LOS ANGELES — The Nike Sparq camps are annual collections of the most prized high school football recruits in a specific region of the country. They are a who’s who of four-and five-star talent, the fastest, biggest and most athletic players from around the country all showcasing their skills in what many describe as the prep version of the NFL combine.
The players who attend the invitation-only events hold offers from some of America’s most blueblood college programs.
Except for one guy.
Brock Bowers showed up at the 2019 Nike Sparq camp in the Bay Area with one scholarship offer (from Nevada). And yet, he mystified an audience of spectators, several of whom were left in disbelief at his 40-yard dash time.
He ran it in 4.5 seconds. Doubtful of such a time from a player they did not recognize, camp officials asked him to run it again.
He ran it in 4.5 seconds. And that’s without much practice. It was the first time he’d been seriously timed in the 40. He didn’t have proper hand placement, release or stance.
“He ran it in a lineman’s stance,” laughs Nathan Kenion, Bowers’s seven-on-seven coach who got him an invitation to the combine-like event. “Afterward, everyone started to hit him up. ‘Hey, who are you?’”
That seems like an eternity ago now. Two years into his college career at Georgia, Bowers is playing in his second national championship game and enters this one, like he did the last, as the team’s leading receiver.
Before the top-seeded Bulldogs (14–0) meet TCU (13–1) on Monday at SoFi Stadium, Bowers is surrounded by a group of inquiring reporters during the team’s media day session, attempting to explain this meteoric rise of his from unrecognizable player out of Napa, California in 2019 to arguably already the best tight end in UGA history just a few years later.
Like his appearance at the Nike camp, he’s not really supposed to be here. In fact, without his 7-on-7 coach arguing with camp officials to include Bowers—they initially rejected him—there is a chance he stays hidden in wine country playing for a struggling high school team (they went 0–10 his sophomore season).
His 40 time, vertical leap and other metrics caught the eyes of recruiters, and as his junior football season began, Bowers went from one scholarship offer to about two dozen. Welcome to college football recruiting, where a few strides of your legs can turn into an expense-paid trip to a school.
But there is plenty more to like about Bowers.
He’s got size: 6’4”, 230 pounds. He’s got inane athleticism: Did you see him defy gravity against Ohio State?
He’s got strength: He’s wired with muscle from head to toe. He’s got smarts: He’s never made worse than a B in school.
And he’s got pedigree: His parents both played sports at Utah State (dad Warren was an offensive lineman and mom DeAnna was a record-breaking softball pitcher).
“The 40-yard dash time put him on the map,” says Richie Wessman, Brock’s high school coach at Napa. “It caught like wildfire. One program after another became interested. They’d all come by the school and you’d go down the list of their questions about him and at the end, they were like, ‘How can you not want this kid?’”
Forde: Stetson Bennett Is One Game Away From Becoming an All-Time Great
Over the last two years, the once-unknown prospect became one of the most unstoppable tight end forces that college football has ever seen. Bowers draws comparisons to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, 49ers big man George Kittle and Kyle Pitts, the former Florida tight end drafted fourth in the 2021 draft.
Kenion believes Bowers is a better receiver than all of them. The numbers bear it out. In 29 games played, he has 112 catches for 1,672 yards and 19 touchdowns. His figures as a sophomore this year are nearly identical to those as a freshman (in fact, he’s got the exact same amount of catches).
Defensive coordinators got a good look at him in 2021, strategized to stop him and have seemed to fail miserably. In a line that is sure to make opposing coaches feel even worse, Bowers says he arrived at Georgia without much knowledge of offensive football.
“I didn't know anything when I got here,” he says. “I knew, ‘Get the ball and run.’”
He has, of course, gotten an assist from a stable of talented teammates. His fellow tight end, Darnell Washington, is one of the most colossal figures in the game, at 6’7”, 270 pounds. “It’s hard to defend both of us running routes,” Bowers says. “Usually, one of us is open.”
Joshua L. Jones/USA TODAY NETWORK
That might not be the case on Monday. Washington is questionable to play after spraining his ankle in the semifinal win over Ohio State.
That means Bowers is left all alone. No one is worried. After all, this is a kid who played every position on the basketball court in high school and nearly every one of them on the football field too. He played defensive end and outside linebacker on defense and at various times on offense, played quarterback, receiver and tight end.
In an unusual statistic for his position, Bowers opened his junior season of high school by returning a kickoff for a touchdown. “Things you don’t see,” quip Kenion, “tight ends as kick returners.”
Rob Rang, the longtime NFL draft analyst, contends that Bowers is the best tight end he’s seen in more than 25 years of analyzing draft prospects. Kenion says he’s ushering in a new era at the position.
“He’s painting a picture of the next wave of tight ends,” Kenion says. “You got the in-line tight end and the pure receiver that can’t block. Brock, he’s big enough to block, can take fly sweeps, can catch bubbles, can go deep, block on the edge. He can do everything receivers can do and what tight ends can do in the box.”
It’s no wonder that a few weeks after he arrived in Athens coaches started creating wrinkles in the offensive game plan with a purpose of getting him the ball. Brock says he was shocked when learning of that.
John Cortese was not.
“It’s pretty rare to see somebody with his size and speed combination,” says Cortese, Bowers’s personal trainer. “It’s amazing.”
Few know Bowers better than Cortese. He owns a training facility in Napa, where Bowers spent most of his junior and senior year of high school as the pandemic shut down much of his hometown. Cortese often moved equipment outside into a parking lot to train so he’d abide by California policies.
Photo courtesy of John Cortese
Californians endured strict COVID-19 protocols for more than a year starting in March 2020, Bowers’s junior spring of high school. Parks were closed. Gyms were shuttered. Football practice would start and then stop, start again and then stop. Finally, it permanently ended: His senior season was canceled.
Napa is unusual in that the community’s football and soccer fields are operated and owned by the school districts, which meant amid the pandemic that no one was allowed on them. It didn’t matter that they were outdoors.
Bowers bucked against the rules, practiced routes with friends and was routinely chased off the fields by school administrators.
“It sucked,” Bowers says flatly.
“He’d call me angry,” says mom DeAnna. “He’d says, ‘I’m going to Alston Park!’”
Alston Park is a hilly, scenic biking and hiking area on the edge of Napa, surrounded by—big surprise—orchards and wineries. When Brock wasn’t in Cortese’s parking lot training or being chased off those school fields, he was at Alston running sprints, working on agility drills and heaving himself up incredibly steep hills.
He’d film himself and send them to Georgia coaches. They’d watch them from their office in astonishment.
What can this kid not do?!
What they didn’t know is that the pandemic, as it did many young people, seriously impacted Brock’s mental state. Thank goodness for Alston Park, says DeAnna. It helped her son physically, sure, but mentally as well. “The hill running was an outlet of frustration,” she says.
“He’s watching all of the other guys in his class and they are able to have their senior season on time that fall,” says Warren. “He didn’t get to have that.”
The pandemic interrupted Brock’s recruitment, too. A year after running that 40 that got him noticed, Brock and his parents went on a multi-day trip to visit six schools—a southern swing to see LSU, Georgia and Clemson, and a Midwest swing to see Notre Dame, Michigan and Penn State.
Dellenger: Why Sonny Dykes Was the Final Piece to TCU’s Playoff Puzzle
While on the trip, COVID-19 shut down the country. Bowers wouldn’t have another in-person meeting with a coach until he enrolled at Georgia in January 2021.
It’s been quite a wild ride, all of it leading to this fairytale ending of his second year: He is, thankfully, back in California. DeAnna took a hiatus from her job as a high school math teacher. She has not missed a single game in Brock’s two seasons at Georgia, growing quite accustomed to that non-stop Delta flight from Sacramento to Atlanta.
The Bowers family will have at least 25 members at SoFi Stadium, rooting on that kid who put himself on the map five years ago just a few hours north of here.
“I think everybody out here is like ‘He’s finally out this way!’” laughs DeAnna.
Back in Napa, Georgia is suddenly a local favorite. Cortese trains dozens of junior high and middle schoolers who have evolved into Bulldogs fans. Clad in Georgia shirts and hats, they walk into his gym often hoping their local hero is around. “They’re asking when he’s going to come back!” Cortese says.
Well, he’s back—just a few hundred miles south, closing in on a second championship ring in a second season in college.
“Last year in Indianapolis, it didn’t seem real. This kid is playing for a national title?” says DeAnna. “And now a second one in California? It’s amazing.”
