Class of 2018 - DE Casey Rogers (NY) Verbal to Nebraska / Transfer to Oregon | Page 6 | Syracusefan.com

Class of 2018 DE Casey Rogers (NY) Verbal to Nebraska / Transfer to Oregon

OrangeXtreme said:
No idea.

Hope this doesn't bite Dino in the ass. I'd hate to lose a future AA right out of our own backyard. :rolleyes:
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Re: "bite Dino in the ass"

I have to believe that our complete and utter lack of pursuit of this kid, given the numerous SU connections, was a function of the family informing the football coaching staff that there wasn't interest on the kid's part. So our coaches didn't waste their time. Otherwise, it makes no sense to just ignore a kid who picked up so many P5 offers sitting in our back yard.
 
How close are the Rogers family and the Hicks family?
 
Getting the feeling hes a real deal scholarship player
 
OrangeXtreme said:
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I'm not sure if I had read this article from the first page that OX posted. I think it sheds some light on a lot of the questions being asked in this thread. SU was well aware of him

Rogers has already camped at Alabama, Penn State, Colorado, Syracuse, West Virginia, Boston College and Connecticut this summer and heads to Ohio State on Friday.

also...

Syracuse is also in the mix, Rogers said. He's being recruited by tight ends coach Reno Ferri and has spoken with head coach Dino Babers a couple times, most prominently during a visit the day before the Orange's spring game.


And SU offers a unique opportunity: the ability to play football and lacrosse in college, should he be extended a scholarship offer from Babers and Co.


There obviously wasn't mutual interest. Otherwise why wouldn't Babers offer?
 
RF2044 said:
Re: "bite Dino in the ass"

I have to believe that our complete and utter lack of pursuit of this kid, given the numerous SU connections, was a function of the family informing the football coaching staff that there wasn't interest on the kid's part. So our coaches didn't waste their time. Otherwise, it makes no sense to just ignore a kid who picked up so many P5 offers sitting in our back yard.
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That or the offers are PWO's.

It's puzzling.

Edit* - 2-4-7 is reporting him as a legitimate scholarship commitment. He appears on the Nebraska commit list unlike Kevin Johnson Jr. for us, who we believe is a PWO. So looks like he was in fact offered a scholarship.
 
Last edited:
RF2044 said:
Re: "bite Dino in the ass"

I have to believe that our complete and utter lack of pursuit of this kid, given the numerous SU connections, was a function of the family informing the football coaching staff that there wasn't interest on the kid's part. So our coaches didn't waste their time. Otherwise, it makes no sense to just ignore a kid who picked up so many P5 offers sitting in our back yard.
Expand...

Syracuse was well aware, Football program/Babers just didn't have any real interest from what I was told. Not saying thats good or bad but there wasn't a ton of interest.
 
tep624 said:
Yeah seems that way. Guess we'll have to look back on this in 4 years and see how it played out.
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Concern he would lose interest and switch back to lacrosse? Maybe doesn't fit the athletic mold for the D? In 4 years we'll know how well he did in a different scheme, might not be apples to apples.
 
Jake said:
Not everyone wants to attend college where dad works...not saying its the case here, but to be honest...its the LAST place I would have wanted to go.
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Buddy says, "Hi." :D
 
Jake said:
Not everyone wants to attend college where dad works...not saying its the case here, but to be honest...its the LAST place I would have wanted to go.
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He was okay playing Lacrosse here
 
6_8056983.jpg

(Photo: @caseyrogers99)

One quickly finds it would be wrong to tell Casey Rogers he can't do something.

Don't tell him you need to specialize in one sport like a few too many kids do these days upon bad advice. Don't tell him a kid from New York who is off the path of most college football recruiters can't get his shot too.

And, oh yes, don't tell him he can't figure out how to ice skate in a year so he can compete against kids who have been chasing pucks since they escaped the playpen. Maybe here is the space to share that story from when he was in eighth grade. It'll tell you a little something about the Husker football commit.

Casey's dad, Lelan Rogers, had been coaching lacrosse at Cortland, the State University of New York. Now Dad had taken a job as an assistant at Syracuse, where he played the sport in college, and so the family made about a 30-minute move.

Casey soon realized his new neighbors, who quickly became his best buds, were all about hockey. When they were gone practicing, he was annoyed he wasn't part of it. He'd go to their games, and was drawn to guys checking each other into the boards. Contact? Yes please.

So in eighth grade, having never played before, he said, "Why not try?" He had been playing basketball, but a guy like him was always picking up fouls. Why not be rewarded for his physicality?

Casey took advantage of his dad working at Syracuse and found a rink where he could practice skating every day. "I never took lessons," he says. He taught himself.

A year later, he tried out as a high school freshman. He made the varsity roster. He became a three-sport guy: Lacrosse, football and hockey. He can't picture doing it another way now.

"It puts a lot of tools in your tool box and it also teaches you a lot of lessons about competing," he says. "It's just part of who I am now."

Who he is as of this past week is a Nebraska football commit, pledging to the school three weeks after being offered.

He is an athlete who once was committed to play lacrosse at Syracuse, who once got called into Nick Saban's office because of how he impressed at a football camp, who once decided to take up wrestling and compete against heavyweights just for the fun of it.

That last part just in recent weeks. He weighs 255 and is wrestling against dudes bigger than him. But he was still 3-0 on the mat as he spoke to Nebraska 247Sports on Friday night.

"And I'm having a really fun time, and I wish I had wrestled all my life," he says.

The quick takeaway is that when Casey Rogers puts his mind to do something, he's probably going to not just do it, but have success.

Like that time around his junior year of high school when he decided he wasn't going to play lacrosse at Syracuse even though he was a high school All-American in the sport and the school is a perennial power. Casey came to the simple truth he'd be more comfortable living with not playing lacrosse after high school than not having played football.

Talk about betting on yourself. At the time, Casey had zero offers and zero interest. By the time he finished high school, he had but one lonely offer from Western Michigan, which had some coaches who had previously been at Syracuse who knew of him.

But Casey had known since early in high school he was going to go to a post-grad school like Avon Old Farms in Connecticut. He saw the benefits of being one year older than everyone else entering college, and then two years older if you redshirt that first year of college. The son of a coach thinks about things like that.

Before Connecticut, though, there were those three summer days in Alabama. If there was any doubt Casey had made the right decision, it should have been gone when a student manager tapped him on the shoulder and said Nick Saban wished to have a word.

*****

It was last summer when he showed up to what right now represents the center of the college football universe.

Alabama coaches were working Casey Rogers all over the place: tight end, defensive end, outside linebacker. They liked what they saw, made clear by the fact they were debating with each other about where he should play.

Coaches don't waste words like that on kids they don't see great potential in.

When Rogers picked off a pass while playing outside linebacker, that's when he was told to head to Nick Saban's office. Alabama maybe wasn't going to be in his future, but that meeting with Saban was further proof he had chosen wisely.

The truth is this was something that had been building for a long time. If you're in the Rogers family, you are not just into athletics, but probably a dang good one.

His father not only played lacrosse at Syracuse, but Lelan was a three-sport star prior at St. Lawrence University prior to his time with the Orange. Lelan was a Division III national champion in wrestling at 190 pounds in 1985. He also was on a Syracuse team that made it to the lacrosse semifinals in 1987.

Hearing of those successes will drive a boy.

"It was something I wanted to live up to. I wanted to be known as the same thing he was," Casey says. "Obviously I wanted to impress my dad, so I tried my hardest in everything I did so I could."

It wasn't just Dad who had the athlete genes. Casey's mother, Terri, played soccer in college. His sister, Paige, played lacrosse at Syracuse. His grandfather was recruited in football by Michigan State, and his aunts and uncles were all successful athletes themselves.

"I saw what it takes to become very successful in college sports, not just only in lacrosse," Casey says. "But there's been times I watched football practices at Syracuse when I was really young ... and at the same time I always took notes in my head, 'Obviously if I want to do this, this is what I've got to do.'"

His coach at Avon Old Farms, Pierce Brennan, knew he had a gifted player soon after his arrival.

Brennan thinks of the first touchdown Rogers had at the school as a tight end. He ran a mid-hitch route, one of those plays that would almost always be forgettable.

"It probably should have been a 2, or 3 or 5-yard gain, and it ended up being almost a 60-yard touchdown," Brennan says.

Rogers had a good year. The team had a good year. But the offers didn't come until after the season. The list started to grow in December: Vandy, Temple, Rutgers, Indiana...

Then on Dec. 27, Nebraska's D-line coach Mike Dawson put the Huskers on that list too, offering the 6-foot-5 Rogers as a defensive end.

A visit was set for two weeks later. As the airplane descended for a landing in Lincoln, Casey looked out the window. He saw Memorial Stadium. He sort of already knew what was about to happen.

*****

As Casey took the campus tour, and heard from Scott Frost and a staff who made him believe winning big was just around the corner, he thought of advice he'd heard from the man he trusted most.

"My dad has always told his recruits, 'You'll know when you're on the campus of where you want to be. You'll get that feeling.' And I told him, 'Dad I hear you say that all the time to other kids, but right now, I think I feel that feeling.'"

He didn't commit in Lincoln.

But by 9 a.m. the next morning, Husker coaches were at his school in Connecticut.

"I don't think a lot of schools would go to someone's school on the other side of the country basically 13 hours after you went on an official visit," Casey says.

He could have committed on the phone, and it would have still been special. But there was something to doing it right then, face-to-face with the coaches.

Think he made his Dad proud? If you seek out the bio of Lelan Rogers on the Syracuse website, you will note it is already updated to say his son Casey is set to play football at Nebraska.

His dad had never pressured him to play lacrosse in college. In fact, when Casey told him his plans to pursue football, he couldn't have been happier.

Now, Casey says he hasn't gotten the smile off his face since committing. He says he can't wait to play football for Nebraska's coaches. The journey brought him to a conclusion that connects to not just sports, but everything else.

"You find whatever's in your heart and you go for it."
 
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