The roads for three area players who signed national letters of intent to play major college football on Wednesday were navigated with different perspectives.

Muskogee’s Victor Williams could have joined a former Rougher, Jeremy Burton, at Louisiana Monroe, and focused on football or taken a late grayshirt offer from Tulsa, a school closer to home which also has great academics.   But the 5-10, 175-pounder’s priority was hard-core academics, as in the prestigious Ivy League, which is why he selected Dartmouth over Harvard after back-to-back visits to the northeast.

No knock on ULM or even TU, a place known for its academic quality, but Dartmouth represents a whole new stratosphere — even if a few of Williams’ friends might have needed a map to find the Hanover, N.H., campus.

“I’ve had people say’ ‘I’ve never heard of that place, why are you going there?’ That’s where I want to go, it’s not all about D1 with me, it’s about education. Because my body won’t last as long as my mind will,” said the fourth-ranked student in the MHS Class of 2012.

In truth Dartmouth is a Division I level school, situated in the Football Championship Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-AA. He chose it because the community more closely resembled Muskogee in size and flavor than Harvard, located in Cambridge, Mass., which borders downtown Boston.

His parents, Victor Williams Sr. and Anita Williams, never had any qualms about his son’s decision. Seeing his son’s academic and athletic skills, his dad brought up the possibility of attending an Ivy League school when Victor Jr. was in the ninth grade.

“He’s always been about grades,” Anita said. “If he made a bad grade, he wanted to do better. And it wasn’t about us pushing him, he pushed himself.”

“He’s really worked hard to earn it,” his father said. “From this day forward, it’s going to be about the choices and decisions he makes. I’ve done all I can for him as a parent, and now it’s up to him to step out there and make his own way.”

Williams, who played everywhere in the offensive and defensive backfield over his four-year career at MHS and was a two-time All-Phoenix selection (as athlete his junior year and receiver his senior year) will get the opportunity to play in any of those spots for the Big Green. More importantly is his choice of degree, one he chose while attending workshops over three years at Langston University. Williams will major in engineering.

“He’s got whatever he wants ahead of him,” said Muskogee head coach Josh Blankenship. “The education he’s going to receive and the relationships he’s going to build and the doors that are going to open just being part of that institution alone, you can’t even begin to predict. The effort he’s put forth and the way he’s paved and how he’s gotten there shows the direction he’s headed.”



Bedlam stress



Kevin Peterson’s football acumen has been known around here for awhile, and the coaching staffs at Oklahoma and Oklahoma State had seen him in camps.

But it wasn’t until one December weekend that things began to happen at those schools for the Wagoner senior, and when they did, they happened at a rate that was nearly too stressful for him.

He was on an errand at Walmart with his father when Bob Stoops called, having just looked at some film of the 5-11, 170-pounder. The OU head coach wanted him for a visit the following weekend. Meanwhile, OSU special teams and secondary coach Joe DeForrest reached him and wanted him to keep his options open until the following Monday.

Peterson, having connected with then Sooners secondary coach Willie Martinez and defensive coordinator Brent Venables and caught up at least in part with the aura of being connected to the Sooners’ tradition-rich program, said yes.

On Monday, OSU called with an offer.

“That was the most stressful day,” Peterson said. “I had given my word.”

But recruiting is based more on faxes than words, more rankings than coach’s sales pitch. A player’s verbal commitment is no more binding than those letters of interest from a program that begins its recruiting outside its own borders.

OU found that out when Peterson visited OSU, almost at the same time Martinez resigned to make way for Mike Stoops’ return as defensive coordinator, which in turn led to Venables’ move to Clemson.

“Martinez, Venables or even Bob Stoops can go but OU’s going to be OU and that might be fine with some but for me, bonding and having a relationship with my position coach was important.”

But that wasn’t OSU’s only advantage, at least for Kimberly Peterson, Kevin’s mom.

“Originally I wanted him to go to TU because it was closer, and I liked OSU because of the facilities,” she said. “But when we made the visit to OSU, the coaches made me feel comfortable enough to think that if something happens to my child, they’ll be there for him.”

Did she feel that at OU?

“I did, but not to the extent of OSU,” she said. “It also didn’t feel as commercialized. When (Cowboys head coach Mike) Gundy sat the parents down and talked to us, he had us one-on-one and answered every question we had. It seemed more personable. And he told us he wasn’t leaving.”

That thing about the nature of recruiting isn’t lost on fans. Since the Phoenix’s 2011 Player of the Year and 2010-11 Male Athlete of the Year’s decision wasn’t binding until Wednesday, people of all walks turned Peterson’s every step into a field of Bedlam battle.

“He’s low-key anyway but he got to where he didn’t want to go anywhere because it seemed like that was all he was facing,” Kevin’s father, Kevin Peterson Sr., said. “I remember the comments he’d get about how if he went to OU, all he’d have to do is play two years and he could leave for the pros.

“But you know I remember him going to those camps and the feedback he got then. Then it’s like forever and we’re not hearing a thing from either. And we asked about that. With OU it was that well, Venables and Martinez had seen his tapes but Stoops was somewhere, like New York, and hadn’t seen them. With OSU they said it was at first a numbers crunch, then when they had some spots open because of injuries to players that weren’t coming back, they were in a position to offer Kevin something.

“The process, it does make you wonder. But for him, I’m glad it’s over.”



Not that OSU



That numbers crunch left Sequoyah’s Zack Robinson out in the cold, but out there stood Oregon State ready to connect.

“Everyone else wanted me but only as a walkon,” he said.

That may have had as much to do with his stats, and even a lack of film. As a receiver, the 6-foot-2, 195-pounder had 39 catches for 581 yards, eight touchdowns and on defense, had three interceptions. The other numbers crunch was on the All-Phoenix team where he was missed by one player being selected by media and area coaches.

“Yeah, he did fly under the radar. Him having had a great junior year, people defended him well last year,” said Sequoyah coach Brent Scott, who had to explain as the Beavers’ staff came to Sequoyah to check out Robinson that the orange and black wasn’t from Oklahoma State.

Keith Hayward was the Oregon State coach who recruited Robinson, but in a situation similar to Peterson’s, Hayward left the school for Washington. With a scholarship offer from Northeastern State in tow, Robinson had to weigh whether going to a place that was almost as close to Russia as it was his front door.

“I told him, ‘You’ve got to see yourself fitting the school. If you like the program, you like what they have to offer you and feel it can benefit you in the long run, that’s what you need to look at, not clicking with a specific person who you know may leave,”  said Zack’s father, John Robinson. “And that may not be because it’s a bad situation but one that may benefit them. That’s the way you have to look at it.”

Some more perspective: The Beavers staff is considering bulking him up and moving him to an outside linebacker spot.

“They’ve had success with moving skill guys in high school to that spot,” Scott said, citing Dallas Cowboys’ linebacker Victor Butler, a receiver and secondary player in high school.

Still, Zack’s mother, Jennifer Robinson, would have preferred Northeastern State.

“We’ve always told Zack we wanted him to explore life and see what’s out there but when I heard the word Oregon my heart dropped,” she said. “It’s really far away but it makes an excuse for us to travel. Plane trips and long car rides.”

She’s grateful this is 2012 and technology being the way it is, she’ll be able to peek in on his room and keep tabs on him through the Internet. Hugging a computer isn’t like the real thing, though.

“No, it isn’t,” she said.

“We’ll get up there when we can,” his father said. “Meanwhile, we’ll be looking for a way to subscribe to the Pac-12 channel.”