FAYETTEVILLE - A brand new batch of Arkansas Razorback football players begins arriving on campus today for the start of the first summer session Tuesday.
Among the most highly anticipated arrivals is running back Alex Collins of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who has been so eager to begin college at Arkansas that he ventured to Northwest Arkansas during his spring break to watch the Razorbacks at spring practice.
Collins said he had a restless night’s sleep Friday in anticipation of boarding a plane today to Fayetteville.
“I’m excited about getting up to the Hill, and the anticipation is killing me,” Collins said Saturday in a social media exchange with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
“He’s just anxious,” South Plantation Coach Doug Gatewood said. “He’s got his clothes all picked out for the plane. He’s wearing some Arkansas colors. He’s ready for the next page.
“I ask him all the time how much apprehension does he have versus excitement, and he says it’s 100 percent excitement every time.”
Collins, 5-11, 207 pounds, was ranked as the No. 1 running back in the country by 247Sports.com and said he plans to take two classes this summer and further prepare himself for the football season.
“My expectations for the summer are to just get bigger, faster and stronger and get familiar with the system and help myself be a contributor to the team,” Collins said.
Ten years ago, the NCAA began allowing signees to begin their grants in aid during the summer, which served two purposes: It enhanced the chances of academic success for the signees, and it allowed them to acclimate themselves to college-style summer workouts instead of facing a crash course during the opening days of fall camp.
Now college football players who enroll during the summer are much more the norm rather than the exception and many FBS schools reach nearly 100 percent summer participation by their signees.
In recent years at Arkansas, only a handful of junior college signees who needed to wrap up course work at their previous institutions have failed to make it to campus during one of the two summer sessions.
Collins, a three-sport star at South Plantation High, was named the Broward County Class 8A-6A Male Athlete of the Year by the Miami Herald on Friday.
“It feels good to be a part of my school’s tradition, and I’m happy we could bring some of that back this season,” Collins told the Herald.
“One of the things about Alex that I can’t wait to see is [Arkansas] is going to be able to scratch his potential and I wasn’t able to,” Gatewood said. “I’m limited in what I could do. There are things he can do that I couldn’t take advantage of.”
Asked what those traits are, Gatewood mentioned Collins’ ability to pass.
“He can throw the hell out of the ball,” he said.
Collins, who has been timed at 4.41 seconds in the 40-yard dash, ran the third leg on his school’s state champion 400-meter relay team, and played lacrosse.
“He’s just an interesting kid,” Gatewood said.
Collins also rushed for 3,062 yards the past two seasons, including 1,786 in 2011, when he led all of Broward County in rushing.
Collins will be joining an Arkansas backfield in transition. Sophomore Jonathan Williams was the lead back coming out of spring drills, but the Razorbacks are thin behind him with sophomores Kody Walker and Nate Holmes the only other scholarship tailbacks on the roster in the spring.
Sports, Pages 33 on 05/26/2013