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Connor Williams
 

Connor Williams' dad, Jimmy, didn't want to leave anything to chance when it came to getting his son a shot at a college football scholarship.

"He bought a thousand-dollar recruiting service," Connor says. "It's not for the big schools. It's for smaller schools, D-II and D-III. It's where you get your film together, give it to them, and they'll shoot it off to the coaches and everything, and hopefully get you a offer or something."

Jimmy admits that he was concerned about Connor's scholarship prospects in the winter of his junior year at Coppell High.

Connor Williams

"Was he going to get a chance to play somewhere?" Jimmy says. "And, the coach was like, 'I think he's going to be fine. Don't worry about it. He's looking really good.'"

As you might have guessed, it all worked out for Williams, who is headed to the NFL, possibly as a first-round draft pick, after three seasons as Texas left tackle. He remembers being in the film room during spring practice before his senior season of high school when coach Joe McBride told him about his first Division-I offer, from North Texas.

"I was like blown away," Williams said. "I was like, are you kidding me? You just came in here, like all casual and said North Texas offered me. 'Cause he had always told dad, like he's not gonna have a problem getting a scholarship or anything.

"I was like, this is huge. That's a D-I school, come on, this is serious. And he was like, there's gonna be more to come. And I'm like, there's no way. This is unreal. And in that one month of spring ball with coaches and coming and visiting me and seeing that I'm making my transition from tight end to tackle and I'm still growing, I got 38 offers in one month. And it was like, what? Like a month ago I had zero offers and now I have 38 offers from the top schools in the nation, are you serious? This is insane."

Williams visited Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, Georgia, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Texas, before choosing the Longhorns.

Connor Williams, Dad

His switch from tight end to tackle sparked the recruiting interest, but his parents say it also suited his personality.

"The offensive line is a perfect position for him for the way he is," his mom, Debbie, says. "He doesn't want all the fame or anything that goes along with it. He's just that quiet kid that likes to sit back and watch. That's probably a lot of that position. I'm not real familiar with all the football positions, but I do know what a quarterback is and I have definitely learned what a left tackle is."

Jimmy also liked the camaraderie that comes with playing on the line, particularly for Connor, who had to overcome being bullied in elementary and middle school.

"It gives him that small circle of friends that he never had growing up when he was real young," Jimmy says. "It allows him to embrace that focus, and that grind that he enjoys so much. He gets to take all of that and put it together with another group of guys, and so it fits very much who he is."

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