That was a massive recruiting coup for Butch. Top player in the country, and his recruitment was subject of massive attention. Yet, when he got into fall camp, it seemed that Jon Vilma, I believe, who was in the same class, was a bit ahead of DJ as a LB.
For a while that Concord La Salle program was the best in the country, yet I don't hear as much about it now. Sometimes I used to try to figure out the demographics of an area where the leading programs were. I tried to understand why a particular HS was so outstanding. I thought maybe the Concord area was probably substantially heavily blue collar, perhaps because of a large Toyota plant in the town.
I don't know if I was right. I don't read as much about Concord now. There were some other good players who came out of Concord around DJ's time. We never got any others from that area. We also had Ken Dorsey from northern California (Miramonte) about that time.
Now it is getting harder to understand what makes certain high school programs good. There are the IMG's where kids come from everywhere to play. Others like Jake Garcia go across the country for HS. (Why Georgia, in particular, I don't really know, but it worked). It's interesting how Georgia has become a hotbed of quarterbacking.
YES , that was the player , thank you
