With pro future secure, Windsor’s Bulcke’s back on Farm

There’s only one player on the Stanford football team who is a certain first-round draft choice.

No, it’s not Andrew Luck, who may or may not enter the NFL draft after the season. Several other Cardinal players hope to be drafted, but only one is a surefire first-rounder.

It’s defensive lineman Brian Bulcke, who has started only nine games in four years on the Farm. He is already a first-round pick, having been taken sixth overall in the Canadian Football League draft by the Edmonton Eskimos.

Only Canadians are taken in the CFL draft – Bulcke is from Windsor, Ontario – while Americans enter the league as free agents. To be eligible for the draft, players must have attended college or some sort of post-secondary school for four years. Teams must carry at least 20 Canadians on their 42-man active rosters.

Bulcke might well have been the top pick in that draft except for a dislocated wrist that sidelined him after the fourth game last year. He received a medical redshirt for one more year at Stanford and will start at one defensive end spot in new coordinator Vic Fangio’s 3-4 alignment.

He doesn’t see his role and that of fellow linemen Sione Fua and Matt Masifilo (who also missed much of 2009 with an injury) as simply assisting the linebackers to make tackles.

“We’re really encouraged to make plays,” he said. “As a defensive line, we’ve really come along.”

Being one of the top picks in the CFL draft May 2 was “a nice compliment,” although he said another former Stanford player, safety O.J. Atogwe, “beat me by one round.” Atogwe, also from Windsor, was the fifth pick in the 2004 CFL draft. But he signed with the Rams, who took him in the third round of the 2005 NFL draft and is entering his six season with them.

Bulcke would like to play in the NFL too, but he’ll have the Eskimos as a nice alternative. In keeping with his name, pronounced “bulky,” he has filled out to 6-foot-4 and 285 pounds since his freshman year when, as a linebacker, he made 14 tackles against Navy.

The Eskimos liked him so much that they traded two picks to Winnipeg to get in position to draft him. “We know we have to wait a year,” general manager Danny Maciocia told reporters on draft day, “but he’s worth the wait because he can give you eight to 10 good years. … When he comes here, he will be an impact player.”

Maybe so, but Maciocia won’t be around to see it. He was fired a month ago when the Eskimos got off to a rocky start.

Because he grew up in Canada, Bulcke said, “At a young age I had to choose between hockey and football. Very fortunately, I chose football. My father was a football player, so I’m a football player.”

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