Georgia Tech discovered Adam Gotsis in Australia. Perhaps the Yellow Jackets could someday find a player in Ireland, where they’ll play their season opener Saturday against Boston College.
“I think that could happen,” Johnson said Thursday prior to his team’s first and only practice in Dublin. “Really, if they’re going to have satellite camps, that’s where you ought to have them, somewhere where other people don’t recruit.”
There could be material. Central Florida had a kicker who was born in Ireland and moved to Florida before high school, when he took up football. He played in the last college game played in Ireland, in 2014. Ireland has an amateur football league which had more than 900 players in its most recent season, according to the league’s website. Despite being a nation of only 4.8 million, Ireland fields one of the best rugby teams in the world.
“When I was an assistant at the University of Hawaii, we used to recruit Australia that way,” Johnson said. “We’d go watch rugby. We had two kids from the All Blacks New Zealand rugby team.”
Johnson’s satellite camp idea has precedent. Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, whose aggressive stance on the camps has rankled coaches in the SEC and ACC, had camps in Australia and American Samoa this past summer. Finding potential players might not be the challenge as much as sifting through them to find ones who are interested in playing college football in America and could qualify academically. Gotsis was connected to Tech through a former player of Johnson’s living in Australia.
“Come over to Ireland,” he said. “Who knows what you could find?”
About the Author
