BOULDER — In late September, when Fairview outside linebacker Carlo Kemp began his recruiting trips with a visit to Michigan, Knights coach Tom McCartney had an idea.
He decided to send along a little reminder of his grade-school days.
“Knowing ‘Peach’ (Jennifer Pagano, Kemp’s mother) was going with Carlo, I thought it would be good,” McCartney said.
As a youth, McCartney had ties to the Wolverines program. His father, Bill, the former University of Colorado head coach, was a defensive assistant on the staff of Bo Schembechler. So was Jack Harbaugh, whose sons, John (now the Ravens’ coach) and Jim (now Michigan’s coach) were the younger McCartney’s childhood friends and playmates.
Tom McCartney recalled that he could consume his cereal of choice, but the only cereals permitted in the Harbaugh house “were healthy ones.” Hence, John and Jim Harbaugh regularly went over to the McCartney household “for sugar cereal.”
When Kemp and Pagano, who already knew about the cereal story, met with Jim Harbaugh last month while in Ann Arbor, they presented him with a gift from McCartney: a box of Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries cereal.
“That was our favorite cereal growing up,” McCartney said.
Said Kemp: “Coach Harbaugh just started laughing when we gave it to him.”
Kemp, one of the state’s top recruits, has been making his official campus visits throughout the fall.
