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Stamps boss John Hufnagel describes the linebacker as a “tackler.” After all, in his dominating senior year, Harper did drag down ball-carriers 85 times.

“I do love to hit — I’m a hitter,” said Harper, 6-foot-1 and 235 pounds. “If you really look at me, I’m more of a coverage linebacker — I got some wheels on my feet. I’m pretty fast. I can go out there and cover some people. But I do like to lay the wood out there. I can lay somebody out.”

There had been minimal contact from the National Football League — Buffalo Bills and New York Jets expressed a little interest (“but they weren’t saying too much”) — so Harper made sure to keep himself on the sport’s radar.

His road to Calgary began in April, with the Stamps’ free-agent camp at the Chester, Penn., campus of Widener University. That helped.

“I was comfortable because it was at my school.”

However, one thing stood out immediately — he was not alone. A total of 15 linebackers were auditioning. So how does a guy make his case?

“God blessed me with these legs that I have,” replied Harper. “My speed, that basically separated me from the other linebackers.”

He did well enough to earn an invitation to the next stage of the process — May’s appraisal in Florida.

“Before I went there, I was like, ‘Let me do some research,’ ” said Harper, “and I started finding out things about the CFL.”

For starters, he pored over YouTube video of action. He wanted to know what he might be getting himself into.

“It was cool,” said Harper. “I watched a couple of games … viewing how people play. The field. How to adjust to stuff. How I can put myself in that situation … to see if I could do the same things the starters were doing.”