Sync

As a child, Fredi Knighten excelled at sprinting. He swam the breaststroke well, and thanks to a hyperactive family dog with the full name of Tasmanian Devil, he could really giddy up on land too.

But in fifth grade, he decided to master something more complicated. One morning, he told his father he wanted to be a quarterback. Reginald Knighten, who’d starred in basketball in Louisiana, wanted to help his son with whatever sport he chose. So, that evening, he summoned Fredi off the couch and tossed him a brand-new football from about eight yards away. Reginald Knighten recalls: “The first time he threw, it was a straight spiral, and it was real tight. I said ‘Wow, we might have something here.’”

He forbade his son from playing organized football before he threw at least 2 million passes. Reginald estimates that goal petered out around 1.2 million passes, although that turned out to be plenty. Television commercials gave Fredi and Reggie, his older brother by four years, the chance to cram in 500-600 daily passes. The boys would bound off the couch, run outside and throw 100 passes to each other, counting off each one. That repetition was key to Reginald, a former basketball coach. In Ruston, La., he coached a high school freshman named Scotty Thurman and, through him, he saw the high arc of a career built on constant practice.

Reginald Knighten and his boys kept flinging footballs, rain or shine. When forced indoors, they took to a 10-yard hallway and tried to hone their accuracy. Sometimes, it went well. Reginald Knighten recalls one night throwing 500 passes to Fredi in that hallway. “I think he dropped one, and he hit the ceiling once. Everything else was right in my midsection.”

Sometimes, it went not so well. “Plenty of broken ceiling fans and lights, scuffs on the wall,” Reggie Knighten recalls in a phone interview. Still, “it was real important to us to be competitive and on top of our game.”

On a recent weekday, Fredi’s mother Daphne Knighten reminisces about those times while sitting in her home in downtown Little Rock. She puts down the scarf she’s knitting and reminds Fredi her memories aren’t so fond, especially when the outside throwing lasted until 10:30 p.m. Fredi responds: “But it was all worth it, right? You don’t have to pay for college now.”

On Wednesday, senior Fredi Knighten caps a distinguished high school career at Pulaski Academy by taking his dream of playing quarterback to college. He plans to sign a national letter of intent with Arkansas State University, to which he committed after head coach Gus Malzahn came aboard in December. Knighten, an All-American, headlines what likely will be ASU’s best recruiting class ever.

Knighten has had one of the most meteoric rises of any Arkansas high school athlete in recent memory. Barely known entering his junior year, he has cemented his name in the annals by leading the Bruins to a 26-1 record as a starter, a 7-on-7 national championship and a 2011 state title. In the last two seasons, he passed for 8,842 yards and 119 touchdowns and ran for 1,749 yards and 24 touchdowns — often playing only two to three quarters a game. And despite all this success, only ASU and Louisiana Tech offered him scholarships.

As a person, Knighten seemingly has it all. Grades? He earned a 3.4 GPA while tackling the likes of calculus and organic chemistry. Character? On Sundays, he is an altar server at St. Bartholomew Church and then helps a seventh-grader who played quarterback at Lakewood Middle School with his passing. Personality? Try finding a more popular teammate.

But as a player, the big question surrounding Knighten is if, at nearly 5-feet-11 and 189 pounds, he will thrive as a Sun Belt Conference quarterback. Or if defensive linemen who are four and five inches taller than Knighten will repeatedly bat away his pass attempts, along with his long-held dreams?

Those dreams were further built on the bleachers and track at Scott Field near Forest Heights Middle School. There, Reginald Knighten, an assistant principal at the Little Rock school, ran his teenage sons through various agility and stamina drills on Saturday mornings. It all came to fruition in 2009 on a nationally televised game against Little Rock Christian Academy, which featured Michael Dyer, now an ASU teammate. Pulaski Academy would lose 42-21 but Fredi, then a sophomore receiver, first showcased on a big stage his trademark elusiveness with an 89-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. “He’s so quick and so athletic that that he can make [opponents] look like they’re tackling nobody,” Bruins head coach Kevin Kelley says. “They can’t even get a hand on him.” Even when tight-roping along the sideline, trying to squeeze a couple extra yards out of a run, Kelley adds. “For some reason, instead of just running out of bounds, he wants to make that last guy miss and look a little silly before he steps out.”

Although Knighten is blessed with 4.4 speed and the ability to throw the ball 65 yards, Kelley said he became elite by developing patience and learning to scramble as a last option.

“A good quarterback can run and throw the ball. A great quarterback can stand there, and go through reads as the world’s crashing around him and deliver the ball.”

In high school, Knighten grabbed the starting job in the third game of the 2010 season against archrival Lake Hamilton. He passed for 422 yards and four touchdowns on the way to a 41-24 win.

“Before that I was always worrying not to mess up but then I just kind of let loose,” recalls Knighten, who counts former Florida quarterback Chris Leak, also 5-feet-11, as his favorite player. When summer practice opens at ASU, Leak is one reason Knighten believes he can challenge rising senior quarterback Ryan Aplin, the conference player of the year.

But even if he must wait for that position, Knighten believes he can contribute soon. So does Brian McLaughlin of The Sporting News, who included Knighten on the Parade All-America team he chose. “My bet is, at WR, DB, whatever, the kid is going to be a big-time player,” McLaughlin wrote in an email.

Indeed, Malzahn himself considered signing Knighten as a wide receiver when he coached at Auburn. That early interest solidified ASU as Knighten’s choice when Malzahn could offer him a firm scholarship and shot to stay at quarterback. Knighten believes he and Michael Dyer, a former Parade All-America who transferred from Auburn, will help ASU attract better athletes. “Getting Michael Dyer was a big plus for us. I think when he has a great season, he’s gonna help a lot with the recruiting process.” Knighten has already put in work, urging teammates such as safety Aum’Arie Wallace and receiver Kendall Bruce to join him in Jonesboro.

All those football matters will be sorted out soon enough.

In the meantime, Knighten has the rest of his senior year to enjoy/slog through. After long weekdays, he and his mother love to whip up a meal of steak chicken chimichangas and head to the couch. “We watch Jersey Shore,” Daphne says, laughing. Fredi adds: “After Snookie got punched, that’s when I got addicted.”

Knighten also savors pranks. He’s been pulling them with and on teammates for years, and claims nobody at school has gotten him, although he thought there was a close call a few weeks ago.

Assistant football coach Adam DePreist announced he’d made Parade magazine’s team, and at first Knighten didn’t believe him.

To prove it, DePriest showed him the roster online. “It shocked me,” Knighten recalls. “I wondered ‘Did they like Photoshop my name in there or something?’”

Knighten says his favorite pranks came at the expense of a soccer-playing friend. On separate occasions, he and Aum’Arie Wallace moved the friend’s locker after removing everything inside. “The first time, we just moved it into the shower.” The next time, “we flipped it upside down and turned it around and put it back in the same spot.”

Surely, their friend did a double-take when encountering the scene. It’s the same reaction Fredi hopes to one day elicit from everyone who overlooked or dismissed him the last couple seasons. Most major recruiting analysts have seen his size and tagged him as a 2-star recruit (out of five stars). Most coaches offered their scholarships to high school quarterbacks at least two inches taller. All this motivates Knighten, making him eager to prove himself to the Red Wolves who believe in him.

If, in the process, he ends up shocking all those naysayers, then all the better.

Knighten’s used to having the last laugh.

Fredi's forerunners

It’s rare a quarterback with an officially listed height of under 6 feet that succeeds in the NFL, although some exception seems to burst onto the scene every decade or so. In the 1960s, Pro Bowler Eddie LeBaron used a quick and high release along with superior accuracy to compensate for his 5-foot-9 frame.

The one-time Dallas Cowboy never ran for more 190 yards in a season.”If you have the ability to move and the intelligence to know how to read the defenses, you can find the [passing] lanes,” LeBaron told Sports Illustrated in 1998.

“Even the biggest guys can’t throw over the top of a guy 6-10 coming in at you.”

It’s this kind of cunning which made Doug Flutie the patron saint of modern sub 6-foot quarterbacks. The 5-foot-10, 180-pound Pro Bowler had snared almost every imaginable college honor — from Heisman Trophy to Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award — before laying waste to numerous Canadian Football League records in the 1990s. He bookended his CFL days with 13 seasons in the NFL, where he threw for 14,715 yards and 86 touchdowns. It’s less rare that a sub 6-foot quarterback gains national recognition in high school, then lands a dual threat role at a major college program. Prominent examples include:

Mickey Joseph

Height: 5-foot-10

Prep career in Marreo, La.: In 1986, selected as All-American by USA Today and Parade magazine.

College: At Nebraska, a member of three Big Eight Championship football teams, named to the 1990 All-Big Eight team as quarterback. Leg injury stifled his plans to play in the Canadian Football League, and he went into teaching and coaching at high schools and colleges.

Chris Leak

Height: 5-foot-11

Prep career in Charlotte, N.C.: 2002 USA Today All-American and Parade Player of the Year

College: At Florida, set career passing yards record, led Gators to 2007 national championship; In the NFL, only saw action in one preseason game with the Bears; spent three seasons in CFL and was cut by Saskatchewan in summer 2011.

Todd Reesing

Height: 5-foot-11

Prep career in Austin, Texas: 2004 Texas 4A Player of the Year

College: At Kansas, finished career with 11,194 passing yards, 90 touchdowns and 33 interceptions; Ran for 1,046 yards and 15 touchdowns; Spent a few days in CFL before entering financial services industry.

Dylan Favre

Height: 5-foot-10

Prep career in Bay St. Louis, Miss.; 2009 Parade All-American.

College: At Mississippi State, third-string quarterback primarily used in trick-play and red-zone formations in one season; passed for 119 yards and a touchdown; In Dec.r 2011, left Bulldogs before Music City Bowl, transferred to a community college for more playing time.

For more on Knighten’s story, including a tidbit on growing up in Darren McFadden’s neighborhood, go to thesportsseer.com

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