Renewed interest from Frost leads Bellevue West's Forbes to Nebraska
Most days, A.J. Forbes keeps a notebook in his backpack or on his desk. He calls it nerdy and jokes about it, but the lined sheets in his notebook aren’t filled with math problems or Spanish verb tenses.
They’re filled with football plays.
The 6-foot-3, 280-pound interior lineman from Bellevue West wants to be a coach one day, and that notebook full of plays could start him on that path. For Forbes, however, the second step of that journey didn’t come until December 14, when he accepted a preferred walk-on offer to play for Nebraska.
“We kind of had a plan in place before we went down (for the HomeGrown walk-on event) just in case something happened,” Forbes said, detailing the discussions he had with his parents in early December. “When Coach Frost offered the preferred walk-on, we talked about it for 24 hours on the dot and then I decided that Nebraska was the place to be.”
It wasn’t always a foregone conclusion that Forbes would end up in red. Former head coach Bo Pelini began recruiting the big offensive guard during his freshman year of high school, but Mike Riley’s staff didn’t carry over the interest and Forbes’ recruitment to Nebraska went dark.
Forbes had no shortage of options for his college destination. In addition to 11 Division 2 schools, he had long-term interest from Frost and his staff in Orlando.
“UCF was in contact with me for a while before anyone knew they were going to take the Nebraska job,” Forbes said. “Once they came up here to Lincoln, it was just in my head, I was wondering, ‘Okay, they were recruiting a kid from Nebraska and now they’re at Nebraska.’ I was just wondering what they were going to do; I wasn’t exactly sure about it from that point.”
Perhaps his most intriguing offer included a scholarship from the Air Force Academy, a route taken by former standout Crete safety Rhett Harms in 2017.
But part of Forbes’ long-term goal to be a coach drew him to Frost at Nebraska. He recognized the opportunity to learn under Frost and knew if he went to the Air Force, his dream of opening a physical therapy facility would be put on hold for several years after graduation.
Renewed interest from the Huskers led him to seriously consider coming to Lincoln, and at the HomeGrown event, Forbes entered Memorial Stadium with a new sense of what it would mean to play at Nebraska.
“That was my first time in three years being back at Nebraska,” Forbes said. “Just being there and being in the facilities and being around the people that I was playing against and playing with … The big thing was I walked into Memorial and I was just kind of looking around.
“In terms of recruiting, they always talk about that gut feeling that you have when you feel like something’s right. When we walked out into Memorial, that’s kind of when the gut feeling hit me.”
That’s one play that didn’t make it into the notebook.