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LINCOLN — Taariq Allen will sit down next week and sign paperwork that will take him from Massachusetts to Nebraska for the next four or five years.
It will be an anomaly in the recent history of Husker football recruiting, considering how few players NU has taken out of the Northeast.
And it likely left Allen explaining himself to friends and family since committing to Nebraska three months ago, right?
To the contrary.
“People have just been excited for me,” said Allen, a receiver out of Boston. “It’s not been anybody saying, ‘Nebraska? Why are you going to Nebraska?’ It’s more been people saying, ‘You’re helping put Boston high school football on the map.’”
Allen will have some folks in the Northeast following Husker football after he signs his letter of intent Wednesday. He is NU’s first scholarship recruit from Massachusetts since Grant Miller from Peabody in 2002, and the gap before Miller goes all the way back to Mike Croel and Joe Sims coming out of Sudbury in the mid-1980s.
“Nebraska is looked at as such a high-profile program that the majority of people around here are excited for him,” said Rich Fisher, Allen’s coach at The Rivers School in Weston, Mass. “I don’t think there’s any negativity for him packing up and going to Nebraska. It’s no different than a kid leaving Florida or Texas or California. It’s the nature of the beast — kids pack up and leave home.”
Out of that area, however, they don’t usually travel halfway across the country.
“Boston high school football is not like being in Florida or Louisiana or Texas,” Fisher said. “I haven’t been here long enough to say over the last 10 years that ‘x’ amount of kids have left, but the majority of the time when it is a good caliber of player, Boston College is all over them, UConn is all over them, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Rutgers ... they don’t have to go far.”
Allen is more late-bloomer than blue-chip prospect, with three-star and two-star ratings from Rivals.com and Scout.com, respectively. His 40-yard dash time is closer to 4.6 seconds than 4.5 right now.
The 6-foot-3, 191-pound son of a Boston policeman initially was committed to Connecticut and had an offer from Wisconsin, but not a whole lot else.
To be honest, Allen fell into the Huskers’ lap when Fisher brought him to an NU camp last June. Fisher had previously gotten to know Nebraska coach Bo Pelini when Pelini was an NFL assistant coach at New England and Fisher’s best friend, Ted Johnson, was playing for the Patriots.
Now Fisher has two more “big-time players” set to be seniors next season, and said Nebraska already is working on bringing another to the Midwest.
“And that’s how it works,” he said. “It’s about connections.”
Allen caught 36 passes for 660 yards and eight touchdowns as a senior. In attempts to get him the football in other ways, Fisher used the Wildcat and other methods for Allen to run it 69 times for 706 yards and eight scores.
“I think there’s more to show,” Allen said. “When I get out to Nebraska there’s going to be way more competition and I’m going to have to push myself further, and that’s when you’re going to surprise yourself.”
Allen and his cousin, tailback Ben Patrick, were featured in the “Faces in the Crowd” segment of the Dec. 6 issue of Sports Illustrated for helping bring The Rivers School its first Independent School League title in 2010.
Maybe down the line he can bring some other exposure to his old stomping grounds.
“It’s good for our league, that we can produce that kind of talent and send them away,” Fisher said. “It’s good for all of us. It’s win-win.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1042, rich.kaipust@owh.com
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