Craigs offer list explodes

Cincinnati (Ohio) St. Xavier linebacker Fred Craig has had a productive spring evaluation process. He's picked up more and more offers as schools have come by the school to check out the 6-foot-2, 210-pound outside linebacker that racked up more than 80 tackles in 12 games.

"Well the last couple of weeks I've been getting a lot more offers," he said. "Last Friday I got offers from Nebraska, Michigan State and Duke. Then Louisville offered right after that. They called my coach, and he told me during school about the offer. I was pretty excited because they just offered my teammate Darius Ashley."

Throw in earlier offers from Air Force, Duke, Cincinnati, Indiana, West Virginia and Miami University, and it's easy to see why Craig is one of Cincinnati's top players. But he still wants to get even better.

"I'd like to improve my leadership skills," he said. "Then as far as technical skills, I want to work on my agility and breaking on the ball. We have 15 returning starters this year so it's going to be interesting. We also have five or six players that have started on varsity since they were sophomores. I think we have a lot of talent."

Which means St. Xavier should be pretty good in 2007.

"We open with Winton Woods, which is a cross town showdown," Craig said. "They're a smaller school, so I think we should win, but they're a tough team so we'll see how it goes."

When it comes to recruiting, a few teams do tend to stand out.

"My dad went to Duke, so that offer kind of stood out to me," he said. "Also Nebraska does, just because of their history and tradition.

"I'm going to Vanderbilt for a camp. I talked to coach Fowler and he said there is a good chance they'll offer if I come to their camp. Then I'm probably going to head to Northwestern as well for their day camp. Also I'm thinking about going out to Stanford since they haven't offered yet."

Craig said he's not ruled out playing with Ashley in college either.

"We've entertained that idea," he said. "We're just keeping our options open right now, but we're close friends so that's probably going to play in somewhere eventually."