Kirby Moore gained a flurry of transfers and re-recruits this past week, including a quarterback, a Florida receiver, Leo Pulalasi, a DB from Arizona via Stanford, an Oregon State receiver, and a defensive end from Priest River, Idaho (aka the gateway to the wilderness).
But the most interesting pickup is former professional basketball player and NFL mini-camp participant Nathaniel Salmon.
Greg Woods of The
Spokesman-Review has all the details, and here’s what stands out to me:
- Salmon is from New Zealand
- He fist played football way back in…..2024
- That’s because he used his 6’5 body to play professional basketball down under
- He only started playing football because he was invited to “an NFL academy in Gold Coast,” according to Woods, as a tight end.
- He used that experience to enter the NFL’s International Player Pathway, which gets kids from outside North America on the NFL radar.
- After 10 months at IMG Academy, he attended the Los Angeles Chargers’ mini-camp.
Despite all of this, he still has four years of eligibility, per the NCAA. Don’t ask me how it’s possible, but it is. Just nod and go along with it. He’s also 21 years old.
He’s apparently now 6’7 and 270 pounds, so we’ll see how long he remains a tight end.
And according to Woods, Salmon had offers from Utah, Arizona State, Arizona, Baylor, North Carolina and West Virginia and even visited Utah and Arizona State.
Allow me to beat the drum one more time: College athletics is changing in ways many of us couldn’t imagine. It probably feels weird to a lot of us, but change is often weird. Kirby Moore is adapting to the changes, and we’ll see if it pays off.
