Hidden in the back of an industrial park in Ashburn, Va., is the headquarters of the Washington Redskins. I had the chance to visit there earlier this summer while on my yearly recruiting road trip. Slowly making my way up Redskin Drive, I approached the front door of the complex and immediately recognized Redskins director of player personnel Vinny Cerrato, looking much the same as the first time I saw him in 1985. His hair was a little shorter and he may have put on a couple of pounds, but he still looked in good enough shape to suit up and play wide receiver for his college coach Earl Bruce and the Iowa State Cyclones. Proving that old loyalties never die, Cerrato was wearing a Notre Dame shirt.
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Over the next couple of months I'll be writing about college football's five most influential recruiters over the past two decades, and in my mind Vinny Cerrato was the most dominating recruiting presence during that span.
I first heard of Cerrato when he called me in June of 1985 to tell me he had recently been named the Minnesota Gophers' recruiting coordinator. A graduate assistant at the time, Cerrato came into the job with a lot of enthusiasm but very little recruiting knowledge. In the spring of '85 coach Lou Holtz gave Cerrato a shot at this most demanding position.
I look at all fledgling recruiters with an eye of suspicion until they prove to me that they can get the job done, and Cerrato gained my respect within the year. His first six months on the job was spent trying to improve the Gophers, then when Holtz left Minnesota for Notre Dame in late November of '85, Cerrato was more than happy to join him in South Bend. Holtz and Cerrato hit the ground running, and despite the fact that they had less than two months to recruit, they put together an outstanding freshman class led by future All-American QB Tony Rice, FB Anthony Johnson, LB Mike Stonebreaker, DB Pat Terrell, DE Jeff Alm and OL Tim Grunhard. Grunhard, now an 11-year veteran in the NFL with the Kansas City Chiefs, had been turned down by the previous Notre Dame staff and Cerrato had to do some great recruiting to turn Grunhard away from South Carolina and back to Notre Dame.
I noticed quickly that Cerrato had an innate ability to evaluate talent, especially at the skill positions. Perhaps it was because of his own background as a former All-State quarterback in Albert Lea, Minn., where he also starred in hockey and track. He went on to become a sure-handed receiver and one of the team's fastest players at Iowa State. His philosophy to recruit prospects based more on athletic ability and projection was why he was the second most important person on the Notre Dame football staff during their glory years of 1987 through 1993.
One story I remember vividly about Cerrato's evaluating skills was when he was recruiting a skinny quarterback from St. Petersburg, Fla., named Tom Carter. After Carter committed to Cerrato in December, 1990, Florida State and Florida coaches remarked to me that they couldn't believe Notre Dame would come all the way to Florida to take a small, weak-armed quarterback. What those Florida coaches couldn't see, and what Cerrato saw most vividly, was that Carter showed exceptional quickness, foot speed and balance on offense and would project as a terrific college cornerback. Cerrato took several visits to St. Petersburg to not only watch Carter play quarterback, but also to watch his moves on the basketball court. In fact, he frequently spent as much time in basketball stands watching football players play basketball as he did in football stands. That's a major reason Notre Dame's teams during this period were the most athletic in school history.
By this time just about every college coach I talked to knew of Cerrato and his ability to take players from almost any part of the country back to South Bend with him. He beat out Florida State, Florida, UCLA, Texas, Penn State, Michigan and seemingly every other major school for several of their local prospects. That kind of recruiting will earn you a great reputation among fellow coaches, but it can also invite bad-mouthing by those same coaches who now have to go back to their respective head coaches and explain why they lost local prospects to Notre Dame. That's why Cerrato, over a six-year period, was the most talked-about college recruiter in the nation.
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ABOUT TOM LEMMING
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Tom Lemming is editor of Prep Football Report. For information on how to subscribe to Prep Football Report's three yearly magazines and five newsletters, fax your request to 847-842-1313 or write to P.O. Box 59113, Schaumburg, Ill. 60159. For year-round recruiting updates, call Tom Lemming's Prep Football Hotline at 900-860-9888. Calls are $1.79 per minute, and callers must be 18 years old or have parents' permission. |
Between 1987 and 1990 Notre Dame achieved the unprecedented honor of four consecutive No. 1 recruiting classes, a feat not equaled before or since. Those four classes produced 50 future NFL players. In just six years as Notre Dame's recruiting coordinator, Cerrato sent 63 players to the NFL -- no small achievement when you consider that Notre Dame plays the recruiting game with academic restrictions. No college team over the previous 20 years had accumulated as much talent as Notre Dame did during the years of '87 through '93.
But if you had to pinpoint the start of Notre Dame's fall from dominance, it had to be in December of 1991 when the school hosted many of the nation's premier prospects during two very important recruiting weekends. Since arriving in South Bend, Holtz and Cerrato often had to negotiate with Notre Dame's admissions department for borderline students to be accepted into the university. The requests were not uncommon, and Notre Dame's academic success rate with borderline students over the previous five years had been exemplary. However, during December of '91, the majority of Notre Dame's top recruits were turned down academically, many of them while on campus visits, as the admissions department took its stand.
With Cerrato uncertain about his future at the school, a job offer came from San Francisco 49ers owner and Notre Dame alum Eddie DeBartolo for Cerrato to become the 49ers' scouting director. And within the year Cerrato began drafting instant starters for the 49ers and helped develop the team that would win the franchise's most recent Super Bowl title (1995). He enjoyed enormous success from '92 through '97. When ownership problems cost just about everyone in the front office his job, Cerrato was not out of work for long. New Redskins owner Dan Snyder was looking for the best possible candidate to become the team's new director of player personnel, and the first person he contacted was none other than Vinny Cerrato.
Over the past two years with the Redskins Cerrato has become one of the most widely recognized personnel directors in the NFL. In the past few months he has been partly responsible for the Redskins' signing of Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith and Mark Carrier, and he drafted LaVar Arrington and Chris Samuels as the Nos. 2 and 3 picks of the 2000 draft.
Running the Redskins is no small job. The fans in the nation's capital are not a patient lot and will consider anything less than a Super Bowl win as an unsuccessful season. The two people who would be directly in line of the fans' fire would be Snyder and Cerrato. I asked him how he's handling this tremendous pressure so far, and in typical fashion he said he's having the time of his life and relishing the challenge. Of course, having been through the pressure cooker that is Notre Dame and come out smelling like a rose, it should be a walk in the park for college football's all-time greatest recruiter to make the Redskins talented enough to win the Super Bowl.
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