Beaux Collins’ natural skills have made him a magnet for scholarship offers

Beaux Collins started to answer a question but paused. The rising junior wide receiver from Bellflower St. John Bosco High was trying to avoid speaking about himself. The question forced it.

What does receiving scholarship offers from several national programs tell you about yourself?

“I don’t like to talk about myself really, but [it says] that I’m a pretty phenomenal player and I could hang in there with the best,” Collins said.

The 6-foot-3, 195-pound prospect is ranked in the top 100 of his recruiting class by 247Sports and has already drawn attention from the who’s who of college football.

He has received scholarship offers from, among others, Alabama, Florida, Florida State, Louisiana State, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State and Texas. He has been offered by more than half of the Pac-12, including USC and UCLA.

Having coaches from all over the nation come to see him has been an eye-opening experience for Collins.

He hasn’t been a star for St. John Bosco. He hasn’t even been a starter. He played in five games and had nine catches for 224 yards and two scores as a sophomore last fall.

Collins will be taking a much larger role this season as four of the Braves’ top five pass catchers graduated, including wide receivers Colby Bowman and Jake Bailey, who were tied for a team-best 46 catches. Bowman will play at Stanford, Bailey at Rice.

Collins has all the tools to be a dynamic wideout in college. He has a long, athletic frame that he continues to grow into. He goes up and gets the football. Collins catches the ball away from his body. He runs well and is a pretty natural route runner.

Coaches recruiting Collins have told him they like his aggressiveness and his physique, which he has been working hard at over the last year, improving his upper-body strength.

Taking it all in

A lot can change in a year. Collins knows that is true about recruiting as well, so he’s “just seeing what I like about the schools right now and just really just taking in all I can.”

“Eventually I’ll start narrowing it down as we go later in my high school career,” he said.

He has begun taking unofficial visits. He has been to Notre Dame a couple of times and seen Ohio State. Collins will join Clemson quarterback commit D.J. Uiagalelei and some other St. John Bosco teammates on a trip to the South for the Tigers’ camp and an extended campus visit.

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“He’s just paving the way for me and other Bosco players to go out there, have a good time and be looked at by the top schools in the nation,” Collins said of Uiagalelei, adding that he’s trying to get a feel of the program and coaching staff on his visits. “What the coaching staff is like as their personalities and just overall academics out there and the vibe of the school, see if it’s just the right place for me.”

Hometown beckons

He has been to UCLA and USC multiple times and attended the Trojans’ camp last summer. The Bruins offered him a scholarship last month, not long after he had been on campus to view one of their spring practices.

“There’s just a lot of tradition there,” Collins said of UCLA. “Prestigious school. Great academics and just being a hometown school growing up. It’s exciting to me just to be one of their top recruits as far as 2021 goes.”

He said he could see himself being used in the Trojans’ “Air Raid” offense under offensive coordinator Graham Harrell in a similar fashion as he is used at St. John Bosco — as a deep threat who can be moved into the slot on occasion.