Jackson names slight leader
When you’re one of the nation’s top pass catchers as Long Beach Poly’s (Calif.) Desean Jackson is, you can bet your phone will be ringing off the hook. That has definitely been the case and Jackson said he’s close to narrowing his choices down just to ease the burden of all the calls flooding in.
“Man it has been crazy around here,” Jackson said. “I can’t even remember every school that has called to be honest. It’s easier to remember who hasn’t called. Everyone in the Pac 10 except Stanford and UCLA has called and I also haven’t heard from any of the Florida schools. Just about every other school you can think of has called me this month.”
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The lack of interest from UCLA, a school in Jackson’s own backyard has been very puzzling to him.
“That was my favorite school growing up,” Jackson said. “I still have a picture of me in a UCLA jersey standing next to Karim Abdul Jabbar (former Bruin RB) when I was just a little kid. They never wrote me or showed any interest at all. I went to their Junior Day and they said they were going to offer me and then I never heard from them again. My dad went up there recently and they said someone high up at the school said they couldn’t recruit me or something crazy like that.
“I have a 3.0 GPA and a 1280 SAT score so I have no clue what that’s all about but that’s cool. I’m not even tripping on that, there’s a lot of other schools I’m looking at that I like right now so I know I’ll be fine.”
Jackson has three schools he’s definitely going to visit and will set up the dates following Poly’s big week four match-up with Mission Viejo, the nation’s No. 2 ranked team by StudentSports.com.
“I want to take my trips during the season so I can see what it’s like on a game day,” Jackson said. “I’m for sure going to visit Tennessee, LSU and Cal and that might be it. My top three are Cal, USC and Tennessee and Cal has a slight edge right now. I’m just really comfortable there and I like Coach Tedford and that offense. Geoff MacArthur is graduating and I’m being recruited to play his position which is the X receiver. That’s really the focal point of the offense and that’s exciting to me.
“I also know Ken Delgado really well, I mean he’s like family. He coached my brother Byron at San Jose State and he and my dad are like best friends so having him there is huge. USC is still up there too and I like them a lot. They’re not going anywhere and I think I could play early there too because I haven’t been that blown away by their receivers this season. It’s weird though, sometimes I get the feeling that they want me to recruit them instead of the other way around.
“Right now, I’m just going to be focusing on our football season because we have some really tough games ahead of us. We play Clovis East who beat us last year, then we have St. Paul and then Mission Viejo who we have to beat this year. Once that game is over, like I said, then I’ll focus more on recruiting.”