Cedar Rapids’ French: Sacks on a big stage

The most-prominent current college football player from Cedar Rapids is leading one of the nation's most-prominent teams in quarterback sacks.

'It's exciting any time you have the opportunity to get that many sacks,” said Oregon's Christian French. 'I definitely didn't do it by myself.”

The former Kennedy High athlete has seen things go as he'd hoped when he left for Eugene four years ago, yet they haven't gone as he'd expected.

French was a consensus four-star recruit. Rivals.com called him the top prospect in Iowa in his senior year, and ranked him as the No. 5 'athlete” in the nation's recruiting class. He was a true national recruit, and narrowed his final choices to Oregon, Iowa and Notre Dame before choosing to go 1,900 miles west to join the Ducks' vaunted program.

When I first saw French, he was a ninth-grader playing for Kennedy's sophomore basketball team. He never played football until he was a sophomore. He was most of his current 6-foot-5 then, but barely weighed 200 pounds as opposed to the 245 or so he carries today.

French was a nice varsity basketball player at Kennedy, but quickly branded himself as a major-college prospect on the football field. He said a big factor in choosing Oregon was 'it has the number one sports marketing program.”

The UO's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center was the first program of its kind housed within a U.S. college of business. The influence of Oregon-based Nike on the UO campus is impossible not to detect.

So French went to Eugene. He spent his red-shirt season as a scout team tight end. And ...

'It was not quite as I expected,” French said by phone after the Ducks' practice Wednesday night. 'Tight end was not really working out for me at the time. I got off to a slow start. I needed something different.”

During the following year's spring practice, he switched to defense. It wasn't a jarring transition. He had three quarterback sacks and 10 tackles for losses in his senior season at Kennedy.

Now here he is in the fall of 2014, a junior with 5.5 sacks. He isn't a starter, but his amount of playing time has kept increasing. He is a pass-rush specialist who has recorded a sack in five different games, including home wins over Michigan State and Stanford.

Two years ago, Oregon had All-America defensive end Dion Jordan, who is built like French and has made his bones in football as a pass-rusher. He was the third player taken in the 2013 NFL draft. French roomed with Jordan in 2012-13, and now wears the No. 96 that Jordan sported in Eugene.

Jordan also began his Oregon career as a tight end. French assumed the hybrid drop end/outside linebacker role in the Ducks' defense when Jordan went to the Miami Dolphins.

'I learned a lot from him,” French said. 'He taught me to work, work, work, work, to go hard every day.”

Being involved in high-profile wins like last Saturday's 45-16 victory over Stanford, being on an 8-1 team that needs no introduction to America - how's that for a stage?

The Ducks are in Salt Lake City tonight to play 6-2 Utah. Then comes Colorado at home, Oregon State on the road, and a near-certain appearance in the Pac-12 title game. Should Oregon sweep those four contests, they'll be locks to make the playoff.

'The atmosphere,” said French, 'is so fun.”