Alabama Football and Bradley Sylve: You Don't Know Him Now but You Will

Larry Burton (Syndicated Writer) There are some players that the whole country holds its breath for to wait and see where they decide to go to school and there are others that simply go ahead and commit and people wonder who they are.

Not all the top recruits make it to the top of the college football world. Sometimes you have a Javier Arenas, who nobody wanted that claws his way to the top, and sometimes you have people that are well regarded in recruiting circles, but just a little unknown to the masses that come in and become stars.

The latter would be Bradley Sylve.

People in the world of recruiting know who he is, but most of the Alabama Nation has no idea just what they've landed with this commitment.

"He is lightning in a bottle." "He is a Trinton Holiday with better size and hands." (An LSU player said to be the fastest in college football last year) "If Alabama was looking for another Javier Arenas type punt returner, they just got one better." These are all quotes different sources have used to describe Sylve.

One thing is for sure, he's fast, very fast.

Sylve won Louisiana state championships at 100 meters and 200 meters last year as a freshman. And that he appears to be one of the nation’s two fastest all-around sophomore sprinters. He won a 2009 indoor state title at 55 meters, finished eighth in a national indoor meet at 60 meters and has posted electronically timed outdoor marks of 10.62 seconds in the 100 and 21.66 in the 200, along with hand-timed bests of 10.35 and 21.53.

A source in Louisiana swears he runs 4.3 40 and he should hit Tuscaloosa at 6'0" and 182 pounds. He was late coming to football compared to most football stars, and is also a track star.

But make no mistake, he is a football player who also runs track, not a sprinter that simply wants to play football.

At South Plaquemines, Sylve plays wide receiver, kick returner, running back, defensive back or whatever they need, but he is known best for being a receiver and return man.

His biological father Eddie Ray Jackson, was a sprinter and all-state running back at Vidalia High School in north Louisiana, and from 1987 to 1990 played with Brett Favre at Southern Miss. But it was his step father, Cyril Crutchfield, who was also his high school football and track coach that helped mold both the player and the young man.

Crutchfield told the New York Times, “I try to convince Bradley that he’s a football player who has track speed, It’s easy to find 10 guys who run 10.3. It’s a lot harder to find 10.3 guys who are football players.”

Most thought he was a lock for LSU, including LSU. Sylve's high school South Plaquemines, located near Port Sulphur, Louisiana, a small dot on the banks of the Mississippi River. The fact that he runs track so well is even more impressive since the closest "track" is 40 miles from his high school. He practices on grass and the football field is the only spot they have to use.

So he doesn't have the advantage of getting to practice running the oval or get the feel of a real of a real track in track shoes, instead he runs at home in his football cleats on shaggy grass.

But he still puts up some of the best times ever in the state of Louisiana when he finally does show up to run on a "real track."

Such improvisation is not unique to his track life, but his football life too, where the lack of equipment that bigger schools have is simply a dream at tiny South Plaquemines.

His tiny school with barely 200 students won the 2007 and 2008 state 1A titles with such workouts as hopping up and down the river levees on one leg, then the other. They pronged up and down on both legs. They'd run sideways and crabwalk. They carried teammates on their backs, running forward and backward and jump miniature hurdles to increase the degree of difficulty.

“Running the levees is where I think I get all my strength,” Sylve said. “Carrying people up and down, that helps.” Sylve told New York Times reporter Jere Longman.

Though he was well sought after by schools such as the USC Trojans, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Nebraska, Auburn and many others, but many thought he would go to LSU. In the end, the relationship his father had with Nick Saban, formed when Nick was at LSU, helped pull Bradley to the Tide.

"I felt comfortable at Alabama and with Coach Saban and the facilities and opportunities there are just hard to beat," Sylve said about his final choice.

Most felt the level of competition at Tuscaloosa may keep him away, after all, Alabama already has a bevy of receivers not only from last year's recruiting group, but this year's as well.

Some have wondered if he might indeed switch to defensive secondary like Arenas, but for now he is being recruited as a receiver.

"We had a lot of bigger, taller receiver types in camp, so having a smaller speedier type is something we needed as well," Saban said.

Sylve is considered the second best receiver in the state of Louisiana and ESPN rates him as the third best in the nation and gives him a four star rating. He is has a 3.3 grade average and is more than academically qualified for the playing in the NCAA.

Many thought he should give the Olympics a shot, but for now, he's concentrating on football and bringing one last title back to his school before leaving.

Whatever he does, he will do it well.