WRONG! Sapp was a very highly-regarded player in HS. Bill Buchalter of the Orlando Sentinel, who picked the Florida team for the old Georgia-Florida HS All-Star gam told me Sapp was the best player on the Florida team. Buchalter pretty much knew the talent in Florida. That was a terrific all star game, before these newer national A-A games. All the top Florida and Georgia talent played in that game.
Sapp was not a nobody like you suggest he is by being a two star. The only issue was, he was a very short TE at about 6’1”. Whether UM recruited him with the idea he would switch to DT, I don’t know. I suspect they did.
Both JJ’s staff and DE’s staff brought in Derrick Krein to be a DE, knowing that he was one of the highest rated LBs in the country. Had they told him their intentions, he probably would have gone to Arizona State. As it was, after he signed his LOI, he tried to get out of it when JJ abruptly left for Dallas and DE and staff came in. Today, it seems to be easier to get out of a LOI if a coach changes. I knew Krein was coming in to play DE, but apparently Krein didn’t.
College football is a ruthless business.
BTW, I remember that ‘90 class, I think it was. My friends, many who were insiders more or less, said I was the only one who didn’t like the class. I felt we lost out on too many top targets. Our best DT recruit was Dwayne Johnson. We were so depleted they told Dwayne not to stay in Pennsylvania to play that summer in the Big 33 game but to come to school for the summer session. I dunno, maybe it was for academic preparation, but I assumed they were trying to prepare him for the season. I think in the early 90’s we were playing guys like Anthony Hamlet, Eric Miller, Damon Bethel on the DL.
I guess they really didn’t know what they had in Sapp but he was apparently very athletic for his size, twitchy, explosive, strong. I guess they put on around 50 or so pounds on him and he was a DT. I don’t remember if Orgeron was DL coach at the time.