I guess when you’re around football as long as Alonzo Highsmith has, you wind up being associated with an awful lot of big names. That’s one thing that really struck me during this week’s episode of the Scouting the League podcast, which features the Senior Personnel Executive of the Patriots.

This week’s show was a lot of fun not just because I got to talk football with one of the top scouting minds in the game for an hour, but for all the interesting facets of Zo’s life that I learned during the pre-interview research phase as well as during the podcast itself. Here are a few things that I found especially interesting.

• Alonzo was the No. 1 prospect in his class at his high school position — linebacker. Not fullback, where he was eventually a first-round pick by the Houston Oilers in the 1987 draft. He said he cried when head coach Howard Schnellenberger asked him to switch positions, but a desire to help the team drove him to make the change.
• None other than Florida linebacker Wilber Marshall, who went on to stardom with the Bears, basically knocked Zo out of the 1983 season. He barely got healthy in time to return late in the season and even score a touchdown in the Orange Bowl win over Nebraska.
• Zo was basically drafted by the Oilers to be the successor to Earl Campbell, who had been traded prior to the 1985 season.
• His head coach in Houston was Jerry Glanville, which is funny because, ideally, Zo would have given Houston a power rushing attack. When I think of Glanville, I think of the guy who brought the Run and Shoot offense to the NFL as head coach of the Falcons.
• After his playing career, during his four years as a heavyweight boxer, Zo actually signed to fight George Foreman. However, the fight was cancelled because promoters didn’t want to risk Foreman losing before he could fight Larry Holmes, who was scheduled to be his next opponent after Zo.
• Zo and his son, AJ, actually room together in Foxboro. Presumably, that will change soon, as AJ, the Patriots’ pro director, is getting married next month.
• Until we talked, I never thought about how so many super-talented people who came out of Green Bay’s front office have almost no ego. It starts with Executive VP of Player Personnel Eliot Wolf; I could give you a half-dozen examples of Eliot going out of his way to make me, a nobody who has never worked in the league, feel important. However, it’s also true of Seahawks GM John Schneider and Dolphins GM Jon-Eric Sullivan in addition to Zo. Each of them have every reason to think they are hot stuff, but they are all just regular guys.
• Maybe one reason Zo has had so much success helping draft QBs (Aaron Rodgers, Baker Mayfield and Drake Maye have all been selected on his watch) is because of the QBs he’s played with. His QBs at Miami (Fla.) were Bernie Kosar and Vinny Testaverde. His QB in Houston? Warren Moon. In Dallas? Troy Aikman. Even Steve Deberg, who shared the QB position with Testaverde during Alonzo’s time with the Bucs, was not half-bad. Wow.

So there you go. Eight fun facts about Alonzo Highsmith that are part of this week’s podcast and I haven’t spoiled one bit of Zo’s thoughts and philosphy on scouting and player evaluation, which he discusses at length. If you haven’t listen in yet, do yourself a favor and check it out.