Zak Keefer

zak.keefer@indystar.com

WESTFIELD – The best NFL prospect you’ve never heard of wasn’t good enough to get on the field as a high school freshman, not as a high school sophomore, not as a high school junior. That year hurt like hell. While his friends were suiting up on varsity, Krishawn Hogan wasn’t even making the dress list.

Go to the games? Nah. He stayed home on Friday nights.

“You’re on the football team and you’re sitting in the stands?” Hogan says now. “That just looks weird.”

The best NFL prospect you’ve never heard of got his only shot at college football because he happened to be tagging along with his cousin on a recruiting visit in Canton, Ohio. The Walsh University coaches took a flyer on Hogan, the skinny receiver who’d finally made it on the field at Warren Central as a senior. His numbers were less than staggering: 20 catches, one touchdown. That’s it.

“I was like a baby giraffe running around back then,” he remembers.

The best NFL prospect you’ve never heard of flamed out of his first college stop, landed back home, bought a 15-year-old Pontiac Grand Am for $2,200 and took a job as a janitor working the graveyard shift. The hours were midnight to 8 a.m. He’d clock out, sneak in an hour of sleep, then race over to Ivy Tech for classes. After that, it was on to Job No. 2. All to keep his fading football dream alive.

No one could’ve seen all that was to come. Least of all Krishawn Hogan.

Four years ago he was mopping floors at the Indiana Convention Center; this week he’s making history across the street.

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That’s how far he was willing to go, from barely playing in high school to blowing his first chance at college football to working nights as a janitor to pay for his car and education. He scraped for one, last, desperate shot in the NAIA ranks for a program that was all of six years old.

Nobody’s going to mistake Marian University for an NFL breeding ground. Krishawn Hogan made the scouts come anyway.

In three seasons, the former Warren Central scrub became the best player in program history, the best NAIA wide receiver in the country and – most improbable of all – a legitimate candidate for April’s NFL draft. This week he’ll do something no Marian player has ever done: compete among 325 hopefuls at this week's NFL Scouting Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Yeah. He’s come a long way.

Come April, he hopes to be the first player from Marian ever drafted.

Painting Hogan as your run-of-the-mill late bloomer isn’t quite right; it’s not just his body that matured over the past three years. He grew up, too. Sure, that baby giraffe “fell in love with the weight room,” his coach at Marian, Mark Henninger, points out. But there’s more. Staring down a dream that seemed impossible during his days at Warren Central, then when he arrived at Marian as a scrawny 19-year-old driving that 1998 Grand Am and working two jobs, Hogan become the poster child for what a second chance can offer.

Marian gave him his last shot. He ran with it.

The NFL never crossed Henninger’s mind – he coaches at Marian, after all – until the team’s first workout of 2015.

“In 2014, we could cover Krishawn in practice,” he explains. “Not the next year. I remember the first play of fall camp, he runs a go route against our top corner, who’s an All-American track guy, and just burns him. Right then and there, you’re like, 'Maybe ...'”

Still, this was a massive maybe. Three Marian players have fought their way into an NFL training camp. None made it past final cuts. Just getting a pro scout to stop by campus on their way to Bloomington or West Lafayette or Columbus, Ohio, was almost unheard of.

But in Hogan there was growth, not to mention incredible upside – he’d learned from his mistakes at Walsh. He blames immaturity.

“I didn’t know how to take coaching,” he admits. “It was a problem, and I needed to fix it.”

He’d filled out, too, a “baby giraffe” no more. He’d gone from a gaunt 5-9 and 175 pounds as a senior at Warren Central to a chiseled 6-3 and 224.

He was set to explode. Then he did.

Want some numbers that are staggering? In three seasons, Hogan set Marian records for receptions (263), touchdowns (42) and yards (4,395). Pore through the film and you’ll think you’re watching the Julio Jones of the NAIA ranks – a player so dominant you start to feel bad for the defense.

Word spread. Scouts came. Jaws dropped. Teams took note. Last fall scouts from some 20 NFL teams – including the hometown Indianapolis Colts – made a stop at tiny Marian to watch the receiver no one could cover.

“Seemed like we had a team here every day,” Henninger says.

As the combine kicks off this week, the biggest draft knock on Hogan remains where he played and whom he played against. He wasn’t burning SEC defenses at Marian. He was burning Taylor University and Siena Heights. That’s why the combine is vital – the interviews, the measurable, the drills. Hogan’s ready. He’s spent the past eight weeks in what amounts to an NFL crash course, the EXOS Training Program at St. Vincent Sports Performance. It’s football, all day, every day, readying Hogan and other top prospects for the biggest job interviews of their lives.

For a small-school dreamer like Hogan, it’s everything. This is his shot. He might not get another.

“The great thing about the combine,” says Hogan’s agent, Indy-based Buddy Baker, “is that it’s easy to be objective. From a physical standpoint, those are objective numbers. What your size is, what you run, all that stuff. It doesn’t matter where you’re from.

“He’s a draftable player. He has draftable grades.”

Teams will have to decide that. Hogan this week owns an opportunity never before afforded a player from Marian. He’ll have the attention of 32 NFL head coaches and 32 NFL general managers. He’ll have the chance to prove he can hang with the nation’s best.

“It only takes one team,” Baker adds, before rightly pointing out it’s not where you get drafted that defines your career. The league’s rosters are scattered with small-school success stories. Hogan could be next.

Perhaps his biggest break arrived early. Hogan’s girlfriend, Natalia, a former sprinter at Marian, was due with the couple’s first baby on Sunday. Hogan is schedules to run at the combine on Saturday. Could’ve made for a few hectic days – and nights.

Then the baby boy came two weeks early. K.J., they’re calling him, for Krishawn Jr.

“Someone told me he gave me his first gift by coming early,” Krishawn says, smiling. “I like that.”

He’s a new dad with a big chance ahead of him. Make the NFL? After he couldn’t get on the field in high school, after he busted out of his first college stop, after he took a job as a janitor so he could chase his dream at a tiny school that’s never sent a player to the pros?

“If I can make it, anyone can,” Krishawn says.

His story proves it.

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Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.