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He is a defensive end. A beast. Able to tear down circus tents with one tug. He was the body double for King Kong. When he walks he leaves impressions in the concrete. He's Robert Nkemdiche. The 17 year-old bouncing around in college football coach's heads. They are the turds, he is the water that will either clog their program or send them to the promised land. This is the Robert Nkemdiche vortex.
In case you don't follow recruiting whatsoever, Nkemdiche is a 6'-4" 270 pound DE out of Loganville, GA. His Greyson High School team beat my alma mater, Walton High School, in the Georgia 5A State Championship last year...the quarterback of that team was former Mississippi State signee Nick Schuessler. Robert Nkemdiche is the consensus #1 player in the nation - regardless of position.
Mississippi State was on Nkemdiche's list of schools - perhaps because of Schuessler. But he chose to commit to Clemson on June 14th...and soon after Schuessler left State to join Nkemdiche (next year), and several other players from Grayson, in Clemson.
As far as Hugh Freeze is concerned, Robert Nkemdiche is not off the table. In his theory, Nkemdiche is close at hand and can still be had.
Denzel Nkemdiche, Robert's brother, plays football at Ole Miss. A couple of weeks ago the two got together in Oxford and it was the most covered casual visit ever....Robert put on an Ole Miss jersey and it got tweeted out. Ole Miss fans got sucked into the vortex full tilt.
This past weekend Hugh Freeze pushed GA linebacker Mario Mathis off his 2013 board due to his ACL injury not healing as well as Ole Miss would have liked. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported the story by interviewing Mario's father - who insinuated that the rug was pulled out from under his son.
Then Robert Nkemdiche tweets this out...
messed up what omu did to mario mathis.
— robert nkemdiche (@Robertusmagna_1) July 31, 2012
Clearly ole Rob was upset with the actions of Hugh Freeze and 'Ole Miss University'. A few hours later, Matt Wyatt tosses out a juicy rumor nugget - Nkemdiche's father, Sunday Nkemdiche, was offered a job at UMMC (Ole Miss' Medical school in Jackson).
Then around dinner time Tuesday night the Commercial Appeal out of Memphis refuted the AJC report by interviewing Mario Mathis' mother, who stated the scholarship offer to her son was always contingent upon him being at full strength physically.
Is it too convenient that the Memphis paper released an article to back Freeze? Was Mathis' mother fully aware of the situation - a situation that generally involves negotiations and talks between males when the father is present (no offense, ladies)? Did Freeze coax Mathis' mother, or smooth things over in light of Nkemdiche's tweet about this situation?
Look, I don't know if Hugh Freeze is pulling out all the stops to get Nkemdiche on his roster or not - but I wouldn't be shocked at the lengths he or any other coach would be willing to go through for him to fax that letter of intent on signing day to their office.
What is the end game with this kid? He is a defensive end! He may be the most sure-bet prospect ever, but I've got to believe the attention and hype has his head in the clouds. He's getting his buddies in at Clemson through a package deal, he's playing games with the Ole Miss fanbase, he's teasing schools, etc. I don't recall Jadeveon Clowney doing any of this mess. Nkemdiche has his own Wikipedia page - and he hasn't even started his senior year of high school. Enough already, there's almost no way he's going to live up to this hype.