ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Tucked away in the arid terrain of southern Idaho, the town of Gooding has about 3,500 residents, a McDonald’s, an annual rodeo and an exceptionally large cheese factory. It’s great for people who love the rugged outdoors, but it’s not the kind of place anyone finds by accident.
“If you’re going to Gooding, it’s because you have a reason to go to Gooding,” said Cameron Andersen, who spent 13 years coaching football at Gooding High School.
Advertisement
A year ago, Jim Harbaugh had a reason to go to Gooding. The reason was Colston Loveland, a tight end prospect who was getting ready to sign with Michigan. Accompanied by assistant coach Jay Harbaugh, Jim Harbaugh arrived late, crashed at Loveland’s house and was cranking out reps on the squat rack with Loveland in the high school weight room first thing the next morning.
“When the Harbaughs came to town, that was exciting for everybody,” said Rachel Faulkner, Loveland’s mother. “Everybody was talking about it.”
It’s not every day that big-time college football coaches show up in Gooding, but by signing day last season, there was a well-worn path to Loveland’s door. He had offers from about half of the schools in the Pac-12, plus Alabama and LSU. Bryan Harsin, then the head coach at Auburn, spent three hours in Loveland’s living room in a last-ditch effort to flip his commitment before signing day.
Loveland held firm and signed with the Wolverines. On the surface, it was an unlikely pairing. Why would a program with Michigan’s prestige go all the way to a tiny town in Idaho to sign a tight end? And why would Loveland pick Michigan, a school that had no natural connections to the place he calls home?
The answers have become apparent during the stretch run of Michigan’s season. A season-ending injury to Erick All bumped Loveland up the depth chart, and he moved into the No. 1 spot when Luke Schoonmaker missed time late in the season. Even after Schoonmaker returned, Loveland remained heavily involved and caught the first two touchdowns of his career against Ohio State and Purdue.
The freshman was double-covered, and went up and got it for the highlight TD. 😲@UMichFootball TE @colstonlovelan1 is going to be special. #TheOneFansDeserve x @drpepper pic.twitter.com/lEaCKwsTGT
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) December 4, 2022
“I have so much confidence in that guy,” quarterback J.J. McCarthy said. “I believe that if he wasn’t from Gooding, Idaho, he would be a five-star.”
Advertisement
Loveland wasn’t among the top 500 prospects in the 247Sports Composite when he committed, though he’d finish as a four-star prospect ranked just outside the top 300. According to a database maintained by Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library, he is one of six players from Idaho to appear on a Michigan football roster, joining former long snapper Matt Baldeck and four players who attended Michigan before 1945.
Going from Idaho to Michigan is rare enough, but it’s even harder to get there from Gooding, a small town about an hour and a half southeast of Boise. During Anderson’s 13 seasons, the school produced roughly 30 players who went on to play college football, mostly at lower levels. Having coaches like Harbaugh and Nick Saban recruit a player from Gooding was almost unthinkable, Andersen said.
Actually, Gooding was big compared to the place where Loveland grew up. The family lived in a tiny town about 20 miles away, but Colston and his older brother went to Gooding so they could attend a bigger high school. It was still a Class 3A school in Idaho, and Loveland wasn’t sure college recruiters would be able to find it on a map.
“Growing up I saw a lot of talent in my school and Idaho in general get looked over,” Loveland said. “It was a little bit of a worry, but people ahead of me preached, ‘If you’re good, people will find you.’ That’s what I stuck with.”
Loveland’s mom comes from a ranching family, so he spent a lot of his days herding cattle and sheep, roaming the family’s property on horseback or on a four-wheeler. He had cousins who competed in rodeos, and Loveland dabbled a bit himself before his family decided he needed to choose between sports and rodeo.
Loveland’s size and athleticism made football an easy choice. He played wide receiver on the varsity team as a freshman and was starting to garner some recruiting buzz by the end of his sophomore season. The only thing keeping Loveland from being a big-time recruit was his speed, which wasn’t quite at the elite level for a wide receiver.
Advertisement
At 6-foot-5, Loveland was better suited for the role of a hybrid tight end. He spent the offseason after his sophomore year learning to block and played mostly tight end as a junior, either in line or flexed out wide.
“The transition into blocking, that was the crazy thing,” said Andersen, who now coaches another Michigan target, four-star wide receiver Gatlin Bair, at Burley High School in southeast Idaho. “He got so good at blocking so fast.”
Loveland was mentioned in a write-up from a seven-on-seven tournament following his sophomore season, and that’s when the offers started to pour in. First it was Idaho State and Utah State. Then it was Utah, Oregon State and Boise State. Then it was Michigan, Auburn and Alabama.
Loveland visited several Pac-12 schools and was getting ready for a trip to Colorado when Michigan invited him to campus. Loveland didn’t want to back out of his plans with Colorado, but at the last minute, he decided to spend the weekend at Michigan instead.
“When we went on the official visits, he liked a lot of the Pac-12 coaches that recruited him,” Faulkner said. “I could see from his body language that he wanted to love it and just wasn’t feeling it. When we got to Ann Arbor, it was like, ‘This is it.’”
The depth chart at Michigan might have been intimidating to a tight end prospect looking for immediate playing time. The Wolverines had All and Schoonmaker, plus a pair of four-star recruits from the previous two classes. It would have been easy to pigeonhole Loveland as a project, a player from a small high school who would need a few years to acclimate before he was ready to play in the Big Ten.
Loveland didn’t view it that way. He didn’t enroll at Michigan last winter with the intention of redshirting; his goal was to play. Harbaugh raved about Loveland when the family visited for the spring game but didn’t make any promises about playing time. If Loveland appeared in five or six games, Faulkner thought that would be a successful freshman season.
Advertisement
“When we had dinner the night before the spring game, he was a little worried,” Faulkner said. “He was like, ‘They’re so good. I’m not sure how much playing time I’m going to get.’ It’s clear he likes competition. He knows it’s going to make you that much better.”
Four games into the season, All was sidelined with a back issue. When Schoonmaker missed the Nebraska and Illinois games with an injury, Loveland became Michigan’s primary option as a pass-catching tight end. He has 12 receptions for 199 yards on the season, including a 45-yard touchdown against Ohio State and a 25-yard touchdown that he plucked out of double coverage against Purdue in the Big Ten Championship Game.
When asked earlier this year what he missed most about Idaho, Loveland’s answer was the potatoes. (“What,” his mom cracked, “you don’t miss your family?”) He’s used to wide-open spaces, but adjusting to his new surroundings at Michigan hasn’t been too disorienting.
“There isn’t much over in Idaho,” Loveland said. “Coming here was super good for me, actually. I’m meeting a bunch of people from a different part of the country.”
With All transferring to Iowa and Schoonmaker in his fifth year, the path is open for Loveland to be a fixture in Michigan’s offense for years to come. That path from Gooding, Idaho, doesn’t really exist on a map, but in Loveland’s case, it was worth the trek.
“It’s never happened before, and it’ll never happen again,” Andersen said. “He’s a rare, rare commodity.”
(Photo: Joe Robbins / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k2lna21pZnxzfJFrZmpqX2aCcLnInJ%2Bin5Gjeqe7zq2ZmqScYrCwuNKtpqdlnKTDprjAp5to