Kansas
Keeler: CSU Rams quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi chose Colorado love over Kansas State money. Know what? He’d do it again.
Add Georgia to the list, now that we’re naming names. And USC. BFN is a BFD.
At least 9.3 million people watched CU and CSU trade haymakers last September in the Rocky Mountain Showdown. You don’t think Lincoln Riley happened to be one of them?
“His DMs were ringing off the hook (in December),” Rich Nicolosi, father to Rams quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, told me Friday. “Everyone from USC to Georgia, and everyone in between. Several in Texas. Some of those offers, most of it, (was) just B.S.”
Some of them, though? Some of them weren’t.
“The K-State one is absolutely legitimate,” Rich said of the Wildcats’ alleged NIL push. “And there were several others.”
Which makes you wonder: What sort of dad lets his kid turn down $600,000, as Rams coach Jay Norvell recently accused the Wildcats of putting on the table, for the glitz of the Mountain West?
A dad who raised his kid right. A dad who says his kid would make the same choice again.
No receipts. No regrets.
“Brayden didn’t ever really take it seriously,” Rich said. “That’s why he was always committed to (CSU coach) Jay (Norvell). It was Jay who believed in Brayden. It was Jay who gave him a shot. He’s extremely loyal to Jay.
“And Brayden loves CSU … (he’s) an outdoors kid, he loves hunting and fishing. He loves everything about it, and I think that tied it all into a neat little bow.”
As a redshirt freshman, BFN led the Mountain West in total offense per game (286.1 yards) and passing yards per game (288.3). As a sophomore heading to camp on Thursday, he’s shaved his 40-yard dash time down to the 4.6-second range and his 20-yard shuttle time to 4.19.
That last number, if you’re curious, is quicker than the 2024 combine times posted by Michigan’s JJ McCarthy (4.23), the No.10 overall pick in the ’24 NFL Draft, and South Carolina’s Spencer Rattler (4.37), who wound up getting taken in the fifth round by the Saints. He’s squatting 460 to 480-ish pounds, with sights on topping 500 soon.
“It’s fun to see some of the (social media posts),” Rich laughed. “Like, ‘They offered $600K for a QB2? Really?’ Maybe you’re not seeing what the NFL scouts see right now.”
The scouts see BFN, CSU’s Big Freakin’ Deal, as a 6-foot-4 RPG. They see a kid who’ll hang in the pocket until he can smell the linebacker’s chewing gum. They see guts. They see vision. They see a fast processor. They see a photographic memory. They see a guy who took honors classes in chemistry and advanced placement courses in world history.
And yeah, they’ve seen the 16 picks from last fall. Brayden and Rich, a football coach himself, even got together to break them down: Three came on end-of-half or end-of-game heaves, another handful on third-and-forevers.
“Probably half of them were really mental mistakes, being a freshman, being new,” Rich said. “I would say he’s not really going to change his gunslinger mentality.
“And I think that’s one of the things that, when you compare him to Jordan Love, how he played for Green Bay, and had similar stats, but the NFL looks back and goes, ‘He’s not afraid to let it rip.’”
No receipts. No regrets.
BFN’s never been cowered from the stage. Never shirked a challenge. Growing up, Rich made a point to never “let” his kids, including Brayden, beat him in anything.
Victories were earned. They even made up a fake medal out of a jar lid, a carrot at the end of the family stick, and presented it to the “Champion Of The Garage.”
Brayden won it for the first time at age 14 when he finally beat Rich in table tennis. Young BFN put the medal on, then went outside and did a ceremonial lap of honor around the neighborhood.
“From then on,” Rich laughed, “there’s nothing that I can beat him at.”
Brayden became a 5-foot-8 underclassman being chased by 300-pound linemen at San Diego’s Torrey Pines High School. But by the time that first major growth spurt hit, in 2020, BFN was SOL — a 6-foot-ish QB with no prep football in California to play that fall thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The family moved to Texas, where young Brayden transferred into Aledo High, zipped from JV to QB1, and won a state championship within months of joining the program.
“Get him on a board game like Rummikub, you play him in anything, he instantly locks into ‘kill’ mode,” Rich said. “He’s just like his mom — he won’t let anybody win.”
BFN grew up at Rich’s practices and games, shagging balls and joining drills, soaking it all in like a young Kyle Shanahan or a young Jim Harbaugh,
At 9, he was watching film with Rich, who showed him how to dissect defenses. At 12, his fastball was clocked at 72 miles per hour. At 15, he was throwing the rock so stinking hard that Rich decided, rather than busting up his fingers, to let someone else run routes with his new missile launcher.
Although even dad admits that a spare $600,000 sure would’ve come in handy recently. Brayden just sprung for a $3,000 bed, complete with one of those “smart” therapy mattresses that contour to your spine.
“He doesn’t care about any of that stuff,” Rich said. “We really just don’t care about that. We have a really great (adviser) who is our brand manager … he always told us, ‘Don’t try to get rich playing college football. The real money is in the NFL.’”
No receipts. No regrets.
“I’ve seen his accountability going up, his sense of responsibility going up big time,” Rich said. “He won that (CSU) locker room last year, to be honest with you, before the season even started. People loved him. He’s got no enemies. Except for some CU Buffs fans.”
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