Best College Player whose talent never translated into the Pro's
 

I watched a few classic college games on ESPN classic and was struck how many "super" players who dominated the great games never translated and played in the pro's.

I thought it might be a good topic to discuss some of these. The guy I was very impressed with was Turner Gill. He seemed to have something special.

Lawrence Phillips

major "the legend" applewhite
archie "my ol does the hard work for me" griffin
brian "they test for steroids in the nfl" bozworth
andre "we're a product" ware and david "of the system" klingler
eric "couldn't even pass in middle school" crouch
soon to be willis mcgahee, aka archie griffin 2

WVU's Major Harris - 10 years ahead of his time.

I was thinking that for Tony Mandarich.

How about Steve "knee blowout" Emtman?

according to CNNSI's top 100 college players, George Gipp is the greatest collegiate never to strike it big in the pros. Of course, he was dead.

Ron Dayne gets the honors of the highest on their list to not make an impact, but he still has time.

Archie Griffin is the highest that played a full career below the potential that people saw when he came out of college.

Ryan Leaf?

Chuck Long

Art Schlichter, who's real talent was in making bad bets.

Rick Mirer

Another guy I was watching was Darian Hagan from the 89 Colorado team. He was the QB. He was like a men among boys, but you never heard from him after that season.

All Bengals 1st round draft picks from 1990 to today

I would have to put Ernie Davis ahead of George Gipp for guys who died before their pro careers. For CNNSI to have Gipp as the fourth best college player ever is ridiculous, he is not even the fourth best tailback to ever play at Notre Dame. That list is not even good enough for a VH-1 special.

Hugh Green was also a player who came to my mind.

EDIT: There/They're/Their

Major Harris.

-Anxiety

*insert Penn State Running back here*

*insert Florida Quarterback here*

did you read the bio?

"Gipp was more than just the focus of the famous Knute Rockne speech or the subject of a Ronald Reagan movie, he was the greatest all-around player to ever play college football as a great runner, passer, defensive back, punter, kicker and kick returner "

A few names who haven't been mentioned:

Danny Weurfal and Charlie Ward (obviously different reasons, but both were super college players)
Marcus Nash
Eric Bienemy

TroyF

Bo Jackson....

Just think of what might have been...

Oh, and I'd like to add to the list:

- Steve Emtman (spelling help, please.... too early in the morning)
- Quentin Coryatt
- Desmond Howard
- Heath Shuler

Anyone the Bengals drafted applies here

Jake Plummer is running out of time to avoid being on this list, too...

More of a high school superstar since he only played 1 year in college, but Marcus Dupree.

not the star people thought he would be, but a long career and a superbowl MVP. I would take that.

All I know was that he sucked for the Redskins when they first drafted him. He had a long career, distinguished only by that one game, but for the most part, he never really was the all-pro superstar that one would have expected him to be coming out of college.

Kind of reminds me of Rocket Ismail...

I'm kinda partial to Jim Druckenmiller

The funny thing about that is Desmond actually had a pretty nice year the last year he was with the Redskins. 40 catches, 727 yards (18.2 average) 5TD's.

You say he had that "one game", but in the '96 season he shattered the league record for punt return yardage in a season. (875-692)

He was a MAJOR reason GB went to that Super Bowl. He was a lot more than that "one game". Beyond that, Desmond ended up with over 7000 total yards in his career. He never was the prolific pass catcher many expected him to be, but he doesn't belong in a conversation with Ryan Leaf either.

TroyF

Maybe he's not as huge a bust as Leaf, but, like so many other Heisman trophy winners, he was crowned as the best college football player in the land, and never achieved a similar level of acclaim in the pros... that's all I was saying.

Hit the nail on the head. This guy would be a certain 1st rounder if he came out now. Instead, he was a 12th round pick by the Raiders because people said he was better suited for the CFL.

I've played basketball with him and had a chance to see him and a few other old WVU players play against an arena league team when Charleston was lobbying for a team. The man still has it, flat out an incredible athlete.

Was probably the closest thing we'll see to Mike Vick, 12 years before Vick was even on the mind of sports fans.

Major made a mistake coming out early. He had financial reasons, but he wasn't ready. If he'd had another year in college, he might have been able to get a chance in the NFL and done something with it.

Ugh

Agreed, but in todays NFL, with that kind of potential, he still goes in the 1st round.

It really is sad, because he's one of the nicest people you could ever meet.

Aundray Bruce

I posted about the Maj on another thread in here about "your future looks bright to me..." or something like that.
He was incredible. His teammate WR Reggie Rembert was an equally big bust. He might've been the first Bengals first rounder to be such a big bust.
The lions have also had a ton of busts. After Barry Sanders a lot of their first rounders have been average or worse. (Andre Ware, etc.)
Another WVU bust was Brian Jozwiak. He was a top ten pick in the mid-eighties and never did much.

Rocky Perez
Brian Natkin

Reggie Rembert was a colossal A-hole. I didn't get along with him very well at all. I think he ended up in jail after his brief time with the Bengals. I never thought he was all that talented, but he benefited a lot from playing on a pretty talented offense.

Rembert had all the tools to be a huge star. He was 6'5'' 4.3 or 4.4 40 time, had a good vertical leap and excellent body control. This was back before there were too many guys with those kinds of tools. He maybe wasn't the smartest guy around. On cincinnatti talk radio they mainly talked about how he couldn't learn the offense and he was in and out of rehab places for alcohol problems.

Yep, Reggie was tall and fast and pretty athletic, but he wasn't a very good football player. He used to drop balls in practice all the time and he hardly ever ran the right routes (of course, Major usually ended up making things up on the field anyway :D). Off the field, Major was a great guy but Reggie wasn't. Reggie treated everyone like crap and he had a major attitude problem.

Tony Mandarich has to get my vote. He was surrounded by SO much hype. Everyone who watched sport center saw clip after clip of this guy making spectacular blocks, sometimes two or three pancake type blocks on the same play. He was supposed to be Superman. He was supposed to protect Brett Favre's backside for the next 10 years. Instead the only package he was good enough to play in was the Packers "Double Jumbo" formation. Double Jumbo was a 4TE set.

With a lot of these guys mentioned above were great atheletes but a lot of people didn't think they would translate to the NFL. Namely guys like Charlie Ward. Also not mentioned, and not a spectacular athelete, but someone who put up great numbers in college, David Klingler.

Regarding Steve Emtman, there's no doubt that given his draft status (#1 pick overall) and mediocre career that his NFL days did not live up to his collegiate performance.

However, I don't think this was due to a lack of talent. Before he blew his knees out with Indianapolis, he was playing quite well. We'll never know how he'd have done had he stayed healthier, and injuries are part of the game, but I think Emtman was a case of injuries decimating his ability to play rather than him being overrated.

I think anyone drafted by the Bengals should be granted clemency from this list, as their professional fates were doomed from the start.

Klingler is a good one. Along the same lines you could make a case for Andre Ware.

Edit: fixed typo.

Do you mean Klingler?

I say Brian Bosworth. And his movie sucked too.

yep. typo.

my vote is for a duo - Johnnie Morton (USC) and J.J. Stokes (UCLA). I remember some talk that these guys would be dueling to be the top receivers in the NFL for years to come. Neither have been terrible, but neither quite became the superstar that I thought they might?

*shiver*

Only reason I pointed this out is that my last name is Klinger and I played only 2 years of college ball (then dropped out) and I thought I may have made an unknown impact. :D

Bienemy was a long time reserve for us and I never knew he was a great college player?

Ki-Jana Carter. He was supposed to be our future.

Tim Couch

Where did you play?

I played a year at WV Tech (very small school) and then transferred to WVU and played 2 seasons. I was too good for Tech and not good enough for WVU. :D

Josh Heupel.

Great college QB and leader, but couldn't even make an NFL roster as a back-up.