The football coach made his business pitch to the basketball player every so often for two years. No matter how many times Devin Nicholson said he wanted to focus on basketball, Cass Tech High School coach Thomas Wilcher pressed on: Nicholson was meant to play football.
“He kept turning me down,” Wilcher said. Nicholson was all business — “a very serious person,” his high school coach calls him. Growing up in Detroit, he played youth football but chose basketball as his high school sport. Wilcher was still convinced the young athlete had the body of a linebacker.
At one point, Nicholson even revealed that several family members had played football.