JUCO DE Rulon Davis

[NU fan in Denver]

he received a spate of threatening hate mail from fans of Nebraska

 

morons.

Now who has the proof that he even RECEIVED hate mail from NEBRASKA fans. For all I know he could be lying again. That could just be an excuse to keep everyone off his back. Does anyone have any proof to this hate mail.

[Big Red Cop]

I would bet a vast majority of the "hate mail" that he reportedly received was sent by persons claiming to be NU fans, and in truth cheer for another team!!

[BigRedDallasTexan]

sounds like just the job for a buff fan. Although i don't think any of them are smart enough to think of such a sick joke.

[kramer]

The rarest of recruits

 

The incredible story of Rulon Davis

By Richard Cirminiello

 

A little over six years ago, Rulon Davis played his very first down of organized football. Almost two years ago, he was on foreign soil, waging a daily battle to return home alive. Last summer, he had both of his legs run over by a semi on I-10 in Los Angeles. Today, he’s one of the prized recruits of Cal’s 2006 recruiting haul, an incredible, almost storybook, transformation that has Bear coaches and fans wondering if they landed an up-and-coming edge rusher or a superhero.

 

Rulon Davis is a 6-6, 275-pound defensive end with long arms, good feet and NFL potential, but by every measure, he’s the antithesis of the garden variety, four-star recruit that graces web sites and wish lists during each recruiting cycle. For starters, he’s spent more time in the last 24 months on the battlefield than on the football field. Oh, and it wasn’t until his junior year at Charter Oak (CA) High School that he was smitten by the pigskin, and even then, he was an offensive lineman without much of a future in athletics beyond high school. The only recruiting of Davis was done by the United States Marine Corps, which landed him as a reservist without any competition.

 

”In high school, the coaches didn’t put me out there or promote me (to colleges), but that was fine with me,” Davis admitted. “I figured I was done playing football and the next step in my life would be with the Marines.”

 

Davis was born in San Diego, raised in LA County and profoundly influenced by a two-year stay at Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, Tex. Like most of the kids in his neighborhood, he grew up loving sports, but until a six-inch growth spurt ushered in an awkward gawky stage, he’d always dreamt of being the next Charles Barkley, not the next Charles Haley. Spending 8th and 9th grade at MMA left a lasting impression that would affect the course of his life and lay the foundation for the focused, mature student athlete he is today. Harlingen would up being a harbinger of things to come and the inspiration for the most important decision of Davis’ young life.

 

”My own ignorance,” Davis described his initial inspiration for becoming a Marine. “I thought it would be like MMA, which were two of the most fun years of my life. Man, was I dead wrong. I knew the moment I got to San Diego that it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. It wound up being the most challenging thing I’d ever done up to that point. It set me apart from everyone else. I became even more mature and learned some core values I’d wind up incorporating in my everyday life.”

 

Davis fulfilled his obligation, becoming an Avionics Technician because he wanted to tackle one of the toughest careers available, and earned a release from active duty in September 2002. The next leg of his odyssey would take him to Mt. San Antonio College, tucked away in the San Gabriel Valley and recognized for having one of the best athletic programs of California’s 109 community colleges. Davis enrolled at Mt. SAC in 2003 with an eye toward a degree and a return to the gridiron for some unfinished business.

 

”Deep down, I still felt like I had something to prove on the field,” he admitted. “I just wasn’t done with football, so I wound up trying out for the team my freshman year. Honestly, when I first showed up, I figured I would just get cut from the team.”

 

He didn’t. In fact, he blossomed into a dominant pass-rusher, playing as if he was channeling a 20-something Bruce Smith and generating interest from major I-A programs like Washington State that didn’t even know his name just two years earlier. Davis was excelling in the classroom and on the field, and laying the foundation for a bright future. The kid that couldn’t get a sniff of interest at Charter Oak was creating a mild stir after just one season at Mt. SAC. Life was good. Good, that is, until an unexpected phone call early in 2004 would forever change his life. College football may have wanted Rulon Davis, but Uncle Sam still owned his rights. The road to Pullman had a detour…Fallujah, Iraq.

 

”My whole world was crushed,” Davis said with a hint of anguish still in his voice. “My family was devastated. I had just begun to hit all of my personal goals. My heart just stopped. I couldn’t believe what was happening. No one wants to go to war, but that’s what I was prepared to do, and when the time came, I felt I was ready to take on the challenge.”

 

After two months of training at Camp Pendleton (CA), Rulon Davis the student-athlete had become Rulon Davis the soldier, and was headed to Iraq as part of HMLA 775 Helicopter Squadron. In reality, two years of training could not have prepared him for what awaited on the other side of the world.

 

”As soon as the door of the plane opened, there was this intense heat that made you feel as if you’d melt on the spot,” Davis said. “You knew you were in a totally different world. The air smelt different. Everything tasted different. All of my senses were attacked, and then shortly thereafter, we were getting attacked. I remember scrambling to find a bunker so I wouldn’t get shot. I had never been shot at in my life. There’s no training to mentally prepare you for that kind of experience.”

 

Those six months in the Middle East felt like an eternity, and moved with all the swiftness of a life sentence without parole. When Davis returned home to California in September 2004, he was a different person—a little somber, a little less care-free and a lot more focused on seizing the most that life has to offer. Having witnessed unspeakable horrors during a mission that he openly questioned, Davis took more than his belongings back to Covina. His duffel bag included a fair amount of cynicism and skepticism as well.

 

”It was a case of the first to go, last to know,” he said. “We were often poorly informed. We’d watch CNN sometimes to get updates on what was going on around us. We weren’t always getting three squares a day. Helicopters were going down. From my perspective, we weren’t doing anything positive in Iraq. What was our mission? I didn’t know. I’d ask my superiors, and they had no answers. I wanted to leave as fast as possible. I remained focused and did my job as I was trained, so I could get home in one piece.”

 

With the toughest year of his life in the rear view mirror, Davis was intent upon getting back to Mt. SAC and that place when all things in his academic, athletic and personal life were harmoniously aligned. It all seemed simple enough until he had yet another brush with drama to endure last July. Another obstacle to strengthen his resolve. Another chapter for when the book about his life gets written.

 

”I don’t know what I was thinking,” Davis confessed. “Me and a friend thought it would be cool to buy motorcycles. One day last summer, I was riding on I-10 and got tapped from behind. I had no time to react, my lane was cut off and I got thrown from my bike. I was on the highway, trying to crawl away, but a semi wound up rolling over both my legs.”

 

Davis was rushed to USC Medical Center, where he learned he’d neither broken any bones, nor suffered any ligament damage in either leg. It’s no wonder the Fantastic Four showed considerable interest before falling out of contention for his services. Davis did suffer an infection in the hospital, and when the swelling in his leg didn’t subside, surgery was necessary. Following some physical therapy, he was cleared to get back on the field in mid-October, but rather than burn a year of eligibility, he sat out the rest of the season and concentrated on the intense recruiting process that beginning to percolate. That’s good news for the Cal program, which will watch Davis develop for the next three years.

 

For Davis, selecting a college to attend was almost as distasteful as that half-year stint in Iraq. No, his life wasn’t in jeopardy, but his privacy was, and after giving the nod to Cal, he received a spate of threatening hate mail from fans of Nebraska, a school he’d given a verbal commitment to last fall. At the end of the day, Berkeley felt like home for so many reasons, so Davis went with his hunch.

 

”It’s just such a great campus,” he gushed. “The library is awesome. The first time I walked in, there wasn’t a sound. There were tables and tables everywhere. I need to have no distractions. I was actually skeptical of how tenacious Nebraska was during the process. I kind of like staying under the radar. Cal was like, you can come or not. I really liked that. I wanted to go to a great academic institution, plus Cal’s defensive schemes are similar to what we had at Mt. SAC. From the coaches and the players to the campus, it just felt like the right decision.”

 

So here he is, a veteran of only three years of organized football, and none in the last 26 months, with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a future in football that was non-existent not long ago. Davis knows he has plenty to prove and a few layers of rust to shed, but the potential is evident and the player expects to make an immediate impact on a Bear D that’s jonesing for kids that can make plays in the opposition’s backfield.

 

”Rulon has all the physical tools to be a dominant rush-end in the Pac-10,” offered Brad Hoiseth, National JUCO Analyst for Rivals.com. “A lot of his success will depend on how his body reacts to not playing competitive football for two years. He is very tough mentally. Nothing that happens on the field could possibly compare to what he went through off the field the last couple of years.”

 

For many years, The United States Army has reminded us that they do more by 9 AM than most people do all day. Well, in that same vain, Rulon Davis, an ex-Marine, has done more in the past four years than most people do in a lifetime. And beginning this fall, when he’s matriculated at Cal and fighting for a starting job, he’ll have a chance to add a new twist to a journey that’s already one of the most compelling of the 2006 recruiting season.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All this and he was afraid of the competition at NU?!?!?!?