As Beau Sandland crossed the line of the south end-zone at Bobcat Stadium, he stood and admired the sea of blue and gold, each of his bulging arms stretched out to his sides as he took in his new home in full force for the first time.
Sandland crossing the goal line after a 63-yard touchdown catch
To look at Sandland is to observe a physical specimen worth beholding, a 6-foot-6, 254-pound titan with rippling muscles. With his long arms extended, he fully looked the part of NFL prospect following a 63-yard catch and run that showed his speed, fluidity and soft hands.
“He looks like a God,” said MSU junior tight end Austin Barth, no small man himself at 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds. “The guy is just massive. He is just a beast on the field.”
Sandland has looked the part for several years, so much so, he earned almost three dozen offers from some of the top football programs in the country just a few years ago. But Saturday’s breakout game — he caught five passes for 156 yards and two touchdowns in MSU’s 45-28 win over Cal Poly — was affirmation of his potential after a long journey that has seen many twists and turns and on the way to Bozeman. Before Saturday, Sandland had just 16 Division I receptions.
“That’s the guy we have been talking about and it just kind of all came together today and it couldn’t have happened at a better time,” MSU head coach Rob Ash said following his team’s homecoming win. “He’s a tremendous receiver as a tight end with exceptional physical skill.”
Last August, as Montana State drudged through a fall camp accentuated by a competition to replace a four-year starting quarterback, Montana State offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey received a phone call. On the other end, a kid who had fallen out of love with South Beach was scrambling to find a new home. Cramsey was much more concerned with choosing between Dakota Prukop, Jake Bleskin or Quinn McQueary than listening to a plea for a scholarship from a kid he had never heard of.
Sandland catches a corner route during a fall camp scrimmage
Sandland grew up in Woodland Hills, California and went to Simi Valley High. He played out of position in a spread offense in high school, lining up mostly as a 6-foot-4, 215-pound slot receiver. At Los Angeles Pierce College, Sandland grew two inches and put on 40 pounds, morphing himself into the No. 1 junior college recruit in the country.
Cramsey ran Sandland’s name by defensive coordinator Kane Ioane and tight ends coach Daniel DaPrato, Montana State’s primary Southern California recruiters.
“They were like, ‘You need to call that guy back immediately,” Cramsey said with a laugh on Tuesday.
Sandland’s uncle retired to Hamilton, Montana during Sandland’s adolescence. His family held family reunions in the Bitterroot Valley when Sandland was in sixth, seventh and eight grade. He fell in love with the Treasure State. When he fell out of favor with the Miami Hurricanes, he wanted to move back West.
His father retired to Hamilton in 2013 and has since moved to Ennis. Sandland’s older brother was working in the oil fields in North Dakota around the same time. Sandland was late in the process, — he didn’t decide to leave Miami until the summer of 2014 — but he remembered the Treasure State and it’s beauty. He gave Cramsey a call.
“I didn’t know anything about MSU — the facilities, the town, the campus, the coaches, what sort of offense they ran, nothing — but Montana is way more my cup of tea,” Sandland said on Tuesday. “I love it up here. The lifestyle, the hunting, the fishing, the hiking, the different seasons, not a crazy concrete jungle. The state is the fourth-largest and it only has a million people. There was three and a half million in L.A. County alone. This is way more my style.”
Sandland runs the sideline against Cal Poly
Once Cramsey saw film of Sandland, he quickly made sure DaPrato contacted Sandland and offered him a scholarship even if it meant the tight end join the Bobcats following fall camp and redshirted during the 2014 season. DaPrato took care of the paper work while Sandland drove across the country. When he arrived in Bozeman, junior running backs Chad Newell and Gunnar Brekke, junior offensive lineman J.P. Flynn and sophomore defensive tackle Matt Brownlow offered a couch for Sandland to sleep on.
Cramsey himself moved from Miami to Montana in 2013 after Mario Cristobal, his head coach at Florida International, was fired. Cristobal landed at Miami as the tight ends coach for the Hurricanes for an off-season before joining Nick Saban’s staff in the same capacity at Alabama.
“Cristobal coached Beau at Miami a little bit. I called him and he was like, ‘Dude, that guy is going FCS?’ I was like, ‘I think so.’ He was like, ‘He’s a (freaking) creature. You are going to love this guy. He would play for me at Alabama,” Cramsey said in an interview last spring. “I was like, ‘No, he can’t. He won’t. Bye (laughs).’ And he’s about as far from Miami as you and I are. I was hesitant at first about the Miami kid, then I was thankful when I met him that he was about as country as anyone in Montana.”
Despite Sandland’s affinity for the rural West, Miami head coach Al Golden and UM assistants Brennan Carroll and Jed Fisch sold Sandland hard on South Beach.
Sandland making catches in practice
After a standout second season at Pierce, Sandland held offers from Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, USC, Washington and Utah of the Pac 12; Purdue, Nebraska and Indiana of the Big Ten; Baylor, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Iowa State and Kansas State of the Big XII; and Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas A&M of the SEC. He took official visits to Miami, Ole Miss, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas Tech. The mystique of “The U” was too much to pass up.
“They have so much; It’s five national championships. It’s all these guys going to Pro Bowls. It’s most first round draft picks, most draft picks,” Sandland said. “Tight end U, Kellen Winslow, Jeremy Shockey, Greg Olsen, Jimmy Graham. It’s South Beach, the great weather, the small, private institution. A lot of one on one attention from your professors It’s the nearly $60,000 a year education,” Sandland said. “There were a lot of advantages.”
In 2013, Sandland found himself in a position group with future NFL Draft pick tight ends Asante Cleveland and Clive Waldorf. Sandland played in all 13 games and caught a touchdown against Savannah State. With Cleveland gone, Sandland figured he would be a key cog in the offense opposite Waldorf. Out of spring drills, he found his name again listed as No. 3 on the Hurricanes’ depth chart.
“I wasn’t going to do that for my senior year because I knew the kind of player I was and the kind of player I could be in a system,” Sandland said. “I wanted a team that wanted to use me. I didn’t want to move again. No one ever wants to transfer. But the writing was on the wall. I held out as long as I could, hence me coming here so late. I tried to wait as long as a I could and it didn’t change.”
Sandland vs. EWU
Thus far this season, Sandland is finally getting an opportunity to show off his physical gifts. He already has as many touchdowns as a Bobcat (three) as in his final season at Pierce and his one season at Miami combined. His nine catches are fourth on the Bobcats.
“That’s definitely a guy we are keying on after they gave him the ball a lot,” said NAU senior cornerback Marcus Alford, whose Lumberjacks host Montana State on Saturday. “That’s one of their biggest threats. We are definitely going to be aware of where he is at all the time and try to limit him. He’s definitely a big-play guy.”
Northern Arizona brings pressure from all three levels of its defense. The Lumberjacks primarily employ man coverage tactics in the secondary.
“He’s a 260-pound guy who runs really fast and catches pretty much everything you throw to him,” Cramsey said. “What he does to defenses is he causes a lot of matchup problems. Going into this weekend, they are a man free team and I think they really want to evaluate if they want to stay man-free because there will be situations where they have their linebacker one-on-one against Beau or they have their 160-pound nickelback one-on-one against Beau.”
Sandland during Fort Lewis
Mismatches will likely be commonplace for the former four-star recruit during his lone season in the Big Sky. Sandland can power clean more than 315 pounds, bench press nearly 400 pounds and has been clocked as fast as 4.61 in the 40-yard dash during his time in junior college. His numbers against physically limited competition should pop as his NFL dreams continue to gain steam.
Sandland is currently ranked as the No. 21 tight end prospect in the country by NFL Draft Scout. Earlier this week, he was featured on NFL Draft Diamonds, an online publication widely known as the top source for news concerning small-school prospects. Sandland will graduate with a sociology degree with an emphasis in criminology in December. He hopes he won’t have to use it.
“That’s always been my dream for as long as I can remember,” Sandland said. “You always have to have a Plan B. You read the statistics so you have to get your degree. I’ll have mine in December. Hopefully, I’ll never have to use it.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
