Lofa Tatupu

[XKamaaina]

I dunno, per the 1/3/05 ESPN the Magazine article, it was information directly from Lofa.

He had his heart set on SDSU, but did not receive a scholarship. His family could not afford for him to walk-on anywhere, so Lofa took his only offer, to Maine. The plan the whole time was to do so well at Maine, that D1 schools would start offering him. Unfortunately, that still didn't happen after a great season at Maine. USC went after MLB Lance Mitchell who started for Oklahoma opposite Lofa in last night's title game. But, because Mitchell did not have the grades to qualify for USC, his schoolie went to Lofa.

The article said that Carroll was hesitent to start Lofa at Auburn his first year and it was only after that game where Lofa did well, did Carroll even know who he was.

Now, I'm just going off the ESPN the magazine article, but it doesn't look like it was anyone's fault. Pretty much nobody thought Lofa was D1 material initially, it's just that he had such great determination to prove everybody wrong.

[SeaBow]

>>Wow, I've never heard about the Aikman thing, what was that about?<<

I don't remember exactly where... I think it was some ESPN announcer that mentioned he wanted to transfer to Hawaii but we said no thanks.