Canadian Jionathan Kongbo Number 1 US Junior Ranked Football Prospect

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Jonathan Kongbo (inevitably nicknamed King Kongbo) from Surrey BC is the number one ranked US junior college prospect.


Ranked nationally as the No. 1 junior college prospect, he even managed to get smirking, sober-sided Nick Saban to crack a rare smile when Kongbo posted a picture of them together. The head coach of the national champion Crimson Tide dropped in to Yuma this week, in hopes of persuading Kongbo to commit to Alabama.

The NCAA mandates that coaches abide by specific rules, such as not discussing recruits in the media. Kongbo is also declining interviews since he verbally committed to Tennessee in late November, then withdrew the commitment in early January, creating a stampede of coaches to his door.

One not bound by NCAA rules is Blake Nill of the Vanier Cup champion University of B.C. Thunderbirds. Nill, then at Calgary, tried to recruit Kongbo out of high school but lost him to Wyoming. Now, with America’s ranking college powers after him, there is scant hope of Kongbo playing in Canada.

To be honest, the Kongbo situation is probably a long shot,” Nill says. “He’s categorized as a five-star recruit, the highest you can get. That’s the NCAA gold standard. He’s a great kid who can make a difference in any program. I’m going to be a fan now, wherever he ends up.”Like many athletes these days, Kongbo is using social media to orchestrate his personal narrative and tease his followers. He’s having fun with it. The only people upset by his personal news service are the college football beat reporters who can’t get access to him and have to follow his “scoops” on Twitter.

From a list of about 25 or 26 major college offers, he has narrowed his choice to an elite eight — Tennessee, Ole Miss, Alabama, USC, Washington, Oklahoma, Florida State, Oregon. He’ll announce the final four (or five) next week and is expected to deliver his decision on National Signing Day — Feb. 3 — an event that is closer to Valentine’s Day but is considered more of a second Christmas for coaches re-stocking their programs with transcendent athletes such as Kongbo.

Thanks to Hudl, a video hosting service, coaches anywhere are just a few mouse clicks away from all the essential information on this freakish athlete — 6-6, 260 pounds, 37-inch vertical leap, a squat max of more than 700 pounds, a blazing 40-yard dash time of 4.69 seconds — and all the game video they require.

“He’s played one full year of football,” says Tom Minnick, Kongbo’s coach at Arizona Western. “He’s still very raw, but he gets better and better each time he plays. The biggest thing is he’s big — and he can run like a deer and track people down. That’s what the coaches love.”

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/surrey+king+kongbo+making+college+football+coaches +drool/11670936/story.html

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Another interesting aspect of what has happened to Kongbo, is how social media have greatly improved a player's ability to market himself in only a few years. This could be especially valuable to Canadians wanting to head south for football and even to athletes in other sports.
There are two possible downsides to self marketing. One is the possibility that some sports reporters resent his not offering them much in the way of information and this being reflected in their writing about him or other players who take this approach. The other is that other players on his team at the college or professional level start seeing rightly or wrongly one as a publicity hound rather than a team player. Therefore this approach needs to be handled judiciously.





Former Oregon Duck Bo Lokombo, a third-year linebacker with the CFL’s B.C. Lions, is trying to steer Kongbo to Eugene, where Lokombo arrived as a redshirt freshman in 2009 after graduating from W.J. Mouat secondary in Abbotsford. As did Kongbo, Lokombo moved to Canada with his family as a child to escape sectarian violence in the war-weary Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lokombo, who describes himself as Kongbo’s “cousin,” was recruited by 10 NCAA schools in his Grade 12 year. But the opportunity to stoke interest and offer an unfiltered, unique perspective direct from the athlete — bypassing the media as middle men — is so much greater now.
“There’s a lot more opportunity to brand yourself and promote yourself on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram,” Lokombo says. “It can put you in an advantageous place, if you use it correctly. He’s his own marketing manager.”
Surrey’s Christian Covington, a defensive tackle taken in the sixth round of the 2015 NFL draft by the Houston Texans, used his mom, Natasha, and younger sisters Asianna and Autumn in his advertising campaign while a Grade 12 student at Vancouver College. They sent out tapes and resumes to scores of NCAA schools. Most schools showed only mild interest, with Rice University the exception.
“They (his family) get the credit for me ending up at Rice (in Houston),” Covington says. “I wanted to go to a school where I was truly wanted. I got that feeling from Rice.”
If Kongbo’s PR tactics and airtight message control serve to stoke interest from a football-mad country, more power to him.
Until his Grade 12 year at Holy Cross, when Kongbo was recruited in the hallway by head coach Ken Buchan, he had yet to grasp America’s game, football. Basketball was his métier.
“It took three weeks to talk him into playing,” Buchan says. “He didn’t instantly love it. He got hurt, and then he quit. Slowly but surely, he reconsidered. After he became a first-team provincial (AA) all-star, he maybe had an idea what we were talking about.”
Those six games — the sum total of his high school football career — have led to what King Kongbo is now, just three years later: An American icon before he’s made a single major-college tackle.





http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/surrey+king+kongbo+making+college+football+coaches +drool/11670936/story.html

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Below are video highlights of Kongbo's freshman year as a defensive end/outside linebacker.


http://www.hudl.com/athlete/5666139/highlights/303002397/v2

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Kongbo's Twitter account shows how intense the pursuit by colleges can be when they have a prime target in their sites.


https://twitter.com/King_Kongbo

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Here's a list of schools who have made offers to Jonathan Kongbo. In Canada, the University of British Columbia has also been pursuing him.



http://espn.go.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/player/_/id/216879/jonathan-kongbo

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Kongbo's incredibly quick development is reflected in this article about his high school career.


It’s hard to imagine anyone making the kind of debut Jonathan Kongbo did this past September, when on a whim, the senior basketball star at Holy Cross Secondary in Surrey decided to slap on the pads and join his school’s football team.“My first four snaps as a player, I got four sacks in a row,” smiles the 6-foot-5, 247-pound defensive end, who terrorized the host Argyle Pipers in a game played Sept. 15 in North Vancouver. “After that, I just went ‘Wow, OK.’”
And so began a most curious and incredible two-sport senior season for the native of the Congo, who came to Canada with his family at the age of four in search of a better life.
Kongbo, who has played in a grand total of just eight football games, is off in the fall to begin a college career along the defensive line for the NCAA Div. 1 University of Wyoming Cowboys.
He signed his national letter of intent on March 11, and then the very next day, with his future secure, Kongbo suited up for the first game of the B.C. senior boys Quad A basketball championships in Langley, eventually leading the Crusaders to the championship final where it lost to Vancouver’s Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs.
Nonetheless, he’s the first basketball player to be named a first-team all-star at provincials, then depart for an NCAA football career, since Parksville-Ballenas’ Justin Sorensen, a Head of the Class alumnus, pulled the trick in 2003 en route to a career at South Carolina.


http://blogs.theprovince.com/2014/06/16/jonathan-kongbo/

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After decommitting from Tennessee last month, Kongbo decides to join the school today.




According to 247Sports' Ryan Callahan (https://twitter.com/RyanCallahan247/status/694951332453703683), 4-star JUCO defensive end prospect Jonathan Kongbo has signed with the University of Tennessee on national signing day.

Per 247Sports (http://247sports.com/Player/Jonathan-Kongbo-84585), Kongbo is the No. 1 recruit across the board among all JUCO prospects.

It wasn't even a month ago that Kongbo had announced on Twitter (https://twitter.com/King_Kongbo/status/684576305161977856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) that he decommitted from Tennessee. But he still kept the school in consideration when fielding other offers from the likes of Ole Miss, Alabama and Oregon, per 247Sports.

The 6'6", 264-pound defensive end has had two years out of high school to further develop his game at the JUCO level. Originally a Class of 2014 recruit, he was already looking like a star at Holy Cross High School in Canada.





http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2613550-jonathan-kongbo-to-tennessee-volunteers-land-4-star-de-prospect

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Here's Scout.com's description of Kongbo.



From more than two dozen suitors, including national champion Alabama, Kongbo narrowed his short list to four — Tennessee, Ole Miss, Southern California and Florida State.For Tennessee, the original choice, he represents a great get. Described by Scout.com as a "program-changing type of addition on the defensive front," Kongbo joins a school coming off its first nine-win season since 2007 in the hyper-competitive SEC conference, considered a path to the pros. He will enter the 2016 season with three years of NCAA eligibility remaining.

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Another sign that Canadian players are becoming increasingly recognized for their high talent level thanks in part to social media as Chase Claypool becomes the first BCer to sign with Notre Dame.




On Wednesday’s NCAA signing day, surrounded by coaches and fellow classmates, Claypool made B.C. high school history by officially signing his national letter of intent to join the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team next season, the first player from this province to play for what many call the most tradition-laden program in all of college football. The signing comes a week after Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly flew to Abbotsford and dined with Claypool at a local restaurant.

“It was an honour for him to come all the way to Canada because I know he had a couple of flight problems,” said Claypool, who could have easily pursued an NCAA Div. 1 basketball career. “Coach Kelly just wanted to let me know that I was going to be a special player. I took that personally in a very good way.”

After film of Claypool hit the web following his Grade 11 season at Abbotsford, a full-scale blitz was launched by over 20 major NCAA Div. 1 football programs.

They saw the incredible athleticism, the keen game sense and most of all, the comfort the long-armed wide-receiver with the gliding strides brought to the field.

“When we first saw him in Grade 8, we saw a football player, but No. 1, we saw an athlete who could do any number of things,” said Abbotsford head coach Jay Fujimura, who this season watched Claypool lead the Panthers in yardage, touchdowns, tackles and interceptions. “You watch him once and he stands out. He has the speed, but he also has the size and the explosiveness, and to get it all so complete, in one package? That’s rare.”

Indeed.
Claypool helped lead the Panthers all the way to the Subway Bowl B.C. Double A championship final this past December, where the team lost 53-34 to North Vancouver’s Carson Graham Eagles.

On the season, Claypool was selected his tier’s B.C. Player of the Year, and it was no surprise.
On offence, in combined receiving, rushing, passing and kick returns, he totalled 2,514 all-purpose yards in 12 games, scoring 29 touchdowns and passing for three others. His 1,473 receiving yards and 18 receiving touchdowns were No. 1 across both tiers of provincial senior varsity football.
Claypool also tied for his team’s tackling lead with 74 stops, adding five interceptions as well.
With the Irish set to send Claypool his meal plan and his training schedule in advance of fall camp, the question is whether he will be able to crack the game-day lineup and see the field as a pure freshman, or spend his first season in South Bend, Ind., as a red-shirt.
“It depends to how I take to the speed of the game,” Claypool said. “They’ve got lots of older guys so it just depends on how I adapt. If I do, there is a chance of me playing.”
Claypool has always enjoyed watching major U.S. college football on TV, but this past season, he admits he viewed it through a different lens.




http://blogs.theprovince.com/2016/02/03/abbys-claypool-makes-it-official-signs-on-for-historic-next-chapter-with-notre-dames-irish/

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While promising Canadian QB Nathan Rourke's career is on the upswing, having signed with Ohio University, after a very good year in community college football and three years of hard work and development, another Canadian, Jonathan Kongbo, sees his career going in the opposite direction. This is likely a repeat of an old story of rapid success leading to a downfall. Despite having played only two years of football, including one in high school in Canada, Kongbo was ranked the #1 US junior college prospect last year, leading to a bidding war that eventually led to his signing with Tennessee. The 2016 season was a totally different story.



Earlier this week, Tennessee coach Butch Jones was asked what he needed to see from highly touted junior college defensive end Jonathan Kongbo for the rest of the season.
“I think also buying into the team concept … understanding the standards and expectations in our program, what’s required on a daily basis,” was part of Jones’ answer.




The hype with Kongbo was high on the recruiting trail, but he hasn’t come close to living up to it.
From the time he signed with the Vols, Kongbo has been active on social media (http://gridironnow.com/tennessee-jonathan-kongbo-message-for-alabama/). He posted a couple of workout pictures that had a grease board saying “Bama, we comin.” He also tweeted phrases such as “3rd and Kongbo.” But the production hasn’t matched the talk, and since the beginning of the season, he has been vocal on Twitter about his displeasure with having to play some tackle. ...

At one point, he tweeted a picture of a pair of cleats hanging up with the caption, “All things must come to an end.” ...


Jones had to address that in a news conference and said it was in regard to Kongbo losing in a FIFA video game. But with the unhappiness Kongbo has expressed frequently – including, at one point, stripping everything Vols-related from his Twitter account – it’s hard to believe that Kongbo was referring to a video game.
Now Jones is publicly challenging Kongbo to buy into the team concept and begin to live up to standards and expectations. This comes across as a final heave to the end zone to get Kongbo to cooperate. The thing about this that bothers me is how it could affect the rest of the team.
Kongbo hasn’t bought in all season, yet has played a lot of football.

[jerrym]

Jonathan Kongbo has been ranked the #1 2019 draft prospect by the CFL Scouting Bureau (https://www.cfl.ca/2018/08/30/kongbo-tops-first-scouting-bureau-rankings-2019/). However, he has been considered somewhat disappointing in US reviews, with some arguing it was initially because of a lack maturity, which seems to have been overcome, but is now argued that it is because he has been asked to play out of position on a terrible defensive team. The following review argues that Kongbo could very well have a much better season because of changes in his role.



Kongbo was the #1 ranked junior college player coming out of Arizona Western College - a premier JUCO - as a defensive end. He had offers from virtually everywhere, including Florida, Auburn, and Alabama before committing to Tennessee as part of the talented 2016 recruiting class, which ranked 14th nationally (according to 247Sports). His highlight tape was filled with big hits and edge pressure as Kongbo aligned in a variety of 3-man and 4-man fronts. All of this led to lofty expectations that Kongbo would come to Knoxville and be a major contributor for Bob Shoop’s 4-2-5 defense. Unfortunately, he just hasn’t met those high expectations. In one season at Arizona Western Kongbo totaled 55 tackles with 11 sacks. This is in contrast to his 40 total tackles and 3.5 sacks in two seasons at Tennessee.
Is Jonathan Kongbo (http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/players/280297/jonathan-kongbo) simply not the player that we were collectively led to believe? I honestly do not think that is the case. I think he is an exceptionally talented player. The issue has been that during his two seasons at Tennessee he has been asked to play a role that in my opinion has emphasized his weaknesses. Jonathan is naturally an edge rushing defensive end. In 2016, however, the Vols were already set at the defensive end positions, returning one of the greatest defensive lineman in Tennessee history in Derek Barnett (http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/players/248482/derek-barnett) as well as senior Corey Vereen. The defensive coaching staff, to their credit, recognized Kongbo’s talent and truly did their best to get him on the field. Unfortunately, this meant playing him frequently as a 3-technique defensive tackle. ...

Essentially, Kongbo was moved from his natural edge position to an interior defensive line position at an undersized 260lbs. He was forced to take on double teams at the point of attack and take up space, which is definitely not his game. ...

In 2017, with the departure of Barnett (http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/players/269640/derek-barnett) and Vereen, Kongbo was moved back out to the defensive end position. Naturally his numbers improved. His total tackles more than doubled and he had 1.5 more sacks than the previous year. Unfortunately, as we all know, the defense as a whole did not improve but regressed in a major way. Kongbo wasn’t a major factor rushing the passer because, quite frankly, teams didn’t need to pass on Tennessee. They could run it right at our 125th ranked rushing defense (out of 129 schools) and be just fine. Interestingly, there were actually instances where Kongbo was asked to drop into coverage from his defensive end position to defend the pass. It goes without saying that this isn’t exactly his game, either.
This year I am expecting Jonathan to be playing a position that gives him a much better chance to be successful. We should be seeing him at the “Jack” position. ...

The player at the “Jack” position needs to be able to hold the edge in the run game, and get after the quarterback in the passing game. Kongbo should be much better against the run from this outside position than he was in 2016 from an interior spot. Also, I expect that he will be a much improved rusher considering he will be coming often from the weak-side where he will presumably get more favorable one-on-one matchups.


https://www.rockytoptalk.com/2018/7/30/17415320/tennessee-vols-football-most-important-players-2018-jonathan-kongbo

[OV Argo]

Kongbo is not doing much for the Tennessee D this year - stats wise anyways.

Be interesting to see if he remains the #1 ranked prospect; and if CFL teams will view him as a DE or DT.