A Wanted Man : Serra Linebacker Erik Simien Gets Calls From Recruiters All Over the Nation--Even Places Like Kansas, West Point

Erik Simien is a wanted man. He’s just an outside linebacker at Serra High School in Gardena, but his name and frame are renown around the country. Friends he never knew existed are popping up everywhere.

“People keep bothering me,” a cynical Simien said of the college recruiters who contact him weekly. “They’ll say things they don’t have to like, ‘I’m on my way to the stadium and I just wanted to call to see how you are doing.’ ”

Sometimes it’s a phone call from the Midwest or East. “And you get tired of them calling,” Simien said, “especially the schools you know you won’t go to. Out-of-the-way places like Kansas and ridiculous places like West Point.”

And the endless number of letters seem like overkill.

As if on cue, while talking to a reporter Simien, a preseason All-American, is handed a letter from the University of Hawaii--another place he won’t go. Enclosed is a photocopied news story about Hawaii’s recent upset of Iowa. Simien tosses the clip and says about the letter, “You know, I’m not even going to read this. Sometimes you don’t even open them because it’s all the same thing.”

As recruiting prizes go, Simien is a jewel. He runs the 40 in 4.7 seconds, stands 6 feet 3 inches, weighs 220 pounds and holds a B average at Serra.

Scouts say if he grows he could play defensive line in college. He prefers linebacker, he says, because “I get to go after the quarterback more.”

By late February, a fortunate school probably will have signed him to a letter of intent. USC, UCLA, Alabama, Penn State and Notre Dame are his priority schools. Not surprisingly, a letter from Notre Dame can’t be found in his wastebasket.

Simien used to enjoy the attention. He used to dislike football, too. Times have changed.

After playing non-contact flag football in elementary and junior high school, Simien reluctantly joined the frosh-soph team at Serra when he entered ninth grade. He weighed 170. “That was my first time in equipment, I was playing with people who had played contact football before and I didn’t like it,” he said. “I played because everyone else played.”

Two years later he was sporting at least 215 pounds and loving football. As he tells why, he straightens his collar, straightens up and stammers.

“Oh, I can’t even explain it,” he says. “When you sack a quarterback, you can celebrate and I can’t describe how that feels, but that’s why you like football, for the hits. I couldn’t play offense and run the ball. That’s not the same.”

The game comes easy to Simien these days because he believes he can overpower most anybody. That he can was obvious at a recent Serra practice when he was asked to pressure offensive linemen in a pass-protection drill. He knocked everyone on their posteriors.

Last year Simien recorded 70 unassisted tackles and 18 sacks as Serra went 9-2. In this season’s opener against Pasadena, he sacked signal-caller Kyle Washington three times, thrusting his fists in the air after one of the sacks. He does that often. He also talks--to opposing players and coaches. “It’s just street talk,” he said. “I can intimidate people without talking, but it helps, and it’s fun.”

Simien and other pass-rushers celebrate their exploits and taunt opponents because they see it done on TV, according to Serra Coach Joe Griffin, who said that he doesn’t encourage it. But who would?

One local coach, who asked not to be named, said such tactics disgust him and that players who use them should not get headlines.

However, teammate Bobby Holmes finds nothing negative in Simien’s play. “Erik has the best attitude on the team,” said Holmes, a linebacker and lineman. “He inspires a lot of us.”

Simien never boasts about his future in college, Holmes said. Once, he gave a player who wasn’t being recruited one of his letters so the player could get some recognition.

If he’s annoyed some coaches, Simien’s field tactics do not irritate Pasadena Coach Gray Griffiths. “He’ll come and get you,” Griffiths said. “We just couldn’t locate him much of the time . . . . I hope we don’t see similar players too much during league (play) because he is just exceptional.”

Simien says instinct drives him on the field, which might explain his emotional play. On most downs he lines up, standing up, next to his down linemen. Middle linebackers call defensive sets, and audibles when necessary. Gears shift in their minds. From Simien’s outside position, it’s simply a relentless rush to crush the quarterback.

“If you think,” he says, “that’s not football.”

He relies on his mind for the classroom. And ahead of school and football is God. For years Simien has gone to Catholic schools and attended church on Sunday. He says: “You couldn’t play football without God. I’m pretty humble in that respect, knowing it isn’t just me.”

Physical strength is a crucial part of Simien’s game, but he thinks speed determines whether a defensive player corrals the quarterback. A quick, loud snap of his fingers is all he needs to make his point. Strength, he says, is more important in everyday life, when “friends” offer you drugs. New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor--admired by Simien for his speed and strength--was offered and is now undergoing his second tour in rehab.

“If there is a real fine looking girl who is doing drugs and you think it is all right, then you’ll do it,” Simien says, “but you have to be a weak person to let it happen.”

A major university probably will provide Simien many opportunities to test his mettle. And that’s OK, he says, because big schools have tradition and Simien puts a premium on tradition. Playing before more than 50,000 fans is “what you want,” he said, especially when a mere 1,000 might show at Serra (1-1) for Friday’s 7:30 p.m. non-league game against Palos Verdes (2-0).

A university Simien did not want to name, however, could lose the recruiting battle because its operatives keep pressuring him. Befuddled, Simien tried to explain: “It’s people connected with the school. And they are not alumni because alumni are not allowed to contact you . . . . I just don’t know who they are.”