Texas Tech University Athletics
True Freshman Wraps Up Strong Rookie Season
December 12, 2007 | Football
Dec. 12, 2007
By Jonathan Butnick, Texas Tech Athletic Media Relations
It was February 7, 2007, and the storm of annual commotion and excitement had once again swept through the offices of the Texas Tech Football Training Facility. It was National Signing Day, and the Red Raider coaches had received faxed letters of intent from 26 prospects who had signed on to join the program.
While much of the talk in the media and on internet message boards surrounded the addition of seven very promising offensive linemen and the binding pledges of five highly sought after wide receivers, those close to the program recognized the team's most glaring need following the 2006 season, and stressed the importance of restocking the defensive line.
"It was critical; we always want to try to sign defensive tackles, because they're the hardest to find," interim defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill said. "You can always find ends and edge people, but it's just hard to find those really good tackles."
When all was said and done, the personnel department and coaching staff had inked a total of six defensive linemen in an attempt to help replace the production of five departed seniors who combined to account for 201 tackles, 31 tackles for loss, and 21 sacks from the defensive tackle and end positions during their final collegiate seasons.
Quite possibly the least heralded of all the defensive line recruits was an extremely productive, but somehow under-the-radar high school player, recruited to Tech out of Noble, Okla., by running backs coach Seth Littrell.
Colby Whitlock had enjoyed a tremendous career as both an offensive and defensive lineman at Noble High School, collecting 218 tackles, including a remarkable 65 for loss, and making 13 sacks in his two years as a starter on the school's Class 5A varsity team. A two-sport star for the Bears, he was also the pride of the wrestling program, winning an individual state championship in the heavyweight division after posting a 28-1 record his senior year.
"I had just kind of heard about him around the state, just driving through, his name would come up a lot," Littrell said. "We liked his background, we saw how tough he was and that he was a wrestler, and we liked that about him because you have to be pretty mentally tough and able to maintain good leverage to be as successful as he was at it."
Despite his glaring prep success, Whitlock was overlooked by a number of big-time programs, most notably, the one right in his backyard. A quick look at a map shows that Noble is in fact a southern suburb to the city of Norman, home to the University of Oklahoma, less than seven miles down the road.
Despite receiving scholarship offers from in-state schools Oklahoma State and Tulsa, and Orange Bowl-bound Kansas, Whitlock wasn't able to attract the eye of Oklahoma until late in the recruiting process. Even then, they neglected his defensive high school dominance, and saw his future on offense.
"The offensive coordinator came and talked to me at the end of my junior year, but their deal was that they wanted me to play center," Whitlock said. "I went and talked to the defensive line coach, Coach [Jackie] Shipp, and he basically told me that I wasn't good enough to play there on the defensive line."
Littrell, a native Oklahoman in his own right, played his collegiate years as a running back for the Sooners, even serving as a team captain during his senior year in 2000, when the program won its seventh national championship.
During the recruitment, Littrell and Tech's defensive coaching staff disagreed with the opinion of the Oklahoma coaches and felt that Whitlock would be a perfect fit for their scheme and would quickly develop into a contributor at the defensive tackle spot.
"We felt like he could definitely help us after we watched the film, because he would just absolutely kill people on tape," Littrell said. "The teams he was playing against were trying to double and triple-team him, thinking that if they could eliminate him they would probably have success, but he still made plays."
Whitlock quietly arrived in the summer and immediately went to work with Tech's demanding strength and conditioning coach, Bennie Wylie, and his staff. Waking up in the dark hours of the morning, surrounded by players of equal ability and effort, he was forced to adjust to the competitive, fast-paced environment of big-time college football.
"They're pushing you a lot harder, but it's more fun to come in and workout because you've got better competition all the way around you," he said. "It makes you want to compete and get better and it makes you work harder."
With the help of Wylie and others, he quickly rose above the rest of Tech's young defensive line crop and showed coaches he had both the mental and physical wherewithal to contribute early on at the collegiate level. Like the other coaches, McNeill attributed the mental aspect of Whitlock's speedy adjustment to his extensive wrestling experience.
"I knew that mentally he could handle it because he was a state champion wrestler, and he was tough," McNeill said. "I knew that he had been around and had been working out too, so I knew he could do it physically; it was just a matter of him learning the technique, and learning how to do it."
On September 22 in Stillwater, with more than 30 of his closest friends and family in attendance, the true freshman got the call.
"I actually found out from the coaches that I was going to be starting that Tuesday, but I had seen it before that on the internet on Monday," Whitlock said. "There were quite a few people there; a lot of my teammates from high school, my coaches, and then of course my family."
Since starting that first career game at nosetackle against the home-state Cowboys, Whitlock has been one of the bright spots on an undermanned interior defensive line that features a rotation of just four scholarship players.
"The first thing you notice about him is his balance; above everything else, he has great balance," McNeill said. "Then you notice he's got a knack for making plays, and then also that he's a tough individual, so I think it's a combination of those three qualities that makes him effective."
Despite the fact that his impact and progression had become obvious to both the coaching staff and his teammates early on, Whitlock's proverbial `coming out party' didn't come until the season's 11th game, in a loss to Texas in Austin.
Starting his eighth consecutive contest at the nose, Whitlock finished the game tied for the team lead with 10 tackles (nine solo), including an impressive four for loss, against a formidable Longhorn guard-center combination.
"In the second half, I was tired because there were a couple of 16, 17-play drives, but I just kept pushing," he said. "I kept pushing their offensive linemen, and they were just getting tired and quitting pretty much."
Though it came in a losing effort, Whitlock's outing against the Horns served official notice to offensive linemen across the conference that there is a disruptive force in the middle of Tech's defensive front that needs to be accounted for on every play.
In the following week's match-up with the aforementioned Sooners, Whitlock came up big again, making four tackles, including one behind the line, while helping to hold the feared OU rushing attack to a season-low 106 yards in Tech's 34-27 upset win.
"It was a great feeling and I enjoyed it," he said. "I especially enjoyed getting to go home that next week for Thanksgiving, because everyone in Noble likes to talk about OU."
At the close of the 12-game regular season, Whitlock led all Red Raider defensive linemen with his 30 solo tackles, and his 8.5 tackles for loss and five quarterback hurries rank second and third on the team, respectively, amongst all defenders. The post-season accolades have begun to roll in as he was recently named to the Big 12's all-freshman team and even more impressive, a Scout.com first-team freshman All-American.
With his rookie season having drawn to a close, Whitlock has without question given coaches and fans something to look forward to in the coming years. He said the experience he gained this season, combined with a full-run through Tech's off-season strength and conditioning program, should allow him to improve even more for his sophomore campaign.
"I think that spending the entire off-season here, I'll have the biggest gains of my career, and I think it can only help."
McNeill, flush with his usual enthusiasm, agreed, and said the sky is limit for his young pupil.
"If he keeps that correct mentality, he has a chance to be as good as he wants to be," he said. "That means doing the extra things with film, extra things in the weight room, practicing to get better, and he's got a chance to be really good."
