LSU not a lock for talented safety

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• By Richard Davenport
• 9:15AM on March 19th, 2010

Safety T.K. Fleming of Benton, La., is another prospect who was included in Friday’s column.

Fleming, 6-3, 207, 4.45 reports more than 20 scholarship offers, including, Oregon, Tennessee, UCLA, Oklahoma State, Nebraska, Louisville and others while receiving interest from several schools, including Arkansas.

Also a prospect in track and field, Fleming hopes to do both in college.  He has a best of 24 feet-5-inches in the long jump and 48 feet- 11-inches in the triple jump.

Fleming has yet to visit a college campus but plans to visit LSU on March 27 and hopes to see others in the future.

“I don’t know much about any of the schools,” said Fleming, who recorded 67 tackles, 3 interceptions and returned one for a score last year. “I need to go and visit some schools and learn more about them and make my list a little bit shorter and pick out the top 8 schools I like.”

Fleming, who said he plans to wait until sometime after his season to make his college decision, plans to take some of his allotted five official visits during and after his season is completed.

While many consider Louisiana prospects a lock for the LSU Tigers, Fleming said he’s open.

“Anything can happen,” Fleming said. “Just because I was born and raised in Louisiana doesn’t mean I have to go to a Louisiana college. There could be a school out there with better academics, a better football team and surroundings that I would want to go to. Arkansas could be one of those.”

Many football recruits have played the sport at an early age but that’s not the case for Fleming.

“I really wasn’t raised a football type of guy,” Fleming said.”One day in the eighth grade my coach decided to put me on the team because I was big. It turns out I was good. I just kept going into high school because I love it.”

Fleming said he’s grateful to his coaches for making him focus on the doing the right things on and off the football field. The advice paid off during the middle of his sophomore season when UCLA offered him his first scholarship.

“They pulled me into the office and told me I could possibly go to the next level,” Fleming said. “Not a lot of people from Benton have done that so that kind of inspired me to want to make it to the next level and play college football and possibly try and make it to the pros.”

Fleming was thrust into the starting lineup as a sophomore when one of his teammates was dismissed from the team.

“Coach looked at me because safety was my secondary position,” Fleming said.  “So he threw me out there and I happened to do well. So I became the starter and loved be able to hit people.”