The site says it got the info about Dancel from "his father." That would be Bernie Dancel, the assistant coach and mega-benefactor of the Good Counsel football program. Zach has had a stellar career playing at Dancel Field, which opened last season at the Olney school and was built with donations from Bernie.

The Dancel family foundation, which has built YMCAs and contributed to hospital wards in Howard County, gives money away like it grows on trees, and much of the funds have been earmarked for Good Counsel football. The Dancels have also subsidized the tuition of several Good Counsel players, and paid for perks such as a team trip to San Diego.

According to Scouts.com, the New Mexico offer is the first Zach has received from an FBS (formerly known in NCAA parlance as "Division 1") program. Previously, he'd been wooed by Towson and Stony Brook.

New Mexico's program is led for now by Mike Locksley, who is in his second year as head coach at the school after making a name as one of the greatest recruiters in college football as an assistant at Maryland, Florida and Illinois. Locksley is a D.C. native, and he created a pipeline of gridiron talent from this area to whatever school employed him. Dunbar alums and future NFL'ers Vernon and Vontae Davis and Arrelious Benn went where he was.

Locksley's run out west has been disastrous. He was accused of sexual  discrimination by a university employee shortly after he was hired, then was accused of assaulting an assistant coach at a football meeting.

He's posted a 1-19 record thus far. So even if Dancel accepts the UNM offer, there's little chance Locksley will be around long to mentor him.

But, as of the Halloween season, there is job opening for Zach with the Lobos: New Mexico QB Brad Gruner just had season ending surgery after stabbing himself with a knife while carving a pumpkin. 

Locksley Recruits Vontae and Vernon Davis

For years it was agreed that nobody was a better college recruiter than D.C.'s own Mike Locksley. He was responsible for developing a pipeline of gridiron talent from the District to whatever school hired him as an assistant. Two examples: When Locksley was at Maryland, he landed Dunbar's Vernon Davis, now of the San Francisco 49ers. Davis recently signed a contract that made him the highest paid tight end in NFL history. And when Locksley moved over to the University of Illinois, he brought in Dunbar's Vontae Davis, Vernon's little brother and a future Miami Dolphins' first-round pick.

But after years atop the recruiting game as an assistant, Locksley was given his first head coaching job by the University of New Mexico before last season. And he's been a disaster. He had sexual discrimination suits and assault charges filed against him within his first few months at the school. A prize recruit from Coolidge was found to be ineligible, but not until after heading out to New Mexico to join the team.

And now he's in the middle of another brouhaha over whether he bullied a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo, the student newspaper, in a local bar after the kid wrote that the program was in "shambles."  (How many NCAA horror stories begin with "Coach walks into a bar..."?)

The school insists that no low blows were delivered by the Lobos coach during the encounter, but Locksley and New Mexico administrators made the situation much worse by obtaining the security video of the incident and then hiding it.

Still, as we learned from Bobby Knight, any and all misconduct of this sort would be fine, if only the Lobos could win now and then. But the Lobos are losing ugly. Last weekend's 56-14 trouncing by Utah put Locksley's squad at 0-3. The Lobos have been outscored 180-31. That puts Locksley's career record as a head coach at 1-14.

"Shambles" seems kind.

Today the courts are featuring the episode about Jackie Robinson's 1947 integration of baseball. As many times as I've seen it, damn, it's still good.

The jury pool, meanwhile, is only slightly more racially integrated than the 1946 Brooklyn Dodgers.

From what I read, that's been a problem for a while.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Did Dave Donovan used to cover Vinny Cerrato as a media man? D.C. Armor might be one and done, but NFL dreams still alive for its players? D.C. Council to recognize 1954 public school all-stars? Does that mean you're going to write about the 1954 public school all-stars again? Mike Locksley really is landing DCIAA talent all the way to New Mexico?)

***

He was born in a small town. The Daily Times-Herald of Carroll, Iowa, which Dave "Yeah, That' the Ticket!" Donovan once delivered, writes up another profile of a favorite son: the former newspaper boy turned newspaper basher (and Redskins chief operating officer).

The inspiration for the latest piece is outlined in the lede:

Kuemper Catholic High School alum David Donovan, The Washington Redskins top in-house attorney, recently received high-profile billing in a Wall Street Journal story about the team.

Not many folks from Carroll get ink in the Journal.

There's also this bio information:

As a youth David worked as a paperboy here at the Daily Times Herald and also spent time in this newspaper's circulation department. He worked for the former Sernett's department store as well.

At KCHS, Donovan was student council president and editor of the student newspaper, The Charger.

Donovan earned his bachelor's degree in 1980 from Iowa State University in journalism and political science. During his time at Iowa State, Donovan interned for the Daily Times Herald, covering general news and sports under the tutelage of former sports editor Dennis O'Grady.

Kind of humanizes Donovan, a guy who can use some humanizing after all the whoppers he's told this season — the Redskins banned signs for safety reasons, fans aren't acting any differently this season, etc. — in a miserable attempt to protect boss Dan Snyder.

That part about being an Iowa State sportswriter way back when bears greater scrutiny. Being a 1980 grad, that means there was a great chance Donovan was covering the Cyclones when they had a young quarterback named Vinny Cerrato.

The Redskins are being run by the Ames Mafia!

I ask again: What did D.C. ever do to Iowa State to deserve this?

***

Turns out the DC Armor, in the team's brief existence, indeed kept some dreams alive. The Philadelphia Eagles have just signed fullback Joel Gamble to their practice squad. Gamble's recent football background came indoors, with the DC Armor this past season. Here's a highlight.

The Armor, after one season playing before crowds slightly smaller than those the Bremers used to draw at the Grog & Tankard, have reportedly decided to pack it in. The team's website, however, urges fans to "Stayed tuned for the 2010 Season."

***

City Council Chair Vince Gray and Councilman Harry Thomas have introduced a resolution honoring the 1954 D.C. Public School High School All-Star football team.

That's the first integrated team in the DC's schoolboy sports history.

The D.C. All-Stars beat Catholic League powerhouse and all-white St. John's, 12-7, at Griffith Stadium on Dec. 4, 1954. That game has been ignored far too long. So, the more attention the merrier.

***

DCSportsFan.com reports that Coolidge football wideouts Martize Barr and Josh Ford will go to New Mexico to play for Mike Locksley.

Locksley has earned a reputation as one of the top recruiters in college ball over the last decade by funneling DC's best players into whatever program is paying him. He landed Vernon Davis when he was an assistant at Maryland and his brother Vontae Davis when he was offensive coordinator at Illinois.

Both Davises, who grew up in Petworth and played for Craig Jefferies powerhouse Dunbar teams, are now in the NFL. Arrelious Benn, another Dunbar star who was recruited nationally, also went to Illinois to play for Locksley, as did H.D. Woodson QB Eddie McGee.

New Mexico gave Locksley his first head coaching job after last season, and very little has gone smoothly since.Last May, an employee of the New Mexico athletic department accused Locksley with age and sex discrimination. That case was dropped.  Then early in this football season, Locksley got in a fight with an assistant coach that turned physical. He was briefly suspended without pay for that incident.

I spoke with the Davis Brothers a few months ago, and asked if they thought Locksley would be able to work his recruiting magic at such an outta-the-way locale. They said: Sure he will.

"Oh, he's going to bring talent that New Mexico has never seen before now," laughs Vontae. "Let me tell you that!"

Looks like he's right. Last offseason, he landed Coolidge's highly pursued quarterback/receiver tandem of Emmanuel Yeager and Derrell Person.

Yeager later left the team, however, after an arrest in Albuquerque for something called "concealing identity."  He had been pulled over for speeding and told the police that his name was "Emmanuel Yeastraiv." Not quite as catchy as the handle used by Michael Vick's herpes-friendly alter-ego, "Ron Mexico" — though "Ron New Mexico" would have worked well, all things considered.

But "Yeastraiv" seems pretty worldly for a D.C. kid to come up with in the clutch.

Yeastraiv, having reverted back to Yeager, played for Bowie State this season.

***

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Well, special correspondent J.P. Szymkowicz says that while he can't vouch for everybody, his U2 experience was uneventful, other than the show itself.

Szymkowicz says he left DC via Metro at 3 p.m. yesterday and arrived at the Morgan Boulevard station quickly and without any problems. He went into the stadium at 5 p.m. when the gates opened and with his general admission tickets got to the spot on the field that he desired. He got a ride home and found that the drive took "30 minutes from the stadium to the Rte. 50 exit," which is acceptable.

Szymkowicz, an expert on Snyder's parking methods and U2's discography, left so early because he feared the crowd would be too much for the stadium operators to handle.

The show, he says, "was great," and featured a sound system "as good as any of the other shows I have seen dating back to Unforgettable Fire."

Any other travel tales from u2 goers?

***

The Great Dan Steinberg mulls an issue that will likely get more timely as the 2009 season wears on: What do you do if you're mad at the Redskins, but get offered free tickets?

(AFTER THE JUMP: Paper or plastic for Sunday at FedExfield? DC football recruiting star in trouble? DC basketball recruiting star in trouble? Maryland hoops recruit in trouble? Stubblefield 2.0 in domestic and non-domestic legal and financial trouble? Sean Taylor's survivors in some money trouble?)

Steinberg doesn't offer any specific counseling. The Sports Junkies on WJFK have been pushing wearing bags for Sunday's home game with Tampa Bay. The tactic ain't original, but, short of actual physical mayhem, an army of bag-wearers at FedExField would bring bigger laughs and more national attention to the boiling fanimosity than any other obvious protest strategy.

***

Money changes everything. Bad news in USA Today about Albert Haynesworth. Haynesworth's for-now wife, Stephanie Haynesworth, who filed for divorce last year, has told a Tennessee court that the Redskins' budding Dana Stubblefield 2.0 has stopped paying bills for her and his three children. She's asked a judge to force the guy with the 11-figure contract to pony up "at least" $6,000 a month to support the family and to pay mortgages on their home, which is in foreclosure.

The yuckiest portion of the piece:

This [divorce case] isn't the only legal case in Tennessee involving Haynesworth. A Nashville man sued him in May for causing a December car crash that left him needing hip replacement surgery. Corey Edmonson is asking for $7.5 million in compensatory damages and punitive damages of no less than 25% of Haynesworth's $41 million in guaranteed money from his Redskins' contract.

"Very sad for his family, but not surprising given Haynesworth's track record," said Edmonson's attorney, Jon Perry. "Like Mrs. Haynesworth and the kids, Corey also can't pay his bills because of Haynesworth."

Everything Haynesworth has done since signing that record-breaking Skins contract earlier this year has been national news. He's the focus of more fanimosity than any player save perhaps Jason Campbell.

And when Neo Stubby was laying motionless on the field in Detroit after making his first sack of the year, Sam Huff, the team's radio color commentator and a Hall of Fame linebacker himself, wasn't buying that Haynesworth was really hurt. "He's tired," Huff continued repeating, even as a cart full of medical personnel was hauling Haynesworth off the field. Haynesworth later returned to the game, causing a lot of folks to now believe Huff's diagnosis was dead on.

***

Equally depressing money story in the Washington Post today about the financial mess of some of Sean Taylor's survivors. They thought he'd be paying their bills forever.

***

Mike Locksley's in more real warm water in his first season as New Mexico's head coach. First a prized DC recruit left campus before practice even started. Then Locksley was accused of sexual harassment by a university employee. He's lost all four of the games the Lobos have played so far. Now he's been officially reprimanded by the school after a brouhaha with an assistant coach that got physical.

Before taking the New Mexico job, Locksley had developed a reputation by building a talent pipeline from DC to whatever school employed him — Maryland, Florida and Illinois.

"He's going to bring in talent that New Mexico has never seen before now," predicted Dunbar alum and current Miami Dolphin Vontae Davis after Locksley's hiring. Locksley had recruited Davis to Illinois, where he was offensive coordinator. A couple years earlier, when he was an assistant Maryland, Locksley had successfully recruited Vontae's brother Vernon Davis, now a 49ers tight end and another Dunbar alum.

If things don't turnaround soon at New Mexico, Locksley might be back on full time recruiting duty.

***

Different sport, similar water temperature: Kevin Broadus, a DC hoops recruiting star turned head coach, is also getting pummeled in the press. Broadus, now the head basketball coach at Binghamton University, is a former assistant at George Washington and Georgetown. When he was with the Colonials and Hoyas, Broadus got away with bringing in athletes with dubious high school academic records — some players had diplomas from high schools that didn't exist except to field basketball teams. He landed talent like they'd never seen before at Binghamton, too, leading the school to its first-ever NCAA tournament bid last year.

But it looks like his methods are catching up with Broadus these days. Six Binghamton players were kicked off the basketball team last week for various offenses, the most notable being a point guard's arrest for dealing crack.

Now comes word from the New York Times that folks at the school who questioned the school's tolerance of the basketball program were dealt with harshly. That accusation comes from Sally Dear, an adjunct lecturer, who was recently fired by Binghamton. From the Times story:

Dear’s dismissal comes at a time when Binghamton’s basketball program, which reached the N.C.A.A. tournament for the first time last season, has hit a nadir. The university dismissed six players last week, including the starting point guard Emanuel Mayben, who was arrested on charges of selling and possessing of crack cocaine.

Seven Binghamton men’s basketball players majored in human development last year, and Dear said she believed some of them received preferential treatment.

“They know that people have been covering up for the athletes and not holding them to the same standard for other students,” Dear said. “They know that athletes who are not passing classes have been given independent studies to carry them through.”

***
Maryland's prize hoops recruit, forward Jordan Williams, is in trouble. But Williams says he wasn't fighting, he was peacemaking, in the mall brawl that got him arrested.

I had some peacemaking incidents at malls of my own at his age, so I'll recuse myself from judging the guy.

For now!

***

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His powers will now face their greatest test: Locksley just took the head coaching job at New Mexico. Shortly after taking the job, Locksley landed two of the top prospects in DC's prep class of 2009: Coolidge’s heralded quarterback Emmanuel Yeager and the city's top receiver, also from Coolidge, Derrell Person. (However, Yeager, who went to three different high schools here and whose recruitment was marked by questions about his transcript, recently dropped off the New Mexico squad, citing family issues back in DC.)

So I ask Vontae, who was lured to Illinois by Locksley and thrived there, the question that every rival recruiter in college football has been wondering for years: What's Locksley's secret?

"It's no secret. He doesn't have a secret," says Vontae, a No. 1 pick of the Miami Dolphins in this year's NFL draft. "He's a DC guy, and he makes DC guys feel comfortable with him. He won't tell you anything he doesn't mean." (The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Locksley's salary of $479,233 while with the Illini made him one of the highest paid workers on the state’s payroll.)

Though Locksley's workplace is now two time zones and a world away from DC, the Davises remain convinced that he'll still work his recruiting magic — even in Albuquerque.

"Oh, he's going to bring talent that New Mexico has never seen before now," laughs Vontae. "Let me tell you that!"

DC's own Vernon and Vontae Davis, the 3rd set of brothers ever to be drafted #1 in the NFL, will come home to put on a free youth football clinic this Saturday at their alma mater, Dunbar.

Along with being Exhibit A on how much gridiron talent can be found within the underappreciated DCIAA, the Davis brothers tale shows how valuable a great recruiter can be to a college program.

Both were wooed out of high school by Mike Locksley, a Ballou alum who for the last decade has controlled the flow of DC-area football talent the way the Corleone family once did olive oil.

Locksley landed Vernon, now a tight end with the San Francisco 49ers, while he was recruiting coordinator for Maryland. After a year at Florida, he moved to Illinois as offensive coordinator and brought Vontae (the top pick of the Miami Dolphins in the 2009 draft) and scads of other area phenoms (Eddie McGee, Arrelious Benn) to Champaign.

Locksley has now taken over the football program at New Mexico, his first head coaching job.

And early indications are the DC kids will keep going wherever he goes. Even to Albuquerque: Coolidge's heralded quarterback/receiver tandem of Emmanuel Yeager and Derrell Person committed to New Mexico after Locksley got the top job.

New Mexico!

The Davises camp is designed for kids 8 to 18 years old, and will run from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Admission is free.

(BTW: the other sets of sibling first rounders are (obviously) the Mannings, Eli and Peyton, and (never heard of one of 'em) the McDougles, Jerome and Stockar.)