PaliHi Running Back Creer Picks Colorado

A unique and memorable high school football career culminated last Wednesday at 11:50 a.m. during lunch at Palisades High’a career that almost never was.   Across the country, hundreds of future college football stars took center stage at their respective high schools on February 2 for National Signing Day.   At PaliHi, the stage belonged to Dolphins star running back Malcolm Creer.   Over 200 Pali students flooded the Dolphins’ gym. Creer’s uncle, Jabari, took pictures and video with his camera phone. Even the online football magazine Deep Coverage documented all the action with a professional camcorder.   The 5-foot-11, 200-pound Creer sat at a table amidst it all, facing a sea of supporters, teammates and family, taking everything in with a beaming smile. Banners from football powers Colorado and Washington draped his table, building the suspense. After briefly thanking everyone for coming out, Creer started a one-man fashion show.   ’It all started with Pali pride,’ he said, referring to his dark blue Palisades hoodie. Then he took it off to reveal another Pali shirt. Then a Michigan shirt. Three articles of clothing later, he was left displaying a black shirt with gold letters that revealed his decision: He’ll be attending the University of Colorado on a full football scholarship.   Creer’s mother, Donna Jones, was understandably aglow from the storybook ending to her son’s high school career.   ’The last two months have been a dream,’ she said. ‘The whole thing is so miraculous. He was so under the radar. But every time he put his hands on the ball, it was like ‘ ‘Wow!”   Coming into the 2010 season, Malcolm was just as his mom described, flying well under the radar following a modest junior year when he led the Dolphins in rushing with 660 yards. But last fall, he suddenly became a Division I prospect. Rushing for 1,270 yards and 19 touchdowns, Creer even saw a couple of his most impressive highlight videos go viral’including an 108-yard interception return and a long, infamous touchdown run that featured a spinning cartwheel to keep his balance and vicious stiff-arms.   Yet only a few short years ago, Creer’s football career wasn’t just under the radar’it was non-existent.   As a freshman at Pali, Malcolm hadn’t played a down of organized football in his life, choosing the hard court over the gridiron from elementary school on.   ’He was a basketball kid all the way,’ his mother said. ‘All the way.’   Starting at age seven, Creer made basketball his passion. His father, Eric, had played at Morningside High School and it wasn’t long before Malcolm was following in those footsteps. Between a handful of local Park-and-Rec leagues, playing for his grade school and in pick-up games, his basketball pursuits kept football at bay.   ’I’m surprised he (focused on) basketball for so long,’ Eric said. ‘Even as a little kid, he was big, always built for football. He’s a natural.’ Fast-forward to his sophomore year at PaliHi, where that football nature started to take shape. A former classmate, Conner Preston, Pali’s quarterback at the time, told Creer and his older brother, Michael, to give football a go. Malcolm, preoccupied with playing high school basketball, wasn’t convinced.   ’He told me I had the size to play football,’ Creer said, ‘but I just laughed it off.’   Preston, who later transferred to Serra and is headed to SMU next year on a football scholarship, kept making his argument. And eventually, he persuaded both brothers to give football a shot.   That season, they endeared themselves to the program and then-coach Kelly Loftus.   ’I fell in love with the Creer family through Michael,’ Loftus told the Palisadian-Post. ‘Then I met Malcolm. And I thought, ‘Shoot, you’re varsity material right now, just ’cause I know your family.’   Loftus’ instincts were spot on.   ’He was just a stallion,’ Loftus said. ‘He’s always been the same (size). If he had played football as a sophomore with the JV team, he would’ve had 100 touchdowns.   ’I may have done him a disservice by not letting him play as a sophomore with his peers. But on the other hand, I might have done him a favor.’   By his senior year, the highlights and 100-yard, multiple-touchdown games started to pile up and so too did the Division I schools interested in Malcolm, including Nebraska, Washington, Idaho State and Eastern Washington. A Washington scout even showed up at a Pali-Fairfax basketball game in January, in part to see the defense and energy that make Malcolm a key reserve for the Dolphins.   But in the end, Colorado won out.   ’I have a warm feeling about fitting into the program,’ Creer said. ‘Meeting with the coaches, they gave me the feeling that I could fit in and they’d push me to my full potential. I can get used to the cold quickly. It shouldn’t bother me a bit.’   That warm feeling’in spite of the Colorado cold’was brought on in large part by the high level of interest the Buffaloes showed in Malcolm from the start of the recruiting process.   ’I was already set for Colorado,’ he said. ‘Washington was just using me as a fall back plan. But I wasn’t a fall-back plan for Colorado. I was just their main guy, and that’s why I chose Colorado.’   As a Buffalo, Creer joins a program buoyed by Colorado alumni. New head coach Jon Embree and offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy both played football for Boulder, and have injected optimism into a program that finished 19-39 the last five years and will join the Pac-10 this fall.   But for Malcolm, who is already taking classes at Santa Monica College to learn sign language and is interested in becoming a teacher, it was clear he needed to go somewhere that valued getting an education as much as getting into the end zone.   Which is exactly what he’ll get in Boulder.   ’The thing (Coach Bieniemy) and Coach Embree push is academics,’ Creer’s mother said. ‘They say, ‘You better believe as a football program, we’re going to use you. So you better use us. Get your education. Do well in the classroom and the rest will take care of itself.”   With a core GPA of 3.0, education has always been something that Malcolm has taken care of himself. As such, the prospect of getting a free education through football was something that hardly occurred to him for the majority of his high school career.   ’I’ve always just played football for the fun of it,’ Creer said, ‘and planned to get to college through academics.’   Though that plan didn’t materialize, if Malcolm’s celebratory signing-day ceremony and scholarship to Colorado are any indication, things turned out exactly the way they were supposed to.   And a football career that’s still in its infancy couldn’t look brighter.