Bruce Pickens
Defensive Back (1986-87)

Bruce Pickens was a football player at Westport, an inner-city Kansas City, Missouri high school that had fewer than 20 players on its squad.

 

Dick Foster discovered Pickens by accident and gave him a chance.  Coach Foster was recruiting a player from Southwest High School in Kansas City and went to watch that player at the state track meet, while talking with the recruit the recruit mentioned to Coach Foster that he should recruit that kid from Westport Bruce Pickens.  At the state track meet that year, Pickens won the 200m dash with a time of 20.9, so coach Foster began talking with him. 

 

Pickens signed with Coffeyville but wasn’t good enough to play as a freshman.  Coach Foster red-shirted him and he played on the scout team.  Foster tried him at receiver, but while he had great speed, he didn’t have good hands.  Foster noticed that on defense, however, Pickens kept making big plays, so Foster put him at cornerback, and he had three interceptions against the Nebraska JV in 1987.

 

Pickens ranked third in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference in 1987 with five interceptions and that mark still ranks tied for tenth in Red Raven history.

 

Nebraska was the only major college to recruit Pickens out of Coffeyville, but he proved the Cornhusker coaches right by being named the Newcomer of the Year in the Big Eight and making the All-Conference team. 

 

Pickens was Atlanta’s first-round draft pick in 1991, the league’s third overall pick in the draft.  Pickens had NFL stints with the Falcons, Packers, Chiefs, and Raiders.