ABILENE, Texas.  Ryan Simmons is, to all appearances, a slightly scrawny high school senior with no particular athletic ability, but he's drawing attention from top colleges across the country as recruiting season swings into high gear.  "I don't know what it is," says his mother, Pearl, a municipal employee.  "He was drum major for the marching band all four years, so he never even put on a jock strap outside of gym class."

Simmons:  "Over there's the Science Building, and behind me is Greek row."

Ryan has a talent that is prized by college admissions officers--the ability to walk backwards in a straight line at a regular pace while avoiding people, plants and inanimate objects and talking at the same time.  "Ryan will probably end up at a big school like Alabama or Michigan," says Jim Stampfeld, a writer who follows the college recruiting scene, "but he can basically write his ticket wherever he goes."

"Take the steps one at a time so you don't trip you clumsy doofuses."

Ryan is projected as a freshman starter for the tour guide squad at whatever school he attends, as colleges find that a fast first step backwards and an ability to climb stone steps in reverse are critical factors in luring impressionable high school students and their parents to a campus.  "I couldn't believe that guy," says Mykal Woods, a senior at Forest Park High School in St. Louis about James "D Train" Glenn, a consensus All-American tour guide at the University of Kentucky.  "He said he'd take one more question about the Student Union, he answered it with one word and he was gone" down a brick pathway that leads to Rupp Gymnasium.

"You think you can beat me in one-on-one coverage?  Just try it."

Amanda Weiss-Web of Brandeis University is representative of a new breed of campus tour guide who has used weight training and off-season conditioning to turn herself from a walk-on her freshman year to a potential lottery pick when museums and art galleries tap top college backpedallers on Draft Day '08.  "Last summer I did everything backwards," she says.  "Ate dessert first, broke up with a guy before I slept with him, the whole nine yards."  The only knock against her is a tendency to draw illegal contact penalties in passing situations.  "When it's near the end of the tour and kids make a run for the bookstore to buy sweatshirts, she'll bump them at the line of scrimmage," says Al Groe, head scout for the Whitney Museum in New York.  "She needs to learn to release and talk to the parents.  They're the ones who write the big checks."

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman