The email arrived in Jon Wholley’s inbox in December 2021 asking him whether an opportunity to attend a post-graduate year of prep school for football would be possible. Wholley, the football coach at Avon Old Farms in Connecticut, knew nothing about the person who had sent the message. After all, Christian Alliegro didn’t have a single FBS scholarship offer and was instead committed to play lacrosse for Navy.
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So, Wholley did what anybody does in this day and age. He went online, found Alliegro’s football highlights and clicked play. What he saw was a lanky, athletic-looking 6-foot-4 senior who was outleaping receivers for the ball down the field as a safety and running up to stuff tailbacks in the box.
Wholley, who spent three years as a linebackers coach at UConn followed by a stint at Mississippi State, knew an FBS player when he saw one. And Alliegro appeared to fit the mold. So, Wholley arranged a visit to determine how best to proceed.
“When I saw him walk through the door, everything kind of changed,” Wholley said. “I basically instantly told him, ‘Listen as long as you’re not egregiously slow, which you do not look like on film, you’re going to be a no-brainer Power 5 football player.’ Because he looked like a kid that if you told me that’s Penn State’s top recruit, you’d go, ‘Yeah, that’s what they look like.’ One of the best-looking kids physically that I’ve seen having gone into high schools for a million years when I was college recruiting.”
That’s how Alliegro’s path to college football began. A year later, after earning scholarship offers from 13 FBS programs, he signed with Wisconsin in December 2022 as an outside linebacker, moving on from pursuing a college lacrosse opportunity.
“It was almost like it was meant to happen,” Alliegro said. “I really didn’t want to play lacrosse. In the back of my mind, I always knew I liked football better. That’s what I really wanted to do. It was just kind of tough deciding how I would do that until I got here, and it all seemed to click and everything worked out.”
How could a player with Alliegro’s build at 6-foot-4 and 227 pounds, who could run a 4.57-second 40-yard dash and bench press 225 pounds 24 times, be so overlooked as a college football prospect coming out of Darien High School in Connecticut?
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Alliegro’s dad, Stephan, said his son had virtually no exposure because he was so focused on lacrosse — a sport in which he earned All-America honors — and didn’t attend any football camps. He didn’t have a junior season of football because it was canceled amid the pandemic. Alliegro did help lead his football team to a state title as a senior when he made 76 tackles with three interceptions and earned all-state honors, which sparked his interest in continuing with the sport.
“It’s not like the Midwest,” Stephan said. “Darien High School, not too many kids get recruited to Division I schools to play football. There’s a handful. But it’s a hotbed for lacrosse. It’s a lacrosse town. It’s recognized as a lacrosse power nationally. Football is kind of a fun sport to play but an afterthought.”
Alliegro initially reached out to a handful of prep schools in the northeast at the request of Navy, which wanted him to improve his math grade and mature because he was a year young for his grade. But after Alliegro met Wholley, who determined his best position on the football field would be linebacker, a whole new set of opportunities opened.
Alliegro attended the Best of New England camp at Springfield (Mass.) College in June 2022 — his first football camp — and caught the attention of coaches from UConn, among others. He took video of himself doing footwork and linebacker drills, and Wholley sent them to some of his contacts in college coaching. That video paved the way for Alliegro to attend a camp at Minnesota in late July, and he earned a Gophers scholarship offer. UConn and Rutgers followed with offers.
During the fall, as his talent became more evident, he earned offers from Virginia, Maryland, Wake Forest, North Carolina State, Syracuse, Louisville, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt. Wisconsin’s previous coaching staff offered Alliegro in October as a tight end, as did Vanderbilt. The rest of the schools offered him as a linebacker.
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Wholley had a relationship with then-Wisconsin recruiting director Mickey Turner. The two crossed paths while recruiting the New Jersey area when Turner was tight ends coach for the Badgers and Wholley worked at UConn. Turner had contributed to helping Wholley send quarterback Marshall Howe from Avon Old Farms to Wisconsin as a walk-on earlier that year.
Alliegro said one of the goals he set last summer when he typed them into his cell phone was to earn a scholarship offer from Wisconsin. He had admired the Badgers’ style of play from afar. But Alliegro wasn’t keen on playing tight end in college because he wanted to play linebacker. After Wisconsin’s coaching staff was overhauled and Luke Fickell took over as head coach, that’s exactly the opportunity that presented itself.
Alliegro took an official visit to Wake Forest the first weekend in December. When he arrived back home, new Wisconsin defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach Mike Tressel was among a handful of coaches from different schools waiting to talk to him. Tressel re-offered Alliegro as an outside linebacker.
“Whether a guy goes through a fifth-year post-grad or a guy that comes from northern Wisconsin that plays eight-man football, you’re looking at the potential down the road,” Fickell said on signing day in December. “And I think when you talk about fits, we’re talking about where are they now and where do you believe they’re going to be? If they’re the type of person that’s going to embrace the culture and the things that you’re going to ask them to do, it’s amazing how much more they’ll grow and change within the next two years.
“I look at Christian as that, whether he’s in his fifth year in a post-grad year, I just look at a guy that’s really mature, he’s got an incredible growth and upside that will be completely different I think in two years.”
Alliegro canceled a scheduled official visit to Virginia to attend Wisconsin the weekend of Dec. 9. He committed to the Badgers days before he was supposed to take an official visit to Minnesota.
“Coach Tressel was a great guy,” Alliegro said. “He believes in my ability. I can rush, I can get back into coverage, blitz and do all that. When I went on my official visit, he was like, ‘This is what you’re going to do.’ I already knew that was literally the perfect position for me with my athletic ability. And when I went around the school, met more of the coaching staff, my intuition was that this was the spot.”
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Wholley calls Alliegro “a freak of nature.” During the first week of school at Avon Old Farms last fall, members of the different dorms held a competition as part of field day activities at the all-boys boarding school. One of the events was to see how many times students could bench press 135 pounds. Alliegro did it 59 times.
“I legitimately believe that if he came here as a junior and he had the two years, I’m pretty confident he would’ve gotten offers from everybody in the country,” Wholley said. “Like Georgia, you name it. He has that ability.”
Alliegro will take that ability to Madison when he enrolls in school next month. He is a raw prospect but one whose upside is undeniable when he devotes all his time to football.
“All of this happened with a quick turnaround,” Alliegro said. “But it was a blessing, too.”
(Photo: Courtesy of Christian Alliegro)
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