At 6-feet-6-1/2 and 358 pounds, Ramon Harewood may have been the biggest engineering student ever to attend the University of the West Indies.
These days, Harewood is an offensive lineman awaiting the NFL’s April 22-24 draft. The native of Barbados, an island nation of about 260,000 people, has played organized football only three years — all at Morehouse College, where he majored in applied physics and engineering.
A few years ago, Harewood hadn’t given football so much as a thought after spending much of his youth playing rugby, cricket, soccer and volleyball. Some colleges in Great Britain expressed interest in him coming to play rugby across the pond.
Harewood decided to attend the University of the West Indies on his way to becoming an engineer.
But an Atlanta track coach, Michael Grant, had attended a college fair where he spotted Harewood as a high school senior. Grant, who also had been a college football assistant coach, and Harewood exchanged pleasantries and contact information.
Grant later became an assistant coach at Morehouse. When Harewood had a change of heart after a semester as a student in the Caribbean, he connected with Grant at Morehouse and enrolled at the Atlanta school during the spring of 2006.
Harewood played for Morehouse the last three seasons. He is a project, but even at his immense size he ran the 40-yard dash in 5.27 seconds on a Decatur, Ga., high school field during his pro-day workout. And he has the footwork of a former soccer player.
He was an all-Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) second-team pick in his first year of organized football and received first team all-SIAC honors the last two years.
He was not invited to any of the major postseason all-star games and wasn’t invited to the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis. Most teams still see him as a rather large question mark to go with his substantial frame. It’s a question of how far he can go in professional football in a short time.
But Harewood is one of those draft stories that show even in an age of lightning-speed communication held in the palm of a hand, there are some surprises to be found, still some riddles looking for answers.
Jeff Legwold: 303-954-2359 or jlegwold@denverpost.com
