This, more than anything else, is the story of a bunch of people who were wrong. Dummies, fools, goobers, people of that ilk. So-called college football recruiting experts who couldn't recognize a career-defining opportunity in front of their faces.

Contrary to the Hollywood origin story you might be imagining, the story of why projected No. 1 NFL draft pick Cam Ward was a zero-star recruit isn't some rags-to-riches tale of a kid from the middle-of-nowhere rising from obscurity. It's a story about a system steeped in confirmation bias, decision makers who'd rather be risk averse than forward thinkers and the unavoidable flaws of a multimillion-dollar industry based around certain fallible humans' abilities to evaluate other fallible humans.

Cam Ward wasn't a zero-star recruit because nobody noticed him. He was a zero-star recruit because the people who noticed him were ― for the most part ― very wrong.

Cam Ward's journey from zero-star recruit to NFL draft superstar

Across five college seasons at Incarnate Word, Washington State and Miami, Ward threw 158 touchdowns. That's more than any player in the history of Division I college football. So how does college football's most prolific thrower of touchdowns go entirely missed by the industry built to look for players like him?

The answer is he really wasn't missed, per se.

"Going into his senior year we had 10-12 times during the offseason where we had a tryout for him," says Brent Mascheck, Ward's coach at Columbia High School in West Columbia, Texas. "You name a college. We would go out there and have him go through every drill and him throwing the football."

College coaches knew Ward . Or, at the very least, they had the opportunity to.

West Columbia is only about an hour south of Houston, a football recruiting hub. Mascheck remembers coaches from the SEC and Big 12 vetting Ward. Mascheck recalls a Big 12 assistant coach telling him he got on his hands and knees to beg his head coach to offer Ward, but the coach refused because Ward was "overweight" at around 240 pounds. He says another prominent Group of Five school rejected Ward because the coaches didn't like his body type.

Then there's Texas A&M. Darrell Dickey, then the Aggies' offensive coordinator, was enamored of Ward's physical gifts. He told The Tennessean he was blown away by Ward's stature, presence, poise, release, timing and the velocity he put behind a ball. He saw a raw player who'd need the right kind of coaching and support to develop. But crucially, he saw a player capable of becoming the kind of big-armed pocket passer every team covets.

Dickey got Ward to College Station for a camp where Ward threw in front of Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher, who'd won championships coaching big pocket passers like Jameis Winston. Ward, as Dickey remembers, lit up the camp. Sure, Ward had some technical issues. But Dickey says Ward had the best arm of anyone he saw that day. That included fellow 2025 NFL Draft prospect Jalen Milroe, who was already a four-star recruit with offers from Alabama, Texas, Florida State and, yes, Texas A&M.

"The raw physical tools were off the charts," Dickey says. "The issue was knowing how things worked with recruiting. He wasn’t being recruited by hardly anybody else. So you get into that thing of ‘Hey, he didn’t go to the Elite 11.’ He wasn’t a huge name."

So . . . wait. Why wasn't Cam Ward a huge name?

The oft-cited narrative as to why Ward slipped through the recruiting cracks is he played in a Wing-T offense in high school. A Wing-T is a classic high school scheme that features a quarterback under center, a fullback and two "wing backs" offset behind tight ends or tackles. It's a run-first system built around motion, pulling guards, buck sweeps, trap plays and deceiving undisciplined defenses.

It's not, as some might assume, a triple-option offense built around quarterback runs. And even more crucially, it's not a spread offense where quarterbacks throw 30-plus times per game. Ward completed fewer than six passes per game in high school. As a senior, Ward completed 49 passes. Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young, the No. 1-ranked QB recruit at the time, completed 58 touchdowns that season.

So, the obvious question: What the heck was Mascheck thinking? Was he one of the goobers who missed on Ward's talent?

Not exactly.

Mascheck says he knew how special Ward's arm was from the first time he saw him. He witnessed Ward flick a ball 40 or 50 yards downfield on a flood route as an eighth grader . But Mascheck had loyalties beyond Ward's projections.

"In high school football," he says, "you can’t recruit. Our team wasn’t built to throw the ball 60 times. We didn’t have those receivers. The one game we did lose (Ward's senior year), we dropped quite a few passes. I hate saying that because I never want to knock other kids. But we had to do what was best for the entire team."

One of the few perks to playing in the Wing-T is that Ward learned how to thrive in muddy pockets. When he did drop back, he had to stay calm among pressure, which remains one of his strengths.

Still, Ward lacked tape and presented raw and unpolished. Compare that against Haynes King, the four-star dual-threat putting up huge numbers and leading his powerhouse school to a Class 6A Texas state championship. King, the son of a 17-time district champion coach, oozed polish. He's the kind of prospect who feels destined to sign with a school like Texas A&M.

So that's what happened. Fisher, by Dickey's account, liked Ward. But the Aggies opted for the player who'd be more ready the day he arrived on campus, instead of the player who had the greater potential.

But what about the recruiting rankings? And the small schools?

Star rankings, obviously, aren't awarded by colleges. Recruiting services like 247Sports, Rivals and ESPN bestow those. And there's no one reason why a recruiting service misses on a player. Evaluators can't be everywhere, so it's understandable that few made it down to West Columbia. And since Ward didn't have much tape, film seldom highlighted his raw talents. Ward went to camps and showcases, but established recruits with big-time offers get majority of the attention at those.

Then there's the insidious side of the recruiting industry: As one industry veteran admits, certain services have policies that prevent players who haven't gotten power conference offers from getting ratings of three stars or better. So a vicious cycle is created where Ward is cast aside in favor of high-star recruits, which means Ward can't get the star rating required to be viewed as a high-caliber recruit and thus noticed by the industry at large.

Dickey said he doesn't know for certain that Ward would've gotten a star rating had Fisher followed his advice and Texas A&M offered Ward a scholarship, but he knows that sort of thing does happen. Dickey was surprised the recruit experts didn't take notice of Ward following his camp performance. And smaller schools not catching on is hardly Dickey's fault.

"I said ‘Hey, if we can’t take him I’ll certainly do everything I can to get his name out there,'" Dickey said. "I wish we had taken him, especially now that I see what he’s turned into. But at the time I knew that there was a lot of things we had to consider. I mentioned his name to quite a few people, Division I and I-AA."

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The predictable ending

Incarnate Word, a new-ish FCS program in San Antonio, offered Ward the scholarship so many denied him. In a matter of months, he'd overtake an incumbent starter and earn the Jerry Rice Award, given to the top freshman in the FCS. Five years later, Ward is being strongly evaluated by the Tennessee Titans as the potential No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.

"Nothing he’s done has surprised me," Dickey said. "It’s kind of made me feel like maybe I should’ve pushed a lot harder to try to get him here. But that’s just the business, so to speak. The tough side into it is we’re always projecting how these guys are going to develop. Some of it is you can’t always see how hard this guy is going to work when he gets to college.

"Just talking to him, I could tell he really wanted to go somewhere and show people what he could do. I think he knew that he had a lot of ability and he wanted to go make something of himself, and he’s done that."

Through it all, Ward's kept the receipts. Even if he's not public about it, he has used it as motivation.