LINCOLN — Jeff Sims isn’t lacking for people to come and take a look at his Fort Scott Community College football players.

NCAA Division I-A teams have signed 48 Greyhounds since Sims became head coach in 2007. Jason Pierre-Paul recently went from Fort Scott to South Florida to No. 15 overall pick in the 2010 NFL draft.

But when it was revealed last week that Stanley Jean-Baptiste was headed to Nebraska, it added to the obvious connection that is strengthening between the Huskers and the junior college in the Little Ozarks region of southeast Kansas.

It started with Fort Scott receiver Brandon Kinnie signing with NU in 2009. It continued last winter when offensive tackle Jermarcus Hardrick and linebacker Lavonte David became Huskers. And now Jean-Baptiste, a receiver who originally is from Miami.

“I just hope to see it keep going,” said Sims, the fourth-year head coach at Fort Scott. “I just hope to see our guys be impact guys up there, because I think they can be.”

Why the tie between the Huskers and Greyhounds, when NU obviously is at a stage where it isn’t taking an inordinate amount of JC players?

Trace it back to Minnesota State-Mankato, where Sims worked with current Nebraska defensive coordinator Carl Pelini on a staff headed by Jeff Jamrog, now the NU assistant athletic director for football. Pelini left for Ohio University, and Sims eventually for Fort Scott, but the two remained in touch.

Sims remembers Pelini calling with a specific need and Fort Scott sending Ohio a player who turned into a two-year starter for the Bobcats. When two high school players needed a junior college, Pelini directed them to Fort Scott, and they immediately helped with Sims’ rebuilding project.

“When I came here, Fort Scott had won 11 games the previous five years,” Sims said. “I would call people and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to turn this thing around,’ and nobody believed me. Carl did.

“If anybody should get credit for the connection between Nebraska, it’s Carl Pelini. If one of my players goes to Nebraska and he’s having a difficult time, I can call Carl and Carl will answer the phone.”

In addition to Pelini and Jamrog, Sims said he has gotten to know NU assistant coach Mike Ekeler and calls Bo Pelini “probably the most personable head coach I’ve been around at that level.”

“I really think the whole pipeline, or whatever you want to call it, has been developed off of relationships,” Sims said. “If I care about a kid, I’m going to send him somewhere where I know I trust the people. I trust Nebraska, and that’s why my guys go up there.”

A sign that the trust and faith is reciprocated, Sims said, is that Nebraska offered scholarships to Kinnie and Jean-Baptiste without seeing them play in junior college. All told, NU has offered scholarships to seven Greyhounds since 2008, with four accepting and one offer still pending.

Before Jean-Baptiste, NU had taken just six junior-college players in its three signing classes under Pelini, with only DeJon Gomes, Chase Harper and Ricky Henry coming from places other than Fort Scott. The other JC player on the Husker roster is Zac Lee, who signed under the former staff.

Sims thinks the anticipated success for his former Greyhounds at NU will lead to the Huskers wanting more.

“They don’t go on every guy I tell them,” Sims said. “There have been some guys I think they should have gone on, but for whatever reason, they didn’t feel like it’s what they needed at the time. It’s all about fits and timing.”

Sims said the only Greyhounds he has directly tried to influence to become Huskers have been Pierre-Paul and Kinnie, because he thought NU offered the best situation for each. Once Kinnie made it to NU — he caught 15 passes last season as a sophomore and is poised to be a starter in 2010 — it helped pave the way for Hardrick, David and Jean-Baptiste to follow.

“Once BK got to Nebraska, it’s pretty much been BK,” Sims said. “I can tell my players that Nebraska is X, Y and Z, but when BK tells them, ‘Listen, Sims is telling the truth, Nebraska is this way,’ it’s kind of a slam dunk.”

Carl Pelini said Friday that Sims produces players who are hard-nosed, well-coached and disciplined. The Greyhounds have won 29 games in Sims’ first three seasons — finishing 11-1 last fall — and are expected to be the JC preseason No. 1 team in 2010.

They’ll go into next season without Jean-Baptiste, a receiver they were counting on, but the relationship with NU is good enough that Sims was OK with the Huskers snatching the player for 2010 instead of 2011.

“They wanted to be fair to our program,” Sims said. “Nebraska called me and said, ‘We heard some of these schools were calling him, what do you want us to do? We don’t want to make you mad.’

“Rather than just coming in and saying, ‘We’re Nebraska, we’re better than you and we’re going to recruit your guys’ ... they just did it right. He wanted to go. I won’t stand in the way of that.”

Contact the writer:

444-1042, rich.kaipust@owh.com

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