Stanford commit Colby Parkinson on new commits, upcoming visit

Colby Parkinson is a pretty happy guy these days.

After spending last week in San Antonio, Texas, for the Army All-American Bowl with his future Stanford teammate Walker Little, he was one of many on watch to see if national top-three player Foster Sarell would choose the Cardinal over his home-state team, Washington.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.

“It’s going to be amazing especially for our quarterback Davis Mills,” Parkinson said. “He’s going to be sitting back there throwing the ball to me, so it’s going to be a fun four years with these guys.”

Little and Sarell drew high marks for their work keeping clean pockets for West quarterbacks during the week. Though Mills, a five-star passer, wasn’t able to play for his East team due to injury, he’s certainly looking forward to not have to worry about his protection once the quartet hits campus.

Sarell tried to keep the general public in the dark when it came to giving clues about his commitment, saying that he needed to confer with his family one last time before his announcement. Whether or not that was the case, Parkinson recalled a couple of instances when Sarell tipped his hand.

“At the beginning of the week he tried to keep it a secret,” he said. “Later on though he kept letting it slip like ‘Oh, when we’re at Stanford…’ so us commits, we knew, so going into it we were pretty excited just waiting for today.”

Sarell should be in the bay area with Parkinson, Mills and Little this weekend for Stanford’s biggest official visit gathering. With Sarell now in the fold, Parkinson will try and team up with him to lure another Washington product, Connor Wedington to join the cast.

“It’s a small class, but it’s going to be a good one,” he said. “That first game against USC we all got together, but other than that we haven’t all been out there at the same time. So being there together it’ll be fun just to hang out with the guys we’re going to spend the next four years with.”

After a rough patch in the middle of the season, Stanford rallied to win its final five games in 2016 and capped things off with an exciting victory over North Carolina in the Sun Bowl. That result in concert with the gang’s collective appearance in the Army Bowl is a nice way to leave things ahead of this weekend’s visit.

“Solomon Thomas is a beast,” he said. “That dude just put the team on his back at the end of the game, but it really just showed the resilience of the team and that’s what Coach (David) Shaw’s all about – just toughness and playing to the end of the fourth quarter.”