Boston College stuffed the football prospect with lobster and steak and took him on a tour of Fenway Park. Notre Dame painted his name on a varsity locker, then flashed it in bright lights on its scoreboard. This weekend, it's Maryland's turn to try to turn Ambrose Wooden's head - as well as his arms and legs - toward College Park for the next four years.
One highlight: a catered dinner held last night at the home of coach Ralph Friedgen.
It's the height of recruiting season for Wooden, Gilman School's prized quarterback, and hundreds of other Division I college wannabes. From November through early February, they visit the schools that are courting them. Like most prospective college students, they tour campuses, buy sweat shirts and test dorm food. But for the athletes, there is more.
They stay in fancy hotels, feast in five-star restaurants and hit a few nightspots. All at the schools' expense. The colleges are given 48 hours to make a case, striving to make their coaches and campuses outshine their competitors.
"It's a sincere sales job," says Greg Mattison, recruiting coordinator at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. Speaking of the 8,000-student Catholic college, he says, "Notre Dame is unique. It's probably not for everybody. If you're just a salesman and the player you're recruiting isn't a proper fit, you'll have problems."
During Wooden's visit to South Bend, the college sought to give him a peek at the academics in his planned major by seating the dean of Notre Dame's business school on one side of him at breakfast, a business professor on the other. Together, they presented Wooden with a personalized first-semester class schedule.
"I really liked that," said Wooden's mother, Robin Petty, who accompanied her son and participated in all but the recruits' late-night activities.
Both mother and son took note of the special touches, such as the Notre Dame logo emblazoned on everything from water bottles to the waffles they had for breakfast.
"The trip was amazing," said Wooden, The Sun's Offensive Player of the Year. "I had a private [hotel] suite, with my own Jacuzzi and a bed so big I couldn't roll off. The food? Awesome. That's the red carpet, I guess."
The campus, steeped in 115 years of football tradition, sells itself. "Walk into the locker room," he says, "and you see Notre Dame jerseys with each [recruit's] high school number hanging in one row, and the NFL jerseys of Notre Dame grads in another.
"I remember walking through the tunnel [to the field], getting a chill and thinking, 'Wow, this is real.' "
Sampling the nightlife
Come evening, Wooden and other prospects paired up with current Notre Dame players and trundled off to parts unknown. When she caught up with her son the next morning, Petty asked where he'd gone.
"We were watching movies," he said.
Petty eyed him skeptically. "I knew better," she recalls. "One of the recruits [from Florida] was sitting there with his head on his breakfast plate."
Do these young men go out clubbing? "Not very often," Mattison says, when pressed.
More important to Wooden than any high jinks was the time he spent with Tyrone Willingham, Notre Dame's highly visible coach who turned the program around and is taking the 10-2 team to the Gator Bowl on Jan. 1. The threesome - coach, recruit and parent - huddled for 90 minutes to discuss the team's ideology and Wooden's future there.
The player and his mom left smiling.
"He [Willingham] said I'd have the opportunity to play next year, at wide receiver," says Wooden, also a track star in high school. Never mind that he has never caught a pass in his life: "I just like [having] the ball."
The Notre Dame coach passed muster with Wooden's mom, who came out firing.
"Would you send your own son here?" she queried.
Willingham smiled. "That's a good question," he said. "Nobody ever asked me that."
"Thanks," Petty replied, "but I still want to know."
Yes, said the coach.
"Something in my gut liked the man," she says. "He made me feel that if I was to give my son to somebody, he would be the 'Robin Petty' that I'm looking for."
As they prepared to leave the college, Petty extended her hand. Willingham would not take it. "He said, 'No, this is Notre Dame family,' and gave me a hug," she said.
Wooden is allowed five official campus visits, and his mother is determined to make them all. Next month, she will accompany him to Penn State and Stanford. Divorced and the mother of three, Petty took a second job to help finance the jaunts. (The colleges pick up all but her airfare.) By day, she is an insurance account analyst; now she works four nights a week cleaning offices downtown. It's a necessary trade-off, she says: "I've got to be there for my son, to help him make an informed decision."
The first trip Petty and her son made was to Boston College, in Chestnut Hill, Mass. On a raw November day, they watched BC drub Syracuse, 41-20. Then it was off to the Capital Grille, a top steakhouse in Boston, where Wooden wolfed down a meal of filet mignon, lobster and an entire roast chicken.
On campus, he sampled academics, social life and, of course, athletics. The Eagles, who play in the Big East Conference, finished 8-4. The high point was an upset of Notre Dame on Nov. 2. BC will play in the Motor City Bowl on Thursday.
Boston College coach Tom O'Brien told Wooden he'd suit up at defensive back, a position he sometimes played in high school. At Gilman, Wooden had already learned about BC because assistant coach Keith Kormanik played there.
Tip? Take everything in
On his trip to New England, Wooden gained some insights he could pass on to other recruits traipsing around the country. What would the tips be?
"See everything, talk to people and take everything in. All you've got to do is say what you want to do, and [the college] will do it for you. I wanted to see Fenway Park, so an assistant coach took me there." Referring to the left-field wall in the Red Sox's historic stadium, he recalls, "I touched the big Green Monster and saw all of the Ted Williams' mementos."
Today, Wooden was to see the sights at Maryland, where he feels less like a tourist. In fact, the Terps like to play up that home-field advantage. Maryland also emphazises a family theme, according to Mike Locksley, recruiting coordinator. During the course of the weekend, the prospects and their families meet the coaches and their families.
Along for the trip, as he was for Wooden's visit to Notre Dame, is Victor Abiamiri, Gilman's standout defensive end and a good friend of the quarterback's.
At College Park, the Gilman players are part of an all-Maryland recruit weekend. "The biggest thing we sell is the people," says Locksley. "When push comes to shove, kids go where they feel more comfortable. A lot of kids visit places where they have bigger stadiums and newer facilities, but brick and mortar aren't the end-all.
"It's the relationships with people you'll be around for four or five years."