Nyckoles Harbor lands No. 1 on Bruce Feldman's annual 'Freaks List'
Long-time national college football reporter Bruce Feldman has been putting out his annual ‘College Football Freaks List’ for almost two decades, and for the first time a true freshman checks in at No. 1 — a freshman every South Carolina football fan is familiar with in former five-star recruit Nyckoles Harbor.
For those who don’t know, the Freaks List, which has grown over the years, is Feldman’s annual check-in on college football’s most freaky athletes, those who are capable of things most of us can only dream of while watching them on Saturday afternoons.
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At 6 feet 5, 243 pounds, the prized former five-star recruit is insanely fast. Videos of his high school races in which he roars past other speedsters that barely come up to his shoulders have gone viral.
Seeing Harbor in person last fall on his official visit to Michigan, I couldn’t believe just how big he actually was. He looked more like a young power forward than a potential future Olympic sprinter. The son of former U.S. national soccer team forward Jean Harbor put up some eye-catching track times in high school, clocking a 10.22-second 100-meter dash, a 6.64 in the 60 and a 20.63 in the 200. In training with the Gamecocks this summer, Harbor hit 22.9 miles per hour on the GPS.
Earlier this month, I asked one of his coaches at South Carolina, Jody Wright, who has coached in the NFL and with Alabama — where he worked with both Julio Jones and Derrick Henry — how he compares. “I would say a taller Julio with a Derrick Henry-type build is a great comparison,” Wright says. “He has the potential to develop into a mismatch nightmare with his size and speed.” Harbor is much taller and heavier than both former Alabama stars, and yet his 100 time in high school was almost a full second faster than both of theirs.
Feldman goes on to mention how impressed head coach Shane Beamer has been, not only with Harbor’s obvious speed but also with his size and toughness, something Beamer talked about following Saturday’s first scrimmage of the preseason.
“I thought Nyck did some good things,” Beamer said. “We got him out there and he operated efficiently. I noticed him when we did punt and what we call punt pressure, the unit that goes up against our punt team. Noticed him on that, a guy with his speed and size, you would think would be pretty good at being able to block punts and spring returns for the punt returner.
“So he did some good stuff in that and working at receiver. He’s a tough kid. You know, you worry about some of these track guys sometimes. Do they just want to come out there and just run fast and shy away from contact? Not that guy. Like he is tough and he is physical.”
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Harbor famously chose South Carolina on ESPN in February over Oregon, Maryland, Michigan, and Miami, giving Beamer and Co. one of the biggest recruiting wins of his tenure.
Starring at both defensive end and tight end as a senior in high school, Harbor was named the co-Defensive Player of the Year in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Metro Division while adding 15 receptions for 439 yards and five touchdowns on offense.
A five-star prospect, Harbor was ranked the No. 21 overall recruit and No. 1 athlete in the 2023 class by the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average of all four major recruiting media sites.
