COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Michael Scherer always had the size and athleticism needed to play linebacker in college football's best conference.
Those natural assets earned him plenty of attention from some of the best programs in Division I before he committed to Gary Pinkel and Missouri prior to his senior year at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in 2011. To become the SEC's leader with 50 tackles through the first five weeks of his sophomore season with the Tigers, he needed something extra.
Scherer's unstoppable drive to be the best led him to the film room, where he found out enough study could slow the game down and give him more time to react to opposing offenses. If Mizzou's middle linebacker sometimes looks like he knows where the ball is going before it gets snapped, it's probably because he does.
"It's just one of those things where you see that it works when you use it in fall camp, spring ball, practicing against our own offense," Scherer says. "You see how it works and you find little tendencies our offensive linemen have, and quarterbacks, and that's something you can pick up on the field."
He credits his teammates for the habit, but his first experience with film study actually came long before he got to Mizzou. Michael's father, Joe Scherer, coached his oldest son, Joey, throughout middle school and says Michael never tired of joining him to watch the game tapes, even though he was five years younger than his brother.
Even today, when the Scherer family watches football games together, their experience isn't the same as it is for most football fans. Joe and Michael both say they'd rather watch the linemen or the linebackers than the ball, and the rewind button always gets plenty of use.
"I don't ever watch a football game relaxing," Michael says. "Even pro games, it's just like watching film to me."
It takes a special kind of player to have that kind of work ethic and discipline, and Joe Scherer says his son has always been a fast learner. Part of his great understanding for the game also comes from Joe's insistence to always find the best coaches for his sons, even if that didn't necessarily mean the best team.
Those traits translated to the classroom as well, where Scherer did well enough to earn offers to play football at Stanford and Notre Dame. Joe says early in the recruiting process those were his top two choices for Michael, whose older brothers have graduated from Penn and Stanford.
"I wanted him to have more than just a sore knee when it was all done," says Joe, who notes the only two things on permanent display on the Scherers' crowded basement wall are Michael's plaques for making the SEC's Academic Honor Roll. "I wanted him to have a good education."
But Pinkel and the coaching staff made a strong enough pitch to get Michael and his dad's full attention. After they spent a full day at Mizzou's business school, they were convinced.
It didn't take long for Pinkel to realize he had something special beyond Scherer's above-average strength and speed. Junior linebacker Kentrell Brothers says Scherer could have probably played a lot more as a freshman, and Pinkel praises his advanced maturity.
"I think that really kind of sets him apart a little bit," Pinkel says. "But I think he's strong and he's very bright. He's a tough competitor."
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That aspect of his game comes from growing up in a household with four boys, all of whom wrestled and played football. Scherer's parents encouraged them to do as much as possible, and he also played basketball, baseball and soccer in high school.
Michael always had the advantage of size over most of his peers, and he even earned the nickname "Big Grocery" from a youth coach for his weight and voracious appetite. But even playing two years up to be with his brother Daniel didn't earn him any special treatment at home, where the brothers wrestled constantly and fought for bragging rights in just about everything.
"I think every piece of furniture in our house has been broken at one time or another," Joe says. "We kind of had a rule that if you wanted a couch and someone else was on the couch, then you had to get them off the couch, basically."
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The family developed its own weightlifting gym in the basement, which Michael has used since second grade and still trains in on the rare occasions when he goes home. When the boys started getting serious about football, Joe would wake them up at 5:30 a.m. to work out.
But Joe says he knew Michael would be different from the other Scherer boys after he signed to play at Mizzou and stopped waking up with them in the mornings. Instead, he got up even earlier to go outside and do speed work.
Scherer has always been a natural leader, and he's noticed the other players looking up to him and trusting him more with his success so far this season. The move to middle linebacker in the spring heightened his responsibilities to communicate on the field before the snap, yet another skill he had to pick up quickly.
"We're getting more complex game plans now, so if a team motions a certain way we might have to change the play and that's on me," Scherer says. "If everybody on the field doesn't get it, that's my fault. I'm getting a minus."
He'll never shy away from blame, and he was the first one out of the locker room to talk to the media after making a career-high 13 tackles in the loss to Indiana, but Scherer is a little more hesitant when it comes to taking credit. Leading the team in tackles was something he never imagined before this season, and he's quick to point out the contributions of Brothers and the Tigers' vaunted defensive line.
His early success merely serves as more motivation. Like most of his teammates, Scherer was watching college football during Mizzou's bye week last Saturday -- that is, until he found out what happened in Tennessee's 11 a.m. game against Florida.
"Once I realized that (Tennessee's) A.J. Johnson had more than five tackles and passed me up, I came up (to the training facility) and started working out," Scherer says. "I figured I had to get a little better."
Mizzou's front seven will face its biggest challenge of the season this weekend in Georgia's high-powered rushing attack, led by junior Todd Gurley. Scherer says the SEC's leading rusher with 155 yards per game can do just about anything, whether it's running around, through or even over opponents.
Coaches moved 6-foot, 200-pound freshman safety Tavon Ross to scout team running back over the weekend to simulate Gurley's athleticism, and the Tigers got to practice live tackling for the first time since the season began. Scherer says all of that should help Missouri as it tries to stop the 6-1, 226-pound force of nature.
"It's a huge deal," he says. "It makes you practice harder. It makes you study the film harder, everything, because you know you've got to prepare for that caliber of a player."
What Scherer didn't -- and never would -- say was Georgia's offensive line and quarterbacks should be doing the same things to prepare for the new anchor of Missouri's defense.
You can follow Luke Thompson on Twitter at @FS_LukeT or email him at lukegthompson87@gmail.com.
