Georgia offered Grant Holloway a football scholarship. He decided to chase Olympic gold instead

TOKYO — Before he was a world champion in the 110-meter hurdles, a gold-medal favorite at the Tokyo Olympics, a man who's come within one-hundredth of a second of the world record, Grant Holloway was a football player.

And a damn good one, too.

"Shoot, I’m pretty confident he’d be in the NFL right now," said his high school coach, Martin Asprey.

"I’ve never seen anybody run that fast on the football field before," said former teammate Patrick Jones II, who now plays for the Minnesota Vikings.

"He was a special football player," said Bryan McClendon, who recruited Holloway at Georgia. "A special, special football player."

Some of this is probably hyperbole, of course – memories and perspective warped over time by what Holloway has accomplished on the track, where his pursuit of Olympic gold will begin at around 6:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

But those who saw Holloway play insist he had just as much talent on the football field as he does on the track. ESPN rated him as a four-star recruit and the No. 7 player in Virginia in the class of 2016. Another recruiting site, 247 Sports, had him as a three-star recruit.

"I feel like he had first-round wide receiver ability. He really, really did," said McClendon, who is now the wide receivers coach at the University of Oregon.

"At times, you do wonder (what he could have accomplished in football). But at the end of the day, I think it all ended up working out great. And as soon as you saw it working out and how it was, you couldn’t do anything but just be happy and proud of him."

Asprey, the head football coach at Grassfield High School in Chesapeake, Virginia, said Holloway primarily played wide receiver and defensive back there, though they moved him around a bit during his sophomore year.

Speed was his biggest weapon, according to those who watched him play. At 6 feet 2 and 190 pounds, he had size and leaping ability, but also the shiftiness of a 5-foot-7 slot receiver. Jones recalled one moment in a game against King's Fork High School in which Holloway caught a bubble screen and appeared to be trapped by defenders along the sideline, but escaped for a huge gain.

"They were supposed to gang tackle him for a loss, but he just accelerated so fast, it was just ridiculous," said Jones, a third-round pick in April's draft.

Virginia Tech was the first school to offer Holloway a football scholarship. But after a stellar performance at a one-day camp during the spring of his junior season, the offers started to come in droves.

Asprey estimated that Holloway had 20 or 30 offers between football and track.

"He had it all," said McClendon. "He had the ability to be able to make plays once he had the ball in his hands. Obviously that natural speed and everything else took over once he would do that. But he had a great ability to be able to separate and get in and out of breaks, especially for a longer guy that he is."

As a senior, Holloway averaged more than 20 yards per offensive touch during the regular season, according to The Virginian-Pilot. He scored 15 touchdowns during that span, in a variety of ways – rushing, receiving, interception returns and kick returns.

All the while, Holloway continued to see similar success in track, which had been his first love. He won outdoor state championships in high jump, long jump and the 110 hurdles, finished second in the 200-meter dash and was named the state's Gatorade Boys Track & Field Athlete of the Year.

Holloway's decision ultimately came down to a pair of Southeastern Conference schools: Florida and Georgia. He told McClendon that if he decided to focus on football, he would come to Athens. If he wanted to prioritize track, it would be Florida.

Holloway, now 23, has said he ultimately picked track and field because it is an individual sport.

"I am not a team player, so track and field was the way to go," he said at a news conference in May. "I love the studying. I love getting better. I love having – basically it’s all in my hands if I want to get better or not. It’s not in nobody else’s."

McClendon said he truly believed that Holloway was one of the best receiver prospects in the country, citing his work ethic on top of all the physical attributes. He credited his parents – including father Stan, a retired U.S. Navy officer – for teaching Holloway discipline.

"There was no doubt that he had the ability to make it to all the levels of football, just like he’s doing in track," McClendon said.

Asprey, the high school coach, said he believe that Holloway would still get looks from NFL teams if he decided to give football another shot after competing in Tokyo. (Holloway, for what it's worth, has given no indication that a return to football is even a remote possibility.)

At times, those who knew Holloway the football player still wonder what he could have achieved in the sport, had he chosen to pursue football over track. Would he have started for the Bulldogs, lining up opposite Riley Ridley and catching touchdown passes from Jake Fromm? Could he have actually made it to the NFL?

It's fun to think about. But the path Holloway picked instead has allowed him to live out two of his childhood dreams – running collegiately at Florida, and competing in the Olympic Games. By Thursday morning, he could have a gold medal draped around his neck.

"Track’s his sport. That’s what he’s good at," Jones said. "It’s ridiculous how fast he was and how gifted he was at football, but you can see he made the right decision."

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: American Grant Holloway picked Olympic dream over Georgia football