Calabasas' Butler getting jump on college career
On Friday afternoon, two hours before Calabasas High kicked off its Marmonte League opener against Oaks Christian, wide receiver Aaron Butler and his family were on their way to Los Angeles International Airport.
A flight was going to take them to Boulder, Colo., to be in attendance at Colorado's football game against USC.
But just before they had loaded the car Friday, Butler, a four-star recruit who committed to Colorado in May, announced his decision to forgo the final five games of his senior season at Calabasas, enroll in online classes and graduate high school early so that he could be on campus at Colorado and begin classes and working out with the football team.
“In the six months that I'm going to be up there and others aren't, I'm going to outwork them,” Butler said in a phone call as his family drove to LAX. “I'm going to get acclimated to the school and the classrooms. I'm going to get used to where everything is. I'm going to build a connection with my teammates going into the season because I'm already going to be one of the guys.”
His sudden transition greatly dims Calabasas' playoff hopes and reshapes the landscape of the Marmonte League. To those parties it might have appeared like that, abrupt.
But the seeds of Butler's plan sprouted when he first saw the respectful way Colorado head coach Deion Sanders treated his father, Robb-Davon Butler. The two were teammates briefly on the Baltimore Ravens. From that moment, all he wanted was to play for Sanders.
The notion to don those gold-and-black threads by spring football camp grew more realistic when he learned, in June, that an early graduation was possible. In finality, it's far more about giving in to his hunger “to take someone's spot by January,” he said, than finishing out what was already a storied high school football career.
Who's to say he can't? He accomplished a similar feat when he accumulated 525 all-purpose yards and seven touchdowns as a freshman at Calabasas, a school that Butler stuck with after a 3-7 season in 2021, turning down interest from the likes of St. John Bosco and Sierra Canyon, to help rebuild the Coyotes program.
“I never had the mindset of leaving as opposed to building,” Butler said.
As a sophomore, he conducted his own recruitment process. He reached out to quarterback Alonzo Contreras, now a Calabasas senior and San Jose State commit, and running back King
Miller, a preferred walk-on at USC.
A year after going winless in the Marmonte League, the Coyotes went 8-5 in 2022 and lost by one in the semifinals to eventual CIF Southern Section Division 6 champion San Jacinto.
“He's the type of kid who can do anything he wants and anytime,” Agoura head coach Dustin Croick said. “He can get open, he can block, he can run the route… It's been a nightmare to coach against him for four years.”
That under his belt, Butler felt it was time for the next step.
Graduating early is a route that's become commonplace. Robb-Davon was quick to admit that his son felt comfortable making this decision because he saw the success it brought USC's Zachariah Branch, Colorado's Dylan Edwards and former Calabasas fourstar recruit — and one of Butler's mentors — Darnay Holmes.
“It wasn't something that he decided to do like yesterday,” Robb-Davon said.
In June, his college counselor, Emily Ritchie, informed Butler that he had enough credits to take his classes online in the fall and graduate by December. With that in the back of his mind, Butler played out the first five games of his senior season, before opting to leave the team Friday.
He is trying to give himself a head start to adapt to the “rigor of college study, the discipline required to be a student-athlete and the opportunity to get the full-blown immersion in the playbook,” Robb-Davon said.
Each of these aspects will help him find success at Colorado.
The Buffaloes, who won just one game in 2022, began this season by surprising college football fans by rattling off three wins, including a 45-42 statement victory against Texas Christian University, the College Football Playoff runners-up in 2022.
But before Sanders' persona, and the hype coupled with those wins, swept the nation, it was the coach's candor that impressed Butler. He was exactly what Robb-Davon described to his son.
“Our personalities fit,” Aaron Butler said about Sanders. “When I saw my dad and him get back together, just that relationship and him calling my dad by his nickname, it was good to see.”
To Sanders, Butler's dad was known as Honest Abe, and to Robb-Davon, he was “O.G. Prime,” a wily veteran and Canton-shoe-in fresh off a short stint in the MLB, who owed nothing more to the NFL, let alone a Ravens practice squad player.
Robb-Davon remembers the day defensive coach Rex Ryan introduced him to the team and Sanders didn't hesitate to take the safety under his wing. And the time his roommate, Duvol Thompson, called him out of the blue saying Sanders wanted to grab lunch with them.
“The relationship with `Prime' as a father made me feel comfortable that I was turning my son over to a stand-up, high-character human being who was going to hold him accountable,” Robb-Davon said.
If it was that familiarity with Sanders that attracted Butler to Colorado, then it was the plans offensive coordinator Scott Lewis and receivers coach Brett Bartolone had for him that sparked the desire to get integrated into the team early.
“They throw the ball a lot and it's fast-paced,” Butler said. “They're going to be able to move me around, put me and Travis (Hunter) on the same side. I don't know who's going to be able to guard that.”
Butler's foresight to buy in on the future that Sanders laid out before Colorado garnered all the attention it has this season can be attributed to a similar feeling that convinced him to remain at Calabasas.
“I sought out a family and they checked all those boxes,” Butler said.
Robb-Davon says it's not that “hype that gets him up in the morning,” rather he's confident in the ideas Sanders sold to him.
Butler exemplified that much by addressing Colorado's 42-6 loss last week to Oregon, telling an Oregon grad “we'll see who's talking next year when we meet them in the playoffs.”
He couldn't wait any longer to kick-start the process that makes opportunities like that realistic.