Colin Kaepernick Only Had One Football Scholarship Offer in High School - Notre Dame and Others Wanted Him to Play Baseball

Who is this 2nd round draft pick, and why didn’t you hear more about him in college?

A 6-foot-4, wiry 172-pound QB as a teenager, Kaepernick was virtually unrecruited out of John H. Pitman High School in Turlock, California. Nevada went hard after him, and had little competition – a couple Pac-12 schools, UTEP and Wyoming were interested, but only the Wolfpack offered him a scholarship … with the intent of playing him at safety.

(How good of an athlete was Kaepernick? He was an All-State nominee in football, basketball and baseball as a senior.)

Kaepernick could have actually played college baseball – he got a partial scholarship offer to Notre Dame after the Irish were intrigued by his 92 mph fastball and two no-hitters during his senior year.

But Kaepernick choose Nevada, and redshirted in 2006. After the Wolfpack’s starting QB got hurt in the opener in 2007, coach Chris Ault went with Kaepernick, who took the job and racked up a 19-3 TD-QB ratio. He never lost the job.

While in college, Kaepernick didn’t draw much attention from the NFL “pundits,” but MLB teams were still salivating over his heater, and the Cubs drafted him in the 43rd round in 2009.