101 Days of BC Football: Bobby Wolford, #36

Boston College football dipped into the Sunshine State several times for their new 2012 class, plucking up a few guys here and there. The next one, Bobby Wolford, was sought after by a great many schools, but did not originally cast his lot with our university.

Wolford comes from a bit of a football family: his uncle, Will Wolford, was a first-round NFL draft pick and spent 13 seasons in the league as an offensive tackle for the Bills, Colts, and Steelers. The elder Wolford is now the radio color commentator for Indianapolis Colts broadcasts. As for the younger Wolford, he is a resident of Jacksonville, where he played for Bishop Kenny High School as an inside linebacker for the Crusaders. A two-year team captain, Wolford started for the varsity football team his sophomore, junior, and senior years and racked up an impressive 122 tackles in his final season, 27 of which were for a loss. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Wolford also played tight end and caught five touchdowns. Put it all together and you’ve got a guy named to the Florida Times-Union All-First Coast team.

Many teams expressed interest in Wolford, a unanimous three-star recruit, though his offers only came from six schools. When his recruiting decision was made, he chose to head on out to Utah to play for the BYU Cougars. Evidently, he had been thinking about going to BC for quite some time, because he decommitted from BYU and changed course for Boston College right after cutting ties with the Cougars. The main reasons for his switch appear to be distance (Massachusetts is closer to home than Utah, and there’s the chance to play ACC games in his home state) and the Catholic nature of the school.

There is no reason to expect that Wolford will play in 2012. The linebacking corps is fine as-is and it would not be worth it to burn a year of his eligibility for little playing time. Expect to see him work his way into the linebacker rotation in 2013.