Bode Sparrow just wanted to enjoy the sand, sunshine and beaches of Hawaii a few months ago, decompress after a long and grueling football season at Davis High and spend some time with his family and friends.
But his cellphone would not stop buzzing.
Sparrow, 17, is reluctant to discuss from whom the calls were coming, preferring to err on the side of humility and privacy, but other sources familiar with his recruitment as the No. 1 prep football prospect in the state of Utah filled in the details.
Oregon coach Dan Lanning. Oklahoma coach Brett Venables. Texas A&M coach Mike Elko. Miami coach Mario Cristobal. Tennessee coach Josh Heupel. Later, new Michigan coach Kyle Whittingham and new Michigan defensive coordinator Jay Hill reached out.
“I’m on vacation with my family, and the whole time, I am just taking phone calls. But it’s part of the deal. Not many kids get this opportunity, so I’m grateful for it, for sure.”
— Davis High receiver and safety Bode Sparrow
And, of course, calls came from new Utah coach Morgan Scalley and veteran BYU coach Kalani Sitake — the first coach to offer Sparrow a scholarship, when the standout receiver and safety was in the ninth grade and just 14 years old.
“Pretty much all the people you see on ESPN and Fox every Saturday in the fall,” Sparrow said last Friday at Layton’s Ellison Park in between games at a seven-on-seven passing competition. “I mean, it’s been a lot. I have been working the phones a lot. I’m on vacation with my family, and the whole time, I am just taking phone calls. But it’s part of the deal. Not many kids get this opportunity, so I’m grateful for it, for sure.”
Bode’s recruitment got so intense, said his father Ty Sparrow, that there were times in the winter and spring that he spent more time on the phone with recruiters than he did doing his homework, or attending classes.
“One week he was missing a few assignments from his math (class), and I am like, ‘Hey, why haven’t you done these?’” said Sparrow, a former Weber High, Snow College and Weber State football player. “He is like, ‘Dad, I’ve been on the phone for the last three hours with college football coaches. Give me a break.’”
Becoming the No. 1 recruit in Utah
Visits and phone calls have been a big part of Sparrow’s life the past year as the 6-foot-3, 195-pound athlete has blossomed into being one of the most heavily recruited prep football players in state history. Sparrow, who will be a senior at Davis this coming fall, is rated as the 69th best overall prospect in the country in the 247Sports Composite rankings, and is the No. 4-ranked “athlete” in the country, according to that service.
Ever since his sophomore year ended, when college coaches could begin initiating direct recruiting conversations, he’s arguably been the most popular teenager in Kaysville. Interest ramped up even more throughout the 2025 prep football season, as Sparrow was listed as the No. 2 athlete in the country in the Rivals300 rankings and led the Darts to a 10-2 record and Region 1 championship with Iowa-bound quarterback Tradon Bessinger, the Deseret News’ Mr. Football.
Davis’ only two losses came in overtime by a total of 4 points.
Praised for his overall athleticism, smarts and football instincts, Sparrow caught 83 passes for 1,218 yards and 16 touchdowns last fall. He also had seven interceptions and 71 tackles and scored two defensive touchdowns.
“The amazing thing is none of it has gone to his head,” said Davis coach Scott Peery. “He’s got a great head on his shoulders. He’s going places. You can see it. You can feel it with him. … He’s very charismatic, and just a fierce competitor in all that he does.”
Fielding scholarship offers from everywhere
According to 247Sports, Sparrow had as many as 27 scholarship offers from Power Four programs before he began to take the likes of LSU, Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas, Nebraska, Texas and UCLA off his list.
In the past year, not only has Sparrow visited on the telephone with those aforementioned coaches fortunate enough to make it on his initial top 10 list, he’s made trips to the places they coach at, while also having them visit him at school and at his home. Sitake, Scalley, Lanning and Venables are among those who have walked the halls of the Sparrow home and Davis High in the past few months, Peery said.
“This spring, when coaches were out on the road, they would always come to my school and I would get pulled out of class, and I was missing a lot of class, but it was all good,” Sparrow said. “I mean, it is a cool opportunity. You just have to keep it in perspective and enjoy it, realize this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing that most people don’t experience.”
What hasn’t been enjoyable, Sparrow acknowledged, is calling the coaches who he has gradually taken off his list and telling them he won’t be playing for them. He did that in May, whittling his final four to Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah and BYU and setting up official visits to those schools.
That meant he had to call coaches at Michigan, Texas A&M, Miami and Tennessee and deliver the bad news personally. Ty Sparrow said it took a little urging, but in the end his son realized that the right thing to do was call the coaches personally.
“I tried to put if off for a little bit, but at the end of the day, you have to make some hard decisions and let some people down,” Bode said. “That’s always hard, but that’s part of the deal. I just had to be a man and keep it real with them and tell them personally, not by text message, and let them know I appreciated them recruiting me. I tried not to burn any bridges.”
Why Bode Sparrow needed a final 4
Sparrow knows three more of those difficult phone calls are still ahead of him. He hopes to make his final decision at the end of June or beginning of July, and refutes the notion that Oklahoma is clearly in the lead. Another highly recruited Utahn, four-star edge rusher Krew Jones of Ridgeline High near Logan, committed to the Sooners last November.
Jones has told Oklahoma reporters that his No. 1 priority is to persuade Sparrow to play in Norman.
Sparrow has already made official visits to Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah — he spent last weekend at Utah after playing in the Weber State-sponsored seven-on-seven tournament in Layton on Friday — and is scheduled to visit BYU this weekend.
Then the “heavy thinking,” as Sparrow calls it, will really begin.
BYU and Utah are “100% still in it,” he said, also refuting some reports that he wants to take his services out of state. “My top four is 25-25-25-25 (percent) right now. … It is going to be a hard decision for sure.”
Sparrow said that throughout the recruiting process, schools “want me to do what I’m most passionate doing,” whether that is playing safety or receiver in college. He’s excelled at both positions at Davis, and “takes pride in and loves doing both” in high school, he said.
With a little more national cachet than Utah or BYU, Oregon and Oklahoma are only recruiting him to play safety. The in-state schools say he can play whatever position he wants, but are leaning toward starting him out at safety and seeing what happens.
“Those guys have let me know how much of a priority I am for them and that I am the No. 1 guy on their boards, and they have shown it,” he said. “Utah and BYU, they have shown me all kinds of love.”
The early and rapid rise of Bode Sparrow
Peery, the Davis coach since 2020, likes to tell the story of how Sparrow started for the Darts’ varsity team as a ninth grader, when he was still in junior high.
One day, the team was watching film together on Halloween, and the players started talking about what they were going to do that night after Sparrow had walked up the street to the high school.
“One kid leaned over to Bode and asked him if he was going trick-or-treating that night, and everybody laughed,” Peery said. “Then that same 14-year-old kid went out there on Friday night and just balled out. So the joke was on all the other guys.”
Through three seasons, Sparrow has more than 3,000 receiving yards, and 16 interceptions.
Peery said it was a “no-brainer” to play a ninth grader, because even back then, Sparrow’s performances in Little League football were known far and wide.
“He caught 10 touchdown passes as a freshman, and his playmaking ability was through the roof,” Peery said. “So nothing was forced. We all knew that this guy was a dude, and we put him out there and he lived up to it.”
Sparrow was elected a team captain as a junior, and excels because he’s not only a high-caliber player, but a high-caliber leader.
“He elevates everyone around him,” Peery said. “Even with all the eyes upon him, he’s handled it and balanced it so well. … Never once have I seen an arrogant attitude, or the (notion) that this is his team. Nothing like that, ever.”
Learning to fly like a Sparrow
Bode’s father, Ty, was a member of Weber High’s 1999 4A state football championship team, the last time the Warriors won a state title on the gridiron. His uncle, Nic, was also an outstanding athlete at the Pleasant View school and played basketball at Weber State.
So the Sparrows know a little bit about athleticism. Ty Sparrow began to realize that Bode was above average in that department when he was 12 or 13, then it really set in when Bode was named a Freshman All-American in 2023.
Not long after that, the offer came in from BYU, and dozens more followed, including one from the head coach at Florida. Inquiries on Bode’s Twitter account poured in from all over the country.
“That’s when I was like, ‘Wow, there’s something special going on here,’” Ty said.
More amazement followed, such as the time Miami’s Cristobal took their family to get ice cream in South Beach.
Asked to describe something about him that has been underreported, Bode mentioned the example he hopes he is setting for his siblings.
“I think I do have the physical attributes to be successful — speed, size, athleticism,” he said. “But I hope the thing that separates me is everything above the ears, the intangibles. I think those things are going to get me to where I want to be. Things like getting good grades, being a leader, being a good example. Those are important to me.”
Ty is most proud of the fact that Bode has become a good example and role model for his three younger brothers.
“He truly is a good kid. He’s respectful. I love how he’s nice to everybody,” Ty said. “He’s got a lot of eyes on him, and he’s done as good of a job with that as anybody in his position possibly could.”
More important decisions to come
Bode is also an outstanding basketball player, and has played on the Davis High team as well as the Utah Prospects on the Nike EYBL circuit. Whether he plays on the high school team this winter will depend on another big decision he has to make, after he chooses his college team.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he’s trying to decide whether or not to serve a two-year mission. He said last week that he’s “probably” not going to go, but hasn’t made a final decision.
“I think right now he’s leaning toward not going,” Ty Sparrow said.
Bode said that if his plans change, it won’t be a deal-breaker for any of the schools that have been in his top 10, a far cry from when his dad came out of high school and told recruiters he was going on a mission, only to see them lose interest.
“At the first, the coaches were all like, ‘Hey, you are from Utah, are you Mormon and are you doing the mission thing?’” Bode said. “When the recruiting started, I wondered how these (non-Utah) schools were going to handle it. To be honest, kudos to them. They’ve been totally in support, totally good with whatever I want to do. They’ve been great.”
Another big decision is whether he should graduate early so he can enroll in January and participate in 2027 spring practices, as many of the top prospects in the country do now. If he does that, he won’t be able to play his final season of high school basketball.
“I have played basketball my whole life, and I love it,” he said. “I’m leaning towards (graduating early), but I’m a big basketball player, and I love my team. We will see, I guess.”
Bottom line on everything, the young man said, is he wants to make the decisions that will help him realize his ultimate dream.
“My main goal, my main thing, is to make it to the NFL,” he said.
