Scooby Wright was exposed to a national audience when he journeyed across the country in December 2014.
One night, Wright was in Orlando, Florida, winning the Chuck Bednarik Award. Another, it was Houston for the Lombardi Award, or Charlotte, North Carolina, for the Bronko Nagurski Award.
Wright received plenty of attention after his sophomore season, when he registered 15 sacks, 164 total tackles, 31 tackles-for-loss, and five forced fumbles. He even had a signature play, a strip-sack of Oregon’s Heisman-winning quarterback, Marcus Mariota, in a UA win.
In La Habra, California, linebacker Jacob Colacion was watching.
Colacion is a 2016 signee for the Wildcats, though he’s not quite the under-the-radar recruit of a “Two-Star Scooby”: Colacion chose the UA over offers from a dozen schools, including Boise State and San Diego State.
“Yeah, that was one of the main reasons I was really interested (in Arizona), because of the success he had there,” Colacion said before signing day in February. “They talked to me about what kind of a role model he is and how he gets stuff done. That’s cool for me.”
Colacion is one of the countless high school athletes who learned about Arizona through Wright, the do-it-all, mohawked-and-tattooed linebacker.
Their interest led to official visits, where the recruits would meet Wright. He could be found working out, lifting weights — and after, they’d talk about him as if they just met a celebrity.
“It was really cool,” Colacion said, beaming. “Everything they say about him his true. He’s just a cool, humble, down-to-earth guy. He’s easy to talk to.”
When Kahi Neves visited campus in December, he met Wright, saw his trophies, even held one of them. A few days later, the Utah native flipped his verbal commitment from Utah to Arizona — and switched from quarterback to linebacker. Neves enrolled at Arizona in the spring in hopes of playing right away, as Wright did in 2013.
Wright wasn’t the only reason Neves flipped to Arizona, certainly, but his presence didn’t hurt.
Wright was the big man on campus in 2014, winning over a basketball town with his football skills. His junior year was a different story: Wright missed most of the season with knee and foot injuries. He returned for the New Mexico Bowl and was his old self, getting 15 tackles and two sacks; he declared for the NFL draft on the field following the game.
Wright’s showing was the culmination of every unheralded high-schooler’s dream. Arizona found an under-recruited player and helped build him into an NFL player.
Put that in the recruiting pamphlet.
“I hope we have the problem every year where we have juniors declaring early and what-have-you,” UA coach Rich Rodriguez said. “But it helps. It helps your program. We need to get more guys drafted. We want to get to the point where we have draft picks every year and I think we will.”
Arizona didn’t have a player drafted in 2013 or 2015, but in 2014 Ka’Deem Carey left early and was selected in the fourth round. Shaquille Richardson and Marquis Flowers, both defensive players, were drafted in the late rounds, too.
All three of them were recruited to Arizona by former coach Mike Stoops and his staff.
This weekend, Wright will become the first-ever player recruited to the UA by Rodriguez to be drafted into the NFL. Will Parks, a member of Rodriguez’s first-ever class in 2012, is a candidate to be picked in the later rounds. Cayleb Jones transferred to Arizona from Texas to play for Rodriguez, and he’ll likely be picked as well.
Wright’s success, and his Two-Star Scooby story, has put the UA on the maps. Matt Dudek, Arizona’s general manager of recruiting, has said he often gets inundated with e-mails and highlight reels sent by parents claiming their kid to be the next Scooby.
Rodriguez hears it too.
“They’ll bring that up. They’ll say, ‘He’s maybe not a 4- or 5-star, but he’s the next Scooby!’” Rodriguez said, laughing. “I’ll take all of them I can get.”
By now, Scooby’s story is part of Arizona lore. The Windsor, California, native had no offers the first time he and Arizona talked. San Diego State didn’t think he was good enough. Boise State was supposed to offer a scholarship but never did. A California assistant coach told Wright he’d be better off going somewhere like Sacramento State.
Arizona saw a budding star. When Rodriguez, Dudek and the UA coaches watched Wright’s highlight tape for the first time, they couldn’t believe nobody had offered him yet. The Wildcats landed a verbal commitment, and kept following up. Rodriguez and former UA defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel chartered a private jet to see Wright and take him out to breakfast. Casteel had been before, alone, to reconfirm Wright’s commitment.
“I think it’s a prime example of ‘who gave him the two stars?’” Rodriguez said. “In our opinion, as soon as we watched film on Scooby Wright, we thought this guy is an immediate impact guy. I don’t know who gave him two, but he should’ve gotten four or five.”
At some point this weekend, Two-Star Scooby will hear his name called as an NFL draft pick. Maybe they’ll call him Scooby Wright, or maybe they’ll announce his given name, Phillip Wright III.
In any case, he’ll no longer be Two-Star Scooby. Soon, he’ll be an NFL player.
“That just goes to show that anything can happen, that stars and rankings don’t matter,” Colacion said. “And that if you put in the work, the results will show.”
