Flint Northern senior Matt Trannon has a decision to make about where he will go to school next fall.
But his decision circles around two sports he has shown the same compassion for throughout high school - basketball and football.
The simple choice for him may be to follow the same path as fellow basketball-playing “Flintstones” Antonio Smith, Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson and Charlie Bell.
An obvious decision? Maybe. But there still hasn’t been a word from the Trannon camp.
Even his high school basketball coach Garner Pleasant and football coach Gary Lee both said they don’t know what will happen next fall.
“I’m still in the dark about that,” Lee said.
But when the 6-foot-7 swingman/power forward/wide receiver finally decides his college destination, he will most likely receive a football scholarship. That will give his school a two-for-one deal; Trannon - an ESPN.com Top 25 basketball player already under scholarship for football - will cost head coach Tom Izzo nothing as a walk-on.
And for both teams, he would make immediate impacts.
“He is probably the most athletic player in the country,” Dave Telep of BlueChipHoops.com said. “He’s a really fast, big time leaper.”
But along with MSU, schools like Tennessee, Ohio State and Michigan have also made Trannon a main recruiting target, Lee said, and for good reason.
“He’s a nice football player,” he said. “No doubt he’s a tremendous athlete with his size. In football it’s rare.
“He has good hands, he’s been working hard on his pass routes, and he’s a very instinctive player.”
Trannon hit the basketball recruiting scene early in his high school career. Telep said it was about two years ago when coaches started looking at him as a big-time forward recruit.
Football took a little longer for Trannon to get the nod, but his athletic ability quickly followed him to the gridiron.
“He’s got so much notoriety from basketball,” Lee said. “And now football has followed.”
As a Northern Viking, Trannon enters his fourth season as a starter for the basketball team and Pleasant said his experience is his biggest asset.
“He’s been through the wars, nothing will surprise him,” he said.
And his experience has been groomed throughout the city of Flint playing against local legends like the “Flintstones.”
“Flint is not that big,” Pleasant said. ‘It’s awfully hard not to have a connection to guys (like the “Flintstones). Being here you play against everybody. You play guys that played in this city. You’re constantly running into the past.”
Maybe the past can influence the future.
