Boo Wheatley

WarEr4Christ · April 1st, 2010, 3:20 pm

Y'all gotta check this out. 3.9 40 time 6' 7" WR, unknown till today

LOS ANGELES
A previously unknown athlete today ran what may have been the first sub-four second 40-yard-dash at a “pro day” workout for professional football prospects.

Joseph “Boo” Wheatly, 24, sprinted at the end of an annual southern California Pro Day, stunning the assembled crowd of athletes, agents, pro scouts and fans. Wheatly’s run caused an audible reaction. The sound was followed about a second later by an aftershock of wild celebration among his fellow athletes, and the murmur of phone calls and texts as pro football scouts rushed to report what they had seen.

Sources among the timing crew and several scouts who had hand-timed the sprint confirmed Wheatly clocked in at 3.9 seconds.

“That’s just ridiculous,” one scout said. “No way I’d believe my watch if it says that. But when everybody’s watch says it, when we saw what we just saw, what else is there to say?”

With the performance, Wheatly is already a wild card heading into next month’s pro football draft. The 40 is often considered a football prospect’s best measuring stick.

Wheatly was a member of the football team at Mesa Junior College last year but battled eligibility issues for most of the season. He was eligible for only one game, where he had seven receptions for 142 yards.

“We first saw Boo running for our track team. You could see there was potential there; we liked his size and thought we could develop his football skills,” head football coach Rich Martinez said by phone.

Wheatly, who stands about 6-foot-7, said he grew four inches over the course of several months following a nondescript high school athletic career. He joined Mesa and then decided to dedicate himself to making a Football Bowl Subdivision program. It was during this training that he felt it coming together, he said.

“I finally got the right shoes! My old ones were a joke,” he said.

Wheatly said he originally started with a traditional sprint training program suggested by his track coach. He’s tweaked it with an additional emphasis that takes full advantage of his long stride. And he’s added drills on the sand and in the shallow water of southern California’s beaches to help with his burst and explosiveness. He’s in the weight room three times a week.

Wheatly didn’t receive much interest from Division I schools, but while working out in southern California he caught passes from other top prospects. These connections got him on the invite to participate in Pro Day — ostensibly to help warm up the quarterbacks.

Speculation is strong that Wheatly could be a top-10 pick, with league sources saying one team has already arranged to fly him in for a personal interview.

While the scramble has just started to see which team might pick Wheatly, it appears Nike is the shoe company which has won the Boo draft. Wheatly trained and ran his historic 40 in, as you may have imagined, swoosh-adorned Nike Air Max running shoes.

Boo Wheatley

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