Brendon Austin has the kind of Colorado in him that will be hard to satisfy when he leaves. He’s a camper and a fisherman, and he loves the mountains.
“I’m pretty easy in that sense,” Austin said.
But mountaineering . . .in Palo Alto? Not so much. Austin laughs.
“The mountains are pretty far away,” he said, then deadpanned, “but I think Tahoe is a couple hours away.”
Austin isn’t going to Stanford for the mountains. There’s a little something called football — and an architectural design degree he would like to pursue — that attracted Colorado’s top-ranked prep recruit to the West Coast.
Austin, a 6-foot-5, 263-pound tackle from Chaparral High, is the biggest, baddest offensive lineman in the state. He will sign an official letter of intent Wednesday on national signing day.
“I can’t wait,” Austin said. “I’m so ready to get out there. I’m enjoying my senior year, my last semester, but I really can’t wait to get out there.”
Austin decided to attend Stanford almost immediately after stepping on campus nearly a calendar year ago. Nothing, not even Jim Harbaugh leaving as Stanford’s coach earlier this month, was going to stop that.
“When I took my visit out there last February, my unofficial for junior day, I pretty much knew at that moment I was going there,” he said. “I came home and took a couple of days to get away from it, let my heart rate slow down a little bit to make sure I was all good. And I was still very confident with it. But I also played devil’s advocate on myself and went out to Notre Dame as well. That just further proved to me that I belonged at Stanford.”
At Chaparral, he was the kind of offensive lineman who could overpower foes with size and athleticism. He fully expects to get above 300 pounds when he gets on Stanford’s weight training program without losing any of his quickness.
“He’s real athletic and a real hard worker,” Chaparral coach John Vogt said of the two-time Denver Post all-Colorado selection. “He was a captain as a junior and a senior, which is pretty unusual. He’s one of those kids that leads by example. He’s a good student. He’s very respectful to not only his peers but his teachers and his coaches. Everything he does he just gives it his all. He’s just a very pleasant young man.”
That is, unless you’re lined up across from him.
“He’s plenty nasty,” Vogt said. “He got a lot of pancake blocks.”
Quietly, Chaparral is starting to churn out major Division I talent on the offensive line. Austin comes on the heels of Jack Harris (now at Colorado), and waiting in the wings is junior tackle Shane Callahan, who has already drawn interest from Michigan and Notre Dame.
At Stanford, Austin could end up playing alongside Dillon Bonnell, who was a highly regarded recruit from ThunderRidge just a season ago.
But this is Austin’s time to shine.
“He’s just an all-American kid,” Vogt said. “They call me old-school coach, I’ve been around a while, and he’s the kind of kid you grew up with. If you were around him five minutes, you’d enjoy him.”
Chris Dempsey: 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com
