The Daily Campus

Issue date: 4/24/06 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Melissa Arbo Ed Nelson shed his basketball jersey for an NFL Pro Day.

Ed Nelson's path to the NFL may have improved Friday afternoon.

With San Diego tight end coach Rob Chudzinski one of 15 scouts working Nelson out at the Sherman Family Sports Complex and agent Joe Linta running the workout, Nelson went through a series of lifting and running drills to show he's ready to hit the big-time gridiron.

The irony in the workout couldn't have been more promising, with Chudzinski the coach of basketball-to-NFL poster boy Antonio Gates and Linta the agent of Corey Lampkin, who played basketball at Texas A&M Corpus Christi and is now a tight end with the New York Jets.

Still, despite all of the circumstances, Nelson, who hasn't played football since stepping in at tight end during his freshman year at Piper High School in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., knows that he can't look too far into the future after the workout.

"We've got the [NFL] Draft coming up," Nelson said. "If I don't get selected in the later rounds, then I'll just go as a free agent somewhere and go into a mini-camp and take it from there."

"Anybody that's looking for him to come in and be a second tight end or a first tight end this year is way off base," Linta said. "What we're talking about is a guy who is going to come in, work his rear end off in his first year and probably be a practice squad guy. He'll give an amazing effort and then in the second year, as the learning curve hits, will be a contributor."

When Linta first worked Nelson out April 11, he didn't expect much. As the workout progressed, however, Linta began to show more interest in what Nelson could do. By the end, he wanted to make sure Nelson was serious about pursuing football.

"At the end, my point to him was, 'You have to decide. It can't be basketball maybe and football maybe, it has to be animal or vegetable, not both.' And he bought into that," Linta said.

The original plan was to have around three or four local scouts stop by, Linta said, but his expectations were exceeded when 15 scouts showed up, including representatives from the Patriots, Giants and Jets, as well as from the Steelers, Rams, Redskins, Ravens and Colts. Even Nelson's basketball teammates, some of the football team and his father were in attendance for the workout.

Continued...

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