Virgile up to a dozen known offers

North Miami Beach, Fla. exemplifies a team-first attitude. Though four Chargers currently hold offers, they are more focused on the success of the team than they are their recruitment at the moment.

Though the players are not paying too much attention, it has not stopped college coaches from making their cases, especially with linebacker Keeon Virgile. The 6-foot-2, 225-pound defender has offers from Ole Miss, Kansas, Kansas State, Syracuse, Minnesota, Texas Tech, USF, UCF, Wake Forest, Bowling Green and FIU. However, there very well could be others as well.

"I really don't know anything about any new offers," Virgile said. "The only ones I know are the ones you guys have listed. All the other ones, I have to ask my coach about."

Virgile has only one focus right now and that is making sure his senior season sees his team make a deep postseason run.

"I haven't been to any camps," he said. "I've just been working out with the rest of our team. I don't know if I'll end up going anywhere either. It just depends on if our coach has time for us to go. We've got a lot of practice to get in because we didn't do so well last year. That's our main focus.

"We want to beat all the teams that beat us. We took those losses really personally. We want to win it all."

North Miami Beach, a traditional power in South Florida, struggled to a 4-6 record a year ago. It is not something that Virgile wants to see repeated.

"I don't really know what happened," he said. "I know our defense was strong except for one game where we gave up too many yards. I believe that was my fault. I'll take the blame for that one. I didn't check with my teammates too much. I was overlooking things. Wherever I was supposed to be, that's where their running back was going to.

"That was the game against Killian. I have like a grudge against Killian now because they really beat us. They had a bunch of unanswered points in the second half."

Though his focus has not been on recruiting, Virgile has had some time to speak with a few college coaches.

"I've talked to a couple of coaches," he said. "I called them with my coach. I've called and talked to Bowling Green and Kansas so far. I've also talked to UCF, but that's about it. I've called the University of South Florida, but they haven't been able to answer yet. I guess they're not allowed to call me back themselves.

"Every now and then, when we come to practice, my coach will take out some numbers and we'll call those coaches. He makes sure that we don't get big heads in the recruiting process."

He also admits to having a few programs standing out at the moment.

"I like the University of South Florida, Syracuse, Kansas and Western Michigan," Virgile said.

Western Michigan has had plenty of success recruiting the high school over the years, so the Broncos are a very real contender for Virgile's services.

"There's a lot of them up there," he said of his former teammates at WMU. "The roster up there is full of guys from our school. They talk to us about the school, but they say it's up to us. I'm sure they want us to come up there and play with them, too, though. I'm going to make it up there with one of my official visits."