DAVIDSON, N.C. — Move aside Steph Curry -- another Davidson College athlete is campaigning to be the school's next big alum.
Barclay Briggs, a senior Davidson center, declared for the NFL Draft on Tuesday. Lineman declaring for the draft is typically not extremely noteworthy for football fans but this instance has an odd exception -- Briggs is the team's backup center and has only appeared in a handful of games during his college career.
Briggs announced the move on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and acknowledged the strangeness of a backup attempting to play at the NFL level.
"While I only played during blowouts or when starters got injured, I refused to let that stop me from being a scrappy, sneaky athletic, fundamental, high football-IQ lunch pail guy," Briggs said.
Briggs thanked Oprah Winfrey and Winston Churchill, among others, for making his dreams of playing with a Division 1 school a reality.
Statistics for linemen are virtually non-existent and even harder to track for a backup player. Briggs appeared in 10 games in his college career, including nine in his senior season of 2023.
With a short list of accomplishments at the college level, NFL teams may not be interested in taking a chance on Briggs. It's something he recognized, but he believes he has some qualities that could make him worth the risk.
"I will provide roughly zero on-field value for an NFL franchise, but I'd probably be pretty fun to have around," Briggs said.
Briggs' post attracted exceptional attention online and even drew shares from former NFL star JJ Watt.
Davidson finished the 2023 season with a 7-4 record in what is the last season for Richard Stadium, the school's 100-year-old athletic facility. The college has produced seven NFL players in its history, most recently Zion Johnson, who was drafted in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Chargers. Johnson played his freshman year at Davidson before transferring to Boston College.