CANTON, Ohio — What Antonio Gates did as a Chargers tight finish was exceptional.
However what he didn’t do was simply as spectacular.
Gates, who shall be enshrined Saturday within the Professional Soccer Corridor of Fame, is the one participant to achieve that pinnacle and not using a single snap of faculty soccer. He was a basketball star at Kent State, a half-hour up the street from Canton, Ohio, and by no means appeared to present soccer a second thought, although he was a two-sport highschool phenom in his hometown of Detroit.
“I never in a million years when he was playing basketball at Kent State thought he would be a professional football player,” mentioned Steve Sefner, the college’s play-by-play announcer when the 6-foot-4 energy ahead was routinely dominating taller opponents.
Kent State’s Antonio Gates drives over Indiana’s A. J. Moye through the 2002 NCAA match.
(Doug Pensinger / Getty Pictures)
“Tone” was his nickname. Tone was what he set.
“He had an elite first step, point-guard skills, making reads, passing,” recalled Anthony Wilkins, now a basketball assistant coach on the College of Nevada Las Vegas, after which Kent State’s co-captain with Gates. “We could put the ball in Tone’s hands and literally run the offense through him.”
Contemplating how polished he was as an NFL participant, it’s mind-boggling he achieved what he did with out the apply and polish of faculty soccer. It’s value noting that not everybody with a bronze bust had a distinguished school profession.
Previous-timey Cleveland finish Dante Lavelli, nicknamed “Gluefingers,” performed solely three video games at Ohio State, and kicker Jan Stenerud was a aggressive skier who solely performed in his senior yr at Montana State. One other one-and-done was cornerback Dick “Night Train” Lane, who solely performed a single season at Scottsbluff Junior Faculty in Nebraska.
Inductees Tim Mara and Joe Carr didn’t play school soccer, however Mara was the founding proprietor of the New York Giants and Carr was president of the NFL for 19 seasons within the Twenties and ‘30s.
But Gates played in an era when making an NFL roster meant devoting virtually every waking hour to becoming a better football player.
That said, football wasn’t unfamiliar to Gates. He was an excellent linebacker at Detroit Central Excessive and one of many state’s high tight finish prospects. Basketball was his old flame, however his soccer prowess was plain.
“Football was something I did so natural, I never really cared,” he informed ESPN in 2010. “I stepped foot on the football field, and it was like, `That’s the best player.’ It was one of those things that was so natural that I didn’t go to practice. I didn’t do the offseason stuff, and I would walk out and catch the first two or three [passes] and take it to the house. And it was like, ‘Wow, and he missed all those days — just imagine if he applied himself.’
“And that’s where the football thing started rolling. I was like, ‘Whatever.’ I was in the gym, shooting basketballs every day, working on my game.”
Not surprisingly, he acquired every kind of scholarship affords from top-notch soccer applications however solely nibbles from big-time basketball colleges. Most of that curiosity got here from mid-majors. A dream provide did come collectively, nonetheless. Nick Saban recruited him to play soccer at Michigan State, and Tom Izzo had a spot for him on the basketball staff. Gates dedicated to the Spartans in 1997.
Gates arrived on campus in the summertime of ’98 as a Prop 48 tutorial qualifier, which means he initially needed to sit out of competitors. He had some challenges within the classroom in his first semester, resulting in Saban rescinding his permission to let Gates play basketball along with soccer. Gates mentioned he felt blindsided by that and wound up leaving the college.
He wound up transferring to Jap Michigan to play basketball within the Mid-American Convention however didn’t focus sufficient on the classroom. That led to him leaving for a group school in California, particularly Faculty of the Sequoias in Visalia, with the objective of getting some good grades underneath his belt.
All that paved his path to Kent State, the place he made an impression the second he stepped onto campus.
“He had a pair of Cartier glasses, that Detroit swag and a confidence,” Wilkins mentioned. “He carried himself like, ‘This isn’t too big for me.’”
Chargers tight finish Antonio Gates, proper, runs after making a catch towards the Arizona Cardinals in November 2018.
(Kelvin Kuo / Related Press)
And the stage wasn’t too massive. He sometimes was the very best participant on the court docket.
“Man, I’d just get caught watching him,” mentioned teammate Deandre Haynes, a former Kent State level guard and now a Marquette assistant. “He could cross you up, dunk on you, shoot the three, everything.”
Haynes was 4 years youthful but in addition grew up in Detroit, so he knew all about Gates the highschool soccer star.
“He actually put my brother in the hospital, he hit him so hard,” Haynes mentioned. “Tone cracked him. He used to punish people in high school.”
All that appeared like a distant reminiscence when Gates determined to exit for spring soccer at Kent State and lasted… sooner or later.
Recalled Kent State basketball teammate Eric Haut: “He came back after one practice saying, ‘Man, I hate football.’”
Haut, now an assistant coach at Utah State, often finds himself telling his gamers about Gates.
“He was one of the best teammates I ever played with,” Haut mentioned. “Everybody knew Tone was a step above the rest of us, but he never acted that way.”
It wasn’t unusual for NFL scouts to point out up at his basketball video games. Gates nonetheless held out NBA hopes, however he was a tweener at that dimension, too small to play ahead on the subsequent degree. He suffered a sprained ankle within the pre-draft course of, dimming any little bit of highlight he commanded.
The consequences of that sprained ankle lingered when he tried out for a few NFL scouts. (He hadn’t been invited to the mix.) A kind of evaluators was Tim Brewster of the San Diego Chargers, who knew in regards to the ankle issues so he didn’t put loads of inventory in Gates’ plodding, 4.8-second 40-yard sprint.
Antonio Gates holds up a personalized Chargers jacket as he’s inducted into the Chargers Corridor of Fame throughout a halftime ceremony at SoFi Stadium on Dec. 10, 2023.
(Ryan Solar / Related Press)
Nobody chosen Gates within the draft, however the Chargers gave him a $7,000 bonus to signal as a rookie free agent. That set in movement one of many NFL’s unlikeliest tales.
He caught 116 landing passes, probably the most by any tight finish in league historical past.
“Being a competitor means putting your best on the line with no guarantees, and Tone embodied that,” Wilkins mentioned.
“I told him when he got in [the Hall of Fame]: ‘The greatest blessing I’ve had has been seeing life through your eyes. And you deserve every bit of it.’”
