When Larry Harold, then the football coach at Macon County High School in Georgia, first met Roquan Smith, he was 1-for-2 in his assessment of the young man.
Harold had just been hired as the varsity coach, and Smith was playing basketball as a freshman. Harold caught one glimpse of Smith, then about 175 pounds, on the hardwood and pegged him as a football player.
He got that part right, but only after a little convincing. Smith was fixing to stop playing football and focus on hoops. His father had been a talented basketball player, and the sport was his first love.
"I was obviously very good at football, but I had my mind made up that I wanted to be a basketball player," Smith said.
"I just told him, 'Man, you're not a basketball player. You're a football player. Give me one year and I will show you you're a football player,' " Harold said. "Changed his number. Changed his position, and here we are today."
Harold incorrectly guessed Smith's age. The youngster had done a little background work on the coach who was taking over a struggling program. Smith told him he knew Harold had been an offensive lineman at Southern University and then ticked off a couple of schools he had worked at previously as an assistant.
"I thought he was a rising senior," Harold said.
"No, Coach, I'm just a freshman," Smith said at the time.
"I was blown away," Harold recalled. "I thought, 'Oh my God, we got us one.' "
The Bears are confident they got themselves one too after selecting Smith with the eighth overall pick in the NFL draft Thursday, making him the club's highest-drafted linebacker since they took Waymond Bryant fourth overall out of Tennessee State in 1974.
Smith, 21, left Georgia with one year of eligibility remaining as one of the most decorated defensive players in program history. Last fall while leading the Bulldogs to the national championship game, he was the Butkus Award winner, SEC defensive player of the year and a unanimous first team All-American.
