The Back Alley Archives

Hunter's father has told his son that he is a “nobody” again, someone who has to prove himself all over again.

He was always going to be a running back.

That was his father's master plan. Every exercise, every football toss in the front yard, every one of life's lessons pointing to that goal. Keith Hunter was a Southern Cal fan during the "Tailback U." years at USC and his second son was going to be the next

great one.

So Omar Hunter, whose dad calls him Duke after John Wayne, spent his salad days

working on his speed and quickness and upper body strength so he could be the next Marcus Allen. His father, who owns a construction company in Suwanee, Ga., would have his son run the hills of Georgia and push a loaded wheelbarrow around to make him stronger.

“I thought he was going to be my little running back,” Keith Hunter said. “All the stuff we did was for him to be a running back. He was big, but he was fast. They had so much trouble trying to stop him and because of his speed they couldn't catch him.

“When he went to high school, he never touched the ball again. But he told me, ‘Dad, I kind of like this position.’ ”

That position was defensive tackle and it was in the trenches where Omar Hunter became a high school All-American for a Buford High School team that went 15-0 last season and won the state title game 50-0. The school sits at the top of a hill in a bedroom community near Atlanta with flowering dogwoods in the parking lot and athletic facilities worthy of a small college. At Buford, Hunter took the body his father built and made it better.

Soon that body will be heading to Gainesville where his arrival has been anticipated as if he's bringing with him a solution to humidity and love bugs. The senior defensive tackle has heard it all — from Urban Meyer's declaration at the spring game that he is on an "Omar Hunter Watch" to his next head coach calling Hunter “the Tim Tebow of this recruiting class.”

He's not a savior, his coach Jess Simpson says, but what Florida is getting is a special player. Whether he'll be the answer to Florida's defensive line problems is anyone's guess. But there is no question Hunter will bring with him a bag full of pressure to excel.

“It's pressure, but I'm just looking forward to it,” he said. “When Coach Meyer said some of those things, I thought he was just joking with me. I'm sure I'll hear about it when I get there. I hear stuff like that and I'm like, ‘Whoa, coach.’

“I just want to go down there and work hard and keep my mouth shut. I'm still just a regular guy, nothing special.”

Hunter's father has told his son that he is a “nobody” again, someone who has to prove himself all over again. The same father instilled beliefs in his son about discipline and listening to coaches. He also taught his son how to be tough.

“He has such a soft heart,” the father said. “On defense, he'd arm tackle guys because he didn't want to hurt them. Then he'd help them up. I told him, ‘Son, you gotta get tough.’ He's plenty tough now.”

According to the recruiting sites, he is also special — a five-star tackle who will bring size and quickness to Florida's football team when he arrives on Friday. Meyer has told booster clubs he will be the first guy to meet Hunter when he crosses the city limits. That's how much the coach thinks of the 6-foot-1, 311-pounder.

“He has a great work ethic,” Meyer said. “Extremely strong. Great mom and dad.”

Meyer knows just how strong Hunter is because the UF coach watched his prized recruit lift weights for an hour on a visit to Buford.

But Florida is getting more than just a big, strong kid with a long high school resume. The school is getting a young man with a 3.7 GPA.

“He's one of the best if not the best I've been around,” said Buford defensive coordinator Dicky May. “But he's a better kid than a player. If I'm in the business world some day, I'm going to find him. He's one of those people who doesn't settle for being good. He works to be great.”

Hunter's work ethic involved more than just lifting weights for the Class AA state champs of Georgia.

“His goal from day one last season was to work on our team's chemistry,” May said.

And as much as Meyer talks about chemistry, you can understand his attraction to a young man who understands its importance.

At a school with a trophy case bulging with hardware and a stadium where one of the sides is double-decked, you can tell from spending some time with Hunter that he's not popular just because he can make tackles.

“My friends don't look at me any differently,” he said.

The journey

It's a long way from Elizabeth, N.J., to Gainesville and in Hunter's case it took plenty of different turns. His family — which includes two brothers and a sister — moved to Reidsville, Ga., from New Jersey when Hunter was in fifth grade. Reidsville is a town of a little more than 2,000 people in South Georgia where 27 percent of the population is below the poverty line.

“That was the countriest place I've ever been in my life,” Hunter said.

After a year of culture shock, the family moved closer to Keith Hunter's relatives — to Buford, a city that went from sleepy to sprawling when the 225-store Mall of Georgia opened its doors in 1999.

That his journey landed him in Buford for high school was a blessing because this isn't an ordinary high school. A new weight room that will dwarf some at major universities is almost finished and a solid glass tower is being constructed in one corner of Tom Rider Stadium. It is a football stadium that looks crisp and clean, and when Hunter takes you on a tour of the facilities, he makes sure to point out that during the season the grass is so green it makes you blink.

At Buford, Hunter was moved to the defensive line and began to blossom as a junior. At Buford, you'd better bring your lunch pail to the weight room. At Buford, Simpson requires 5:30 a.m. workouts and stresses technique.

“As a coach you like to undersell and overproduce, but he's not your typical incoming freshman,” Simpson said of Hunter. “He is extremely advanced technique-wise. I'm a defensive line coach at heart and I have tapes and workouts from all kinds of colleges and NFL teams. He's athletic enough to come in here and watch tapes and do something about it.

“He's got the talent to be a great football player. But he is only 18-years old. You have no idea how going away to college will affect a kid. My gut tells me he'll be fine, but if he called in six months and said this is overwhelming, I mean, it happens. The thing about Omar is that he also brings a humbling within him. And he can be coached hard. He can take criticism.”

What he couldn't take was the barrage that comes with being a highly recruited player. Simpson said Hunter hated all of the attention, the text messages and phone calls and visits. That distaste for the recruiting process led to Hunter's early commitment to Notre Dame.

In actuality, he almost decided to end it all even earlier last spring by committing to Michigan, his favorite school growing up. But Simpson insisted the two jump in a car and at least see the school before he committed.

So the two went to Notre Dame first, then Michigan. Notre Dame blew Hunter away.

“All of that tradition, it overwhelmed me,” he said. “Michigan was nice but it wasn't Notre Dame. So I talked it over with my parents and committed. It was a big relief, but I still had a million coaches come to see me.”

An official visit to Notre Dame during the fall simply cemented the decision in Hunter's mind. But there was a lingering feeling that perhaps he had rushed such an important decision. After Buford won the state championship, he sat down with his parents and told them he wanted to open the process up again.

So he did just that the day before the first practices for the Under Armour All-Star game, opening a Pandora's box of frenetic coaches. Miami's Randy Shannon called right away. Auburn, Tennessee, Florida, Southern Cal — they all jumped into the mix.

“Calling Coach (Charlie) Weis was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do,” Hunter said. “But I also knew nobody could make that call for me. He wasn't happy, told me I had given him my word. I just told him I rushed into it and then he said, ‘I've got to go recruiting because you've left me without any defensive tackles.’ ”

Meyer hadn't stopped recruiting Hunter, but once he de-committed, Hunter became the focus of Florida's recruiting efforts. Hunter had visited Gainesville for UF's 2007 spring game along with teammate T.J. Pridemore, who also ended up being a Florida signee. Both of them loved the campus and the facilities.

“I really was wide open,” Hunter said. “But I kept talking to the teammates I had in the all-star game like Will Hill and Dee Finley and Janoris Jenkins. They were all talking up Florida.

“I wasn't sure what I was going to do. There is this Auburn fan at my school — Jill Sazzera — who texted me every day about going to Auburn. War Eagle.”

One school not in the mix was Georgia, 45 miles away. The Bulldogs had backed off Hunter when he committed to Notre Dame and had run out of available scholarships when he opened it back up. Mark Richt told Hunter he might have one later, but there was no way one of the top players in the country was going to wait to see if a school had room for him.

“Doesn't matter,” Hunter said. “I'm a Gator so I hate Georgia now.”

The big day

On his official visit to Florida, Hunter made up his mind. During a party at Meyer's house, the UF coach brought everyone together, nodded at Hunter and said, “He's a Gator.”

Hunter said there was a lot of whooping and hollering. But the recruiting didn't stop. USC coach Pete Carroll was trying to convince Hunter to visit right up until Signing Day.

And on the day before Signing Day, Hunter got the word that Florida defensive line coach Greg Mattison was leaving for the Baltimore Ravens. Hunter had become close to the personable UF line coach, but he still didn't waver on the decision because Meyer convinced Hunter he would bring in a quality coach. That turned out to be Dan McCarney, who has already formed a bond with Hunter.

“The first official thing I did after I was hired was go to see Omar and his parents,” McCarney said. “I'm not a rookie at this stuff and I know how difficult transition can be. I told them that the position coach might have changed, but everything else was the same and his hopes and dreams can still be realized.

“He's such a mature kid. I can't wait to coach him.”

There were a lot of factors that played into Hunter's decision, but two of the strongest

were Florida's lack of quality depth at defensive tackle and Meyer's personality.

“He is energy,” Hunter said. “It's unreal. And he promised my dad I would graduate from Florida. That made my parents believe in Coach Meyer.”

Said Keith Hunter of his son's decision, “I wasn't happy at first because he had said he was going to Notre Dame. But I'm happy now.”

When Hunter made it official, there was a lot of celebrating in the Florida football offices. It's no secret that one of Florida's liabilities a year ago was the lack of a push in the defensive interior. Even with big-time recruits like John Brown and Torrey Davis ready to go this year, Florida needs someone to step up at defensive tackle.

So before he's even put on an orange helmet, Hunter is expected to be the guy. Meyer has said he expects him to play, maybe even start, in the first game of the season. Hunter just wants to get settled in.

“That's why I'm going for Summer A,” he said. “T.J. was going and I thought it would be great to go down there early and get situated with school instead of trying to deal with starting school and playing football.

“I can't wait. I think about it every day.”

So does his head coach.

As a result, Hunter is sure he'll hear it from his teammates when he goes to the practice fields for his first workout.

“Oh yeah,” he said with a grin. “The bottom line is that if I don't do what I'm supposed to do, people will look at me as being overrated. I don't want that to happen.”