Fleming: The choice: We’ll know in just hours

Published 10:15 pm Saturday, June 19, 2010

It’s just about over for Watts Dantzler. “It” being the mind-boggling, seemingly nonstop recruiting process that many great college football prospects endure.

Dantzler, Dalton High’s 6-foot-8-inch, 315-pound offensive tackle, is a nationally rated prospect — Tom Lemming ranks him at No. 12 and he’s considered by just about everyone to be among the top three in the Peach State. He was recruited seriously by each school in the Southeastern Conference and dozens more around the country.

Watts and his father, the late Danny Dantzler, realized early on that he had the potential to be a big-time recruit and his progress on the football field has led him to the brink of choosing between two of the top programs in the land.

It’s down to Georgia and Auburn, and Watts will make that decision public today at 4 p.m. in the school commons.

“After my freshman year a Georgia Tech coach came by the school and that’s when I started thinking I could do something maybe special in football,” Watts said.

Quickly, college recruiters followed Georgia Tech’s lead and the intensity only grew with each passing season. The summer before his sophomore year, Watts started getting letters from Florida, Vanderbilt and Duke. He was getting one or two a day and soon it got to be 15 or 20, and schools were inviting him to home games.

Each school that sought a Dantzler visit gave him a phone number to call to arrange for three game-day tickets for his unofficial trip. He would only get tickets. Dantzler was responsible for his travel arrangements, motel room, if needed, and any other expense associated with the trips.

“I would call those numbers and say, ‘This is Watts Dantzler, I’m coming to the game Saturday.’”

And, boy, he took some trips.

During the 2009 season, he was at Georgia when the Bulldogs played LSU and South Carolina. He was at South Bend, Ind., when Notre Dame played Southern California. When Tennessee opened the season against Western Kentucky, Dantzler was in Knoxville. He was in Atlanta when Tech hosted North Carolina and Georgia. He sat in Jordan-Hare Stadium to watch Auburn play Ball State and Alabama. He was in Tuscaloosa when the Crimson Tide played Tennessee, in Nashville to see Vanderbilt play Mississippi State, and in Columbia, S.C., when the Gamecocks took on Florida.

While his mother made the Georgia and Auburn trips with him, Dantzler usually asked a Catamounts teammate or two to go with him.  

“My dad and I talked about recruiting a lot,” Watts said. “He encouraged me, as did a lot of other people, to take a lot of visits and enjoy being recruited. I knew it would be fun and I wanted to get a grasp of the schools that were offering scholarships to me.

“Some schools just blew me away. You could sense the tradition at Notre Dame, things like that. But on every visit, I took things away that were impressive.”

Dantzler, a two-time Daily Citizen All-Area Football Team pick, said his first offer came from North Carolina State in April 2009. Then, they just started rolling in, he said. South Carolina, North Carolina, Stanford, Duke, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Auburn, Alabama, Maryland, Miami, Illinois, Georgia, Notre Dame, Mississippi, Georgia Tech, Memphis. On and on it went.

“I think the last time I checked it was almost 30,” Dantzler said during an interview at The Daily Citizen.

In February, Dantzler said his final five choices were Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee and Vanderbilt. At some point, he had dropped Notre Dame because the 11-hour drive would have made it difficult for his family to get to Irish games in South Bend.

First off the final-five list were Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Then Alabama was scratched. This afternoon, he’ll make either Bulldogs coach Mark Richt or Tigers coach Gene Chizik very happy.

Dantzler, whose father died in February 2009 after a 3-year battle with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, had originally said he would make his decision known on Nov. 16, his birthday. Recently, however, he changed his mind so he could honor his father on Father’s Day.

“That was the right thing to do,” Dantzler said. “Plus, despite all the fun I had throughout the recruiting process, it was starting to wear on me. I had about 50 coaches come through last spring in a month’s time. Every day there were two or three at school. There were a lot of phone calls.”

This morning, Dantzler knows where he’ll play college football, having reached that milestone decision about the same time he narrowed his choices to two schools, although he’s chose to keep it to himself for obvious reasons.

The only drama left is his public announcement, one that will reverberate across the powerful SEC.

Dantzler said he’s pretty sure how he’ll present his choice, but he’s still working on his speech.

“I’ll have a couple of funny things and I think it should be good,” Dantzler said.

Will he choose Georgia? His father and mother were married while students in Athens.

Or, will it be Auburn? He really likes the Tigers.

Ironically, Danny Dantzler narrowed his final choices to the same two schools, and he lettered for the Bulldogs in 1971-73 as an offensive lineman.

No matter his choice, Watts Dantzler has one clear idea in mind.

“I know dad will be proud and know he raised a good son,” Watts said.

That’s a given.

Larry Fleming is sports editor for The Daily Citizen