commitment on a player?s end is mostly an insurance policy. While colleges don?t have to honor anything other than a signed Division I letter of intent ? that doesn?t happen until February 2012 for Dunn ? any school would be committing recruiting suicide if it did not fulfill a verbal commitment down the road.
That is one of the reasons why players are committing earlier than ever. For example, a player is protected from injury with a verbal commitment.
Dunn may have tipped his hand a bit. Every time he talked about playing at Ohio State, he smiled wide.
?Wednesday night it was tough to sleep,? Dunn said. ?I just called my family and told them all about it. ... When coach Garcia called and told me who he just got off the phone with and said he had good news, that was real nice.
?This offer means a lot. It?s close to home and my family. I?m happy about it, but we?ve got to talk about it, too.?
Dunn is 6-foot-11⁄2 and about 220 pounds. He ran a 4.5 40-yard that was electronically timed at a Nike Combine event in the spring. Ball is about 6-1, 200 with 4.5 speed.