Once an afterthought on the NFL scouting trail, Fort Hays State became a popular destination last fall. The Division II school, which hadn't produced a draft pick since 1987, boasted a 6-foot-4, 315-pound defensive lineman with freakish skills. Word spread quickly. If you bill it, they will come -- and scouts from every team made the out-of-the-way trek to Hays, Kansas, a long-ago frontier outpost that once served as the home of General George Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok.
The new star of the Wild West show was Nathan Shepherd, whose circuitous football journey to the small school prompted the same skeptical question from every scout -- "the gold-standard question," according to assistant head coach Al McCray.