"I had some looks," he said, "and I did pretty well my senior season. But the offers weren't as great as I thought."
He was going to college the way most people do.
He was going to take out a loan.
Nothing lucky about that. But here's what is:
He was going to make it count for something.
"I love the game, enjoy playing it," the Eagles' seventh-round draft pick was saying as rookie camp continued yesterday. "But coming from my family, from my background, they always harped on education. That's something that had to come first."
It's why Fokou was at the Bullis School, a small prep school in Potomac, Md. After ditching soccer, he starred there in basketball and as a football linebacker, was named conference most valuable player after his senior season. By then, though, the scholarship window had long closed, and the Fokous did all the normal college applicant things, filling out the FAFSA, applying for the guaranteed student loans, finding a school that fit him, that would allow him to play football and major in electrical engineering.
Fokou went to Frostburg State, a Division III school near the West Virginia border of Maryland. As an electrical engineering major.
"I kind of picked that because I used to like to mess around with electrical things when I was younger, taking radios apart and trying to fix things," he said. "I broke a lot of things in the process."
He's a likable sort, an easy guy to root for, the way those who earn their success and recognition by small increments often are. Fokou went to Frostburg for a season, recorded 70 tackles in 10 games - then went and got another student loan so he could transfer to Maryland.
He called himself "a recruited walk-on" but here's how that worked for him. Some assistant coaches knew of him and told him he would have a chance. A chance. Ralph Friedgen, the Maryland coach, "Didn't really know who I was."
