Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: Jeremy Larkin Spotlight
9/5/2018 3:36:00 PM | Football
A new day. . . .
Back in the day they were teammates at Cincinnati's LaSalle High School, and so early on this Tuesday afternoon senior defensive tackle Jordan Thompson is asked if he ever squared off against sophomore running back Jeremy Larkin. Yes, Thompson allows, and then he is asked what those showdowns were like. "Intense. Very intense," he says, and now a bit of whimsy is reflected in his normally-stern visage.
"If you ask him the same question," he here goes on, "he'll probably try to tell you a story of him running me over, which never happened. If you ask me, I could tell you a story where I beat him in a race."
Did that happen?
"If you're asking me, yes," avows the 292-pound lineman. "But, yeah. Very intense. He's a great person to get better with. And just a tremendous friend."
And what's his personality?
"He's very goofy. To me, he's super, super goofy. We have inside jokes from high school that we tell each other. There's definitely a time and a place with his personality. He knows when to be serious and when it's time to goof off."
"I don't know that's he the one to be talking about a goofy personality, knowing him," Larkin himself is soon saying. Now it is some 20 minutes later on this afternoon and here, after a laugh, he continues, "We've been pretty good friends since my freshman year of high school and I think he's definitely the more goofier one."
He also said you're going to try and tell us about the time you ran him over.
"Which is true," the 197-pound running back says.
But that he beat you in a foot race.
"Right," Larkin says, wrapping up this topic. "If he beat me in a foot race, I definitely ran him over. If I still had my Hudl account, I'd pull it up for you and show ya."
Back in the day, when he was still playing basketball, Larkin was so obviously pigeon toed that his dad Jeff suggested he wear 21, the number of pigeon-toed Atlanta Hawk star Dominique Wilkins.
"One-hundred percent," he says when asked about being pigeon toed, which is also the case with (among others) Michael Jordan and Michael Vick, Tom Brady and John Elway. "And I think it has gotten worse over the years because of the way I stand sometimes. But honestly I think it gives me a little advantage going side to side."
"I think it helps his balance," Pat Fitzgerald later says. "I can't do what he can do. I don't think anybody in this room can do what he can do— turn his feet sideways. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool."
Back in the day, when he played basketball on his family's driveway against older brother Jeff, Larkin never caught a break. He instead got the best effort of his sib, who most certainly didn't want to lose to his baby bro, and that helped anneal him for the present.
"It definitely helped (me) knowing when to fight and to always fight to the last second," he explains. "When you're an older brother, you never let your little brother win, so they're constantly on you. That instilled in me a way to fight throughout the entire game and just win. To figure out a way to get a victory against an older brother who's always trying to keep you down."
Back in the day, as he built his rep at LaSalle, Larkin was under-recruited and initially committed to his hometown college before reconsidering and joining the 'Cats.
"A lot of our guys are nationally under-recruited," Fitzgerald says when asked about this. "It doesn't matter what the national people say. I respect their opinions. But they don't coach here. We thought Jeremy was a great fit, a great student, an outstanding family, and his production here speaks for itself. Don't get caught up in stars and all that. I've been doing this for a long time and that doesn't matter. What matters is potential. It has nothing to do with what you've done in high school. It has to do with what you're going to become, and a lot of that has to do with the work ethic the guys put in. Lark has worked his tail off. No one was surprised by his production last week."
Back in the day, like last fall, Larkin was merely the understudy of the redoubtable Justin Jackson. But last Thursday, with Jackson graduated to the pros, he was the Wildcats' bell cow in their season opener at Purdue, and he responded brilliantly, finishing with a pair of touchdowns and 143 yards on 26 carries (5.5ypc).
"I think he was blessed to have a great mentor in JJ," Fitzgerald will say Tuesday while reflecting on that performance. "A guy who showed him the way to prepare for games. I think he's had a good blueprint to follow from JJ."
And how does Larkin most reflect what he learned from Jackson?
"Probably a much better question for him than me," Fitzgerald says. "But I think, number one, preparation. How are you going to go about getting your film prep in, your mental prep in? How can you be a guy who takes 25, 35, 40 snaps in a game? That durability takes a mindset. It takes a physical preparation. I think those are the things he took from JJ the most, I would guess. I don't want to speak for him. But from my perspective that would be it."
Larkin, on this Tuesday, would not be asked what he learned while watching Jackson. But that question was posed to him last fall and on that occasion he said,
"It's about how he goes about his business. One thing I've really been able to learn from him is how he prepares for a game. The extra film he watches throughout the week. How he recovers every day after practice, after a game. And just the type of leader he is. He's a very vocal guy. He's constantly telling us how we have to be better. We have to be the most-prepared group. We have to be this and that. Just how he is as a leader, as a person. He's a great guy."
Early in this new day, like last Friday night, Fitzgerald was showing some people around the new Walter Athletics Center.
"He's in the film room watching tape," he recalls on this Tuesday, speaking here of Jeremy Larkin. "He's just that kind of guy. He's going to have a great career here."
