Nick CamachoRamses Barden flirted with the NFL, but in the end decided to postpone that courtship until next year.
Barden, who shattered several Cal Poly football records as the team’s leading receiver as a junior this past season, recently filed paperwork with the NFL advisory committee to gauge his potential draft outlook, but said Monday that he would take advantage of his senior year of eligibility.
He had until today to make his status official.
“I thought about the whole reason for college being to get a degree,” Barden said, “and it’s been a goal of mine to come in and finish with a degree.”
In addition to voices from “a lot of different sources” coming from the football world, instrumental in the choice, Barden said, was his family.
“They were huge,” the business major said. “My just being (a student at Cal Poly) is just as much their doing as it is mine. It would’ve been unreasonable on my part to not consult them and get their foresight.”
The 6-foot-6, 228-pound Altadena native was a finalist in 2007 for the Walter Payton Award, given to the country’s best offensive player in the Football Championship Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-AA.
Previous winners of the award include NFL stars such as Tony Romo, Brian Westbrook and Steve McNair.
After finishing second in the FCS in receiving yards per game (133.4) while establishing single-season school records for receiving yards (1,467), touchdowns (18), points (108) and 100-yard games (seven), and also its career mark for touchdowns (32), Barden was projected by the advisory committee as a fifth-round pick were he to declare himself draft eligible.
As the Mustangs’ explosive season progressed, interest in Barden increased, and at one point he was rated as high as a second-round pick on some NFL Draft Web sites, such as NFLDraftScout.com, which still projects him as a third-round selection, above Pac-10 names such as USC’s Patrick Turner and Oregon’s Jaison Williams.
“As the season went along, I would hear things,” Barden said. “Agents started to contact me and talk about draft potential.”
While an FCS wide receiver being taken on the draft’s first day would be a rarity, it wouldn’t be a first – and not even on behalf of the conference in which the Mustangs play.
San Diego Chargers wide receiver Vincent Jackson, who caught seven passes for 93 yards and a touchdown Sunday in his team’s 28-24 victory against the Indianapolis Colts in the NFL playoffs, was named the Great West Football Conference Offensive Player of the Year in 2004 when he played at Northern Colorado. Barden won a share of the same award in 2007.
“He’s a better receiver than Vincent Jackson was in college,” Cal Poly head coach Rich Ellerson said.
Jackson, the 61st overall player chosen in the 2005 draft, caught five balls for 98 yards in his last game against the Mustangs, a 31-0 loss at Cal Poly on Nov. 13, 2004.
“Ramses has a chance to play on a really good team,” said Ellerson, who added that again being able to play with quarterback Jonathan Dally, the past season’s second-rated passer in the FCS, should only help his prospects. “But when you roll back the layers, there’s a better player here, and his senior year can put an exclamation point on his college career.”
Prior to putting on the pads, though, the Flintridge Prep product may join the Cal Poly track and field team, he said, probably to compete in the 100-or- 200 meters in order to improve his speed.
“I want to do some training in that kind of atmosphere,” Barden said. “Those are skills I might want to have in my back pocket.”
Barden, who averaged 25.7 yards per catch as a junior, said a week ago that he hadn’t officially prepared to specifically be timed in a 40-yard dash, the NFL’s most widely valued straight-line speed barometer, in “a long time.”
He estimated that he’d probably be clocked around 4.55 seconds, usually fast enough for an NFL wide receiver.
Ellerson said he would fully support his star receiver’s stab at a secondary sport.
“I would really applaud that,” Ellerson said. “Some of the things leading up to the (NFL scouting) combine sound like a track meet, and almost have less to do with football than they do with track. He’s a lot faster than people think, and he’ll gain another step.”
Before auditioning for the professional ranks, though, he will be part of an offense that erupted for an FCS-best 487.1 yards per game a season ago. Now, that unit will boast 10 returning starters.
“That was a big factor in the decision as well,” Barden said. “It’s something I want to be a part of.”
Ellerson says that Barden’s character, regardless of on-the-field exploits, should elevate him up eventual draft boards.
“Next year he’ll have a chance to go to the combine, and go through the interview process,” he said. “When he sits down with (coaches of) teams, he’ll move up 10 or 15 picks right there because of his personality and presence.”
As such a “bright, impressive, sincere and affable young man,” Ellerson opined, Barden’s completed academic endeavors will only aid him in the NFL, a realm of the sporting world Barden himself called “really cutthroat” with ever-fleeting job security.
“(An agent) may try to hire him back to manage his own money and ask for tips,” Ellerson joked.
Former Cal Poly defensive end Chris Gocong, currently a starting linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles, became the program’s highest draft selection ever when chosen with the 71st overall pick in 2006.
Gocong, who brought professional scouts to Cal Poly’s practices on a weekly basis, Ellerson said, shared in college many of the traits that are also Barden’s.
“The light tends to shine brighter on (the offensive) side of the ball,” Ellerson added. “Those guys have a few more mics and cameras in front of them, and Ramses is off the charts in dealing with people.”
Barden will have an opportunity to display his abilities before a largely Football Bowl Subdivision audience in the Mustangs’ season opener at San Diego State on Aug. 30.
It won’t be necessary to deliberately attempt to showcase Barden’s talents, though, Ellerson said.
“The system takes advantage of that,” Ellerson added. “People have a tendency to think of him first as a tall guy, but he’s a really gifted receiver who just happens to be tall.”
Of the 30 former FCS receivers who finished 2007 on NFL rosters, eight were chosen in the draft, but the only one who skipped his senior season, Charleston Southern’s Maurice Price, went undrafted in 2007.
Ultimately, Barden’s announcement was the most prudent one, Ellerson said.
“He was wise to find out as much as he did, and to find out where he stands,” Ellerson voiced of the All-American he feels is “as good of a player as there is in the country.”