On Thursday night, Miami quarterback Cam Ward became the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, but Ward's journey to the NFL didn't begin in Miami.
And it didn't begin at Washington State either, the place where Ward spent two seasons prior to his time at Miami.
Instead, Ward's college journey began at a little school called Incarnate Word.
What even is Incarnate Word?
Close your eyes. Listen to the words: Incarnate Word. What do you visualize?
Unless you're a follower of FCS-level football or from the area where the school is, the answer is probably ... nothing?
No offense meant to Incarnate Word, but despite being founded in 1881 and being located in the state of Texas, I was well into my 20s when I first heard of the school, running across it when I was covering women's college basketball across the state.
The school, a Catholic university, sits in San Antonio, nestled right at the border of San Antonio and Alamo Heights. Part of why it didn't have a lot of hype around it before Ward was that football is a very new part of the school, added in 2009. The team spent four seasons in Division II before moving up to the FCS level.
How did Cam Ward arrive at UIW in the first place?
How did a future No. 1 pick wind up at Incarnate Word? Well, part of it was that Ward was a zero-star recruit in high school. The star quarterback began his journey at Columbia High School in West Columbia, Texas, where he was a multi-sport star for the Roughnecks. (As a CHS alum, let me just quickly add our school chant here: Go Necks Go!)
At CHS, Ward ran the Wing-T offense, an old-school system that isn't really built to generate big passing numbers. Ward learned plenty about quarterbacking in the system, but his low numbers didn't attract much college attention. Not until Ward was spotted at a recruiting camp by Eric Morris, the head coach at UIW. He ended up starting immediately at Incarnate Word, taking the job to start the abbreviated 2021 spring season and winning the Jerry Rice Award, given to the best freshman in FCS.
From there, Ward's rise was meteoric, and it all started because Morris — who left UIW to take the offensive coordinator job at Washington State and brought Ward with him — took a chance on a player who'd been overlooked by everyone else.
Cam Ward put UIW on the college football map
Ward helped turn UIW into one of the best programs at the FCS level, something that was maintained even after he left. In 2022, G.J. Kinne took over as the head coach once Morris left, leading a team quarterbacked by Lindsay Scott Jr. to a 12-2 record.
Kinne then took the Texas State head coaching job. His replacement, Clint Killough, is 20-5 through two seasons at the school. After going 20-46 in the six years before Morris took over as head coach, UIW is now one of the top FCS schools.
And on Thursday night, the Cardinals officially claimed their position as the starting spot of a No. 1 overall pick.