Covington can do it all

Milwaukee (Wis.) Riverside three-star running back Shane Covington is one of the most heavily recruited players in Wisconsin. And for good reason. The 6-foot, 181-pound Covington rushed for 675 yards and eight scores as a junior. He also had 378 yards receiving and two scores and four punt returns for touchdowns.

His versatility is definitely something the college coaches love. And he's definitely also been getting plenty of love from the college coaches.

"I'm hearing the most from Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois," he said. "I'm going down to Illinois on the 21st for their academic day. I'm going to Indiana on either the 12 or the 13th for a visit."

"I've been to the Wisconsin camp, Purdue camp and the Minnesota camp. I'm probably going to try and go to Michigan State for a visit. Also I'm going to try and go to Iowa."

With offers from Illinois, Kansas State and Ball State, Covington recently added another Big Ten offer.

"Indiana offered probably like two weeks ago," Covington said. "They called my coach and told me to call coach Mike Yeager. So I called him, and he said they wanted to offer me. They wanted me to come visit them, so they can get my exact weight and height. That's why I'm going down on the 12th or 13th."

"I'll probably have my decision made before the beginning of our season."

If he had to chose today, Covington said he would either pick Illinois or Kansas State, but he also said he's not heard a lot lately from the Wildcats.

"It'd probably be Illinois or Kansas State," he said. "My top five would be Illinois, Kansas State, Minnesota, Michigan and Indiana."

Covington would love to have decision out the way so he could focus on a big 2007 season. He's been working hard with his teammates and knows big things are coming.

"We look pretty good," he said. "We've been doing these little team camps. We're going to have a strong defense but we're probably going to struggle a little on offense. We've got a lot of sophomores and juniors.

"We're going to run the ball a lot. I expect to get like NFL carries, somewhere around 34 a game. Last year we had like six running backs. Our quarterback had like 300 yards rushing, our wing back had like 400, our fullback had like 500 and then I had like 600. We all split carries. We had a lot of running backs, but this year I'm the only running back coming back."