Those who know Scott Harmon know that he is a huge fan of college football. After all, the head Po-Hi football coach is a former star defensive back for the Oklahoma State Cowboys, and in that role served as team captain two years.

Understandably he is a big Cowboy fan, but in the past few years, he as become a fan of the Tulsa Golden Hurricane as well. That is because a former player of his, Zaven Collins, has been drawing headlines as a linebacker for the Hurricane.

Collins had made Harmon especially proud in the past week or so, being named the recipient of the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, which goes to the nation’s best defensive player. Earlier this week, Collins was named First Team All-America at linebacker. At one time he was mentioned as a possibility for the Heisman Trophy and was among the finalists for other awards including the Butkus award for the nation’s best linebacker.

Harmon coached Collins at Hominy High School, and their coach-player relationship culminated in a Class A State Championship in 2016. Collins was a quarterback on that team and played defensively as a linebacker and defensive back. The Hominy Bucks compiled a 14-0 record that season and none of their games were close. The Bucks defeated Wynnewood 42-14 in the championship game.

Collins was in the third grade when Harmon assumed the head coaching reins at Hominy.

“I went and watched the third grade team play and saw that they were pretty talented and I had my eye on them all the way,” Harmon said. He (Collins) played quite a bit as a freshman as a back up corner and a back up running back. We moved him to quarterback his sophomore year.”

The Bucks made it to the state semifinals Collins’ junior year and then went on to an undefeated year in 2016. Collins was a big Class A quarterback at 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds his senior year. He has grown and put on body mass since then, standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 260 pounds during the most recent season. “I’m not sure he’s done growing. It wouldn’t shock me if he grew some more,” Harmon said.

Collins is a red-shirt junior at Tulsa, which means he would have been eligible to return next year. But he has opted out of playing for the Hurricane in this week’s Armed Forces Bowl against Mississippi State and has made himself available for the NFL draft in the spring. Harmon says that it is expected that Collins will be taken as high as 17th or early in the second round.

“When we visited about it, I told him he made the right decision,” Harmon said. “He’s only 21, still a young kid.”

After his graduation from Hominy, Collins wanted to play quarterback in college.

“I told him that if he wanted to play quarterback he should look at a smaller school,” Harmon said. “But I told him if he wanted to play at a Division I school, he should go as a defensive end or a linebacker. He went to a visit at TU (Tulsa) and they offered him a scholarship the same day. He never looked back.”

Harmon had been contacting Division I coaches about Collins, but Tulsa was the one school that had showed much interest.

The Hurricane had a good year in 2020, finishing as runner-up in the American Athletic Conference. Collins had 54 tackles from his linebacker position, 11.5 tackles for loss and four interceptions. Two of his interceptions came against Oklahoma State and against Tulane he returned an interception 96 yards for a touchdown in overtime.

It goes without saying that wherever Collins winds up in the NFL, Coach Harmon will be following his career very closely.