Rivals 100 junior member lands first offer

Although it's very early to start talking juniors, there is no doubt one of the top prospects in the class of 2007 is Portland (Ore.) Benson Tech defensive lineman Myles Wade. Wade is a member of the Rivals 2007 100 to watch list and could be the premier defensive lineman in the West Coast next season.

Wade, 6-2, 290 pounds will be a national recruit and is already hearing from schools all over the country. He just picked up his first of what will be several scholarship offers a few days ago.

"Oregon State just offered me," Wade said. "I was pretty excited. I'm getting a ton of mail right now from just about everyone and when I opened the letter from Oregon State, I was reading it and assuming it was the same standard letter everyone else has been sending. Then at the bottom in big black letters, it said they were offering me a scholarship and I thought that was pretty cool.

"There has been a lot of schools sending mail every week including Michigan, Cal, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Stanford, Arizona State, Virginia, Michigan State, LSU and several others. It has kind of surprised me but it's exciting at the same time."

Wade burst on to the scene as a sophomore last year when he dominated everyone he went up against including Portland (Ore.) Grant lineman and current Nebraska freshman Ndamukong Suh. The tackle also was one of the best tackles we saw at both the NorCal and Oregon Nike camps this past spring. The big lineman clocked a 5.10 in the 40, 4.47 in the shuttle, jumped 29 inches in the vertical and did 28 reps on the bench, not bad for a player only entering their junior season.

It's obviously very early in the process and Wade will likely change his favorites a couple of hundred times between now and Signing Day of his senior year but we asked if there were any schools that stood out at this early point.

"Yeah, I've always liked Texas," Wade said. "I don't have any ties or family there, I just have always like watching them. Derrick Johnson was one of my favorite players to watch and Texas always has very good defensive linemen so that's why I like them. My dad likes Notre Dame and my mom likes Oklahoma and I like both as well. Of course Oregon State is up there since they're local and they'r my first offer and I like Michigan a lot too."