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The Chiefs made Eric Fisher the top pick of the N.F.L. draft and the first Central Michigan player to go No. 1 over all.
Usually after the first round of the N.F.L. draft, football fans in Michigan can proudly point to players selected who wore maize and blue or green and white during their high-profile Big Ten careers.
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Before Eric Fisher was selected as the No. 1 pick on Thursday, the last Chippewa player selected by a professional league was running back Carl Volny, chosen by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League in the fifth round in 2011.
When the Kansas City Chiefs took offensive tackle Eric Fisher with the first overall pick Thursday, the draft board was illuminated with unfamiliar hues: maroon and gold, the colors of the Central Michigan Chippewas.
The 6-foot-7, 306-pound Fisher entered his senior season with little fanfare. He was a third-team all-Mid-American Conference selection as a junior. He was hardly a household name, even to those in the greater Mount Pleasant area. Now, after leading the Chippewas to a victory in the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl in December, Fisher will be counted on to protect the blind side of Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith, a former No. 1 overall pick himself.
To have a player from my alma mater picked anywhere in the N.F.L. draft was worth a pat on the back from privileged friends who root for "major" football programs. But first over all? Central had a better chance of producing Mr. Irrelevant, the last player chosen.
"At the beginning of the year, N.F.L. scouts said they saw him as a potential first-round pick," Fisher's college coach, Dan Enos, told mlive.com. "And we were like, 'Cool!' Then at the end of the season they said he could be a top-10 pick, and after the Senior Bowl it was that he could be the top pick. It's been unreal."
Before Thursday, the last Chippewas player selected by a professional league was a running back named Carl Volny, chosen by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League in the fifth round in 2011. In the 2010 N.F.L. draft, quarterback Dan LeFevour (Chicago, 181st over all) and wide receiver Antonio Brown (Pittsburgh, 195th over all) were sixth-rounders — a coup by Central standards.
Joe Staley, a Pro Bowl offensive tackle for the 49ers, is Central's only other first-round pick. The success of Staley, the 28th overall pick in 2007, may have lessened the Chiefs' anxiety about choosing a player from a non-Bowl Championship Series conference. Quarterback Byron Leftwich, drafted out of Marshall with the seventh pick in 2003, had been the highest choice from the MAC. Fisher was only the third player in the last 20 years from a non-B.C.S. program to be drafted No. 1 over all, joining Utah's Alex Smith (2005) and Fresno State's David Carr (2002).
So it was no wonder that social media links were atwitter with "Fire Up Chips!" posts Thursday when the ESPN pundits Mel Kiper Jr. and Jon Gruden uttered "Central Michigan" more times in a 15-minute span before the draft than it had been uttered on the network in the previous 15 years.
Fisher hopes to follow in the footsteps of the three other offensive tackles chosen first over all — the Hall of Famer Ron Yary (1968) and the perennial Pro Bowlers Orlando Pace (1997) and Jake Long (2008).
At the end of Thursday night, fans of the Wolverines and the Spartans were still waiting for one of their players to be chosen. There's always the second round.
Wayne Kamidoi, an art director at The Times, is a 1987 graduate of Central Michigan, and left most Chippewa football games by halftime to watch Michigan or Michigan State games on television.
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