HOG CALLS

6-10 lineman big enough to handle it all

University of Arkansas lineman Dan Skipper runs drills before Saturday afternoons scrimmage at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE - Thousands upon thousands have been told they are too small to play football and defied the odds.

Considerably fewer have been told they are too tall for football.

Dan Skipper stands out as one of the few. At 6-10, the University of Arkansas true freshman from Aravada, Colo., has the height to be a center for Mike Anderson’s Razorbacks basketball team.

But it’s the football depth chart Skipper ascends with fellow true freshman Denver Kirkland on Coach Bret Bielema’s football team as their backup offensive tackles.

Kirkland is the quintessential sized lineman, although by everyday standards he is gargantuan at 6-5, 346 pounds.

Skipper, listed 305 pounds, supposedly is the football freak, measuring one inch taller than Ed “Too Tall” Jones, the fabled former Dallas Cowboys defensive linemen.

So if he’s too tall for Too Tall, no doubt “experts” of every kind have deemed Skipper too tall for football on every level that he has played?

“Oh, definitely,” Skipper replied. “I have gotten that for a long time. It is what it is.”

Like those ” Hey, the basketball team practices in the gym” comments as he headed to football fields?

“Oh, yeah,” Skipper said. “That never stops. I just take it as it comes because many people would be blessed to be this tall.”

He could hardly stand taller with his coaches at any height.

Offensive coordinator Jim Chaney and offensive line coach Sam Pittman say they never have coached a football player so tall. That didn’t dissuade them from recruiting Skipper while both coached at Tennessee and then recruiting him to Arkansas once both came to work for Bielema.

Both foresaw situations where Skipper could use his height and long arms advantageously, but even more importantly they believed he has the flexibility to play with a pad level and leverage belying his 6-10 height.

He’s proving them right so far, advancing right away to varsity second-team at a position requiring nearly all freshmen to redshirt.

Skipper, Pittman said, plays with a surprisingly low pad level and “high energy and high football IQ.”

“He is learning what he is supposed to learn and he is going 100 miles an hour,” Pittman said. “That is one thing that you notice out of high school is that he has a high motor, and he has it here, too.”

Chaney, Pittman and Skipper say there are still those moments when he looks like a rookie who hasn’t adjusted to the speed of the college game.

The coaches say those moments are decreasing as Skipper’s reps increase.

“He’s going to be a fantastic player,” Chaney said.

And probably a fantastic addition to the UA even if he never played a down.

Skipper’s high football I.Q translates to the classroom and vice-versa. He begins UA fall semester classes majoring in mechanical engineering.

According to his UA media guide bio, Skipper was in the National Honor Society, elected student body president his senior year, served in student government all four years and contributed 100 hours of community service while attending Ralston Valley High School.

So it seems that even if Dan Skipper wasn’t so tall, classmates would still look up to him.

Sports, Pages 14 on 08/21/2013