FORT COLLINS — Martavius Foster’s major request of Jim McElwain’s Colorado State staff when he was being recruited after a single season at East Mississippi Community College was that he get to wear No. 9.
That was granted, and he has managed to hold onto it through a position switch from tight end to defensive end in the middle of his sophomore season.
So, yes, that will be No. 9 starting at left defensive end for the Rams against Minnesota on Saturday at Hughes Stadium.
“It was my dad’s number back when he played, and I’ve had it since high school,” the 6-foot-4, 270-pound Foster said Tuesday. “It’s something near and dear to my heart.”
That has led to CSU now having two defensive ends — Foster and SteveO Michel (4) — wearing single-digit numbers. Foster is getting more attention because he’s finally starting as a senior and seems to have won over the new Mike Bobo staff.
Foster had three sacks in the Rams’ 65-13 rout of Savannah State on Saturday and earlier drew praise from Bobo virtually all the way through preseason drills.
“I think he’s just made up his mind that he’s going to do everything he could to go out and help the team and be a football player this year,” Bobo said Tuesday. “It probably had a little bit to do with the coaching change. Sometimes in a coaching change, guys get a fresh start. … I don’t really know if he was in the doghouse, but I think the fresh start helped him. And then sometimes, there’s something about being a senior, like, ‘I’m going to do everything I can to possibly make this my best year.’ “
It at least was a conversation-starter for the two that Foster was born in Athens, Ga., where Bobo played and coached most of the last 22 years at the University of Georgia.
“When they first announced he was the head coach, I called him,” Foster said. “It was around Christmas, and we talked about it. We talked for a good 30 minutes. It was just about Athens and Georgia.”
After his parents split up, Foster moved to Starkville, Miss., with his mother, and was a star high school athlete there. He started out at Tennessee State.
“I ended up redshirting my first year there and after the first semester, I decided to go to juco and try again,” Foster said. “I got my grades up and ended up coming here.”
At East Mississippi, a powerhouse JC program, he played defensive end, but he was a tight end in high school and gave that position a shot with the Rams.
“It ended up not working out,” he said, noting that CSU had Crockett Gillmore and Kivon Cartwright at tight end at the time. “I wanted to try defense, and I ended up falling in love with it the second time. I’m still learning, because a lot of guys who played it through high school and college have the edge because they’ve taken so many more reps there than me.”
As he opens his final football season, Foster already has his bachelor’s degree in sociology.
“If you had told me when I was a junior in high school, or even at the end of my senior year, that I would graduate with a degree in four years, I probably wouldn’t have believed you,” he said. “But it’s happened, and right now I’m taking prerequisites to get in the master’s therapy program, so things are looking up.”
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
