Signee Q and A: Malik Antoine
Defensive back Malik Antoine will head west to begin his college career a little more than a month from now with his fellow 2016 Stanford signees. Cardinal Sports Report caught up with the Louisiana native to discuss post-Signing Day life and to reflect on his recruiting process.
Cardinal Sports Report: It's been, gosh, three months since you signed. How has everything been? How have the last few months treated you?
Malik Antoine: It's been amazing. It's always good to sign that letter and fulfill the dream that you've been thinking about for four-plus years, to see that finally happen. It's been a great feeling. It's kind of been an eye-opener as well because we're getting the playbook, the workouts, the talks with coaches, talks with the academic department at Stanford. Everything has been amazing and I'm just enjoying my final moments here in Baton Rouge and getting my body and mind prepared to go to Stanford in June.
CSR: What sort of things do they have you doing in those workouts and how do those compare to what you were doing before with your high school team?
Antoine: I think Stanford really stresses form and function. So most of the stuff is getting my form, like for Olympic lifts, and mostly functional movements that get those smaller muscles working and keep you balanced and very lean as an athlete. It was very new for me - not all the way new, but it was kind of a shocker to my body to do those different types of movements and learning the proper form.
CSR: You mentioned the playbook - I know Stanford's playbook is pretty complex. What were your first impressions looking through everything?
Antoine: My first impression was the complexity in the calls. It's not as basic as high school where it's just a coverage and you go off that coverage. It's more I call the play call and I look at what the offense is on and then I react off that - I have a certain call off that. It's more offensive based - there's no simple calls for, like, this is what I'm going to do.
CSR: In talking with the coaches, when you do talk to folks from over there at this point, what are they telling you? What are the conversations about now?
Antoine: Mostly it's just telling me to keep my grades up and make sure I'm getting as prepared as possible to be there in the summer to fulfill my opportunity that I have.
CSR: Have you been doing track or anything or have you just been focusing on playbook, (getting prepared for Stanford)?
Antoine: I quit track going into my junior year to primarily focus on getting myself better in the offseason. This whole time I've just been training, doing Stanford's training and doing my own DB workout with my coach. That's what I've been doing over the past couple of months.
CSR: Shifting gears a little bit to recruiting now, obviously you picked Stanford early, but was there a runner-up team for you, a second place team if Stanford wasn't in the picture?
Antoine: The other three schools I guess I really considered were Vanderbilt, Cal-Berkeley and Oklahoma State. Those were three schools that were kind of making me I guess second-guess my Stanford decision.
CSR: You obviously talked to a lot of coaches - do you remember a particular recruiting pitch that was the funniest? Did someone ever say something that was funny or unusual or something like that?
Antoine: I guess the funniest thing I ever heard was trying to use the girls on campus and at the school to recruit me.
CSR: Did anybody try to negatively recruit Stanford?
Antoine: Every other coach I talked to, when I told them I was considering Stanford, they always had positive things to say. They always said that's a good program, that's a good academic program, a great athletic program. The only thing they would say is that it's so far away from my home, but besides that they always had great things to say about Stanford's program.
CSR: I know you took a number of visits. What was the most surprising or unusual or shocking or crazy thing that you saw on a visit?
Antoine: I guess I have to go to my Stanford visit. We went to a virtual reality room where we got to put on some virtual reality goggles and go through that tour and see how virtual reality was. That was probably the craziest thing I've done on my official visit.
CSR: You've been through the process, you've signed. Knowing what you know now, what would your advice be for freshman year Malik about this process?
Antoine: Just be patient about the whole thing. Everybody now wants to get recruited so early. Just play football, be patient, enjoy the time with your high school, enjoy the time that you have to get better. Don't rush the recruiting process - it all comes in due time and it will be a more surreal moment if you're patient and wait for it to happen for you.