Scarborough’s Jayden Flaker, coming off a standout sophomore season as a linebacker at North Carolina Central University, plans to transfer to the University of Memphis for his junior season.
Flaker, a football standout and state champion hurdler at Scarborough High before graduating in 2022, made the announcement via an Instagram post Wednesday.
He told the Portland Press Herald he entered the NCAA transfer portal in hopes of fulfilling his childhood dream of playing college football at the Football Bowl Subdivision level, and he believes it will help him get more attention from NFL scouts.
North Carolina Central plays in the Football Championship Subdivision. Memphis, a member of the American Athletic Conference, is 9-3 this season and will play Iowa State in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl on Dec. 29.
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As a freshman at North Carolina Central in 2022, the 6-foot-4, 225-pound Flaker was a special teams standout who saw increasing time on defense. Flaker finished with 12 tackles (10 solo) and two blocked punts for a team that won the Celebration Bowl, the national championship game for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
This season, Flaker was a starting linebacker. He had 54 solo tackles, 31 assists, 10 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks. He was named a first-team All-Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference linebacker, and on Wednesday was named to the HBCU All-America first team. NCCU went 9-3, losing a first-round FCS playoff game to Richmond, 49-27. Flaker made a team-high 11 tackles in that game.
“Transferring was really hard to leave all my teammates and coaches,” Flaker said in a text to the Press Herald. He plans to enroll at Memphis in January.
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