Christian Holloway will join the Mustangs with four years of eligibility remaining (photo by SMU athletics).

More than two years after signing a national letter-of-intent to play football at SMU, Christian Holloway will practice with his teammates when they convene in March for spring workouts … but it won’t be at defensive end.

Holloway visited with SMU head coach June Jones in December and was told he will begin practicing with the offensive line as a tackle this spring.

“It was an interesting conversation,” Holloway said of his meeting with Jones. “At first, I wasn’t too sure, because I’ve only played a couple of years of football. But it was a good conversation. It really left a lot of doors open, as to what I’ll play — if tackle doesn’t work, he said I could play tight end or go back to defensive end. A lot depends on how the spring goes … but I plan to make this work.

“(Jones) talked about a guy (Wayne Hunter) who played for him at Hawaii after transferring there (from Cal-Berkeley). He was originally a defensive end, but (Jones) moved him to offensive tackle and now he has been in the NFL for a long time (Hunter has played nine seasons in the NFL, last year as an offensive tackle with the St. Louis Rams). Coach Jones said I could be like him. I’ve got to get bigger and stronger, and I have a lot to learn, of course, but he said there are some similarities.”

The effort to get bigger already is underway. Holloway, who still has a full four years of eligibility, said he now weighs 285 pounds, an increase of about 45 pounds since his arrival on the Hilltop in 2011. Putting on weight, he said, is fairly easy.

“I want to get to around 295 for the season,” he said. “When I first started (gaining weight), it was easy. I eat differently than I did. I eat a lot of different proteins, but I eat pretty healthy. For a while, I was eating a lot and putting on about 10 pounds a week. Now, we’re running so much that’s it has kind of evened out, and I’ll even lose a little every now and then, but I have to run to get back in shape.”

Coaches aren’t allowed to work with players now, so Holloway has been starting the learning process by studying with starting left tackle Ben Gottschalk, who has begun sharing some of the basics of playing on the offensive line.

“Ben has been great,” Holloway said. “He’s a real down-to-earth guy. We’re both from California, and know a lot of the same people, and I guess we’re comfortable with each other. We’ve been coming out on Saturday mornings and working on things — he’s a good teacher.

“The thing I’m having trouble with is the stance. We play in a two-point stance, but we’re not really standing up. You really almost sit down in the stance. Ben can do that all day — I guess all of them (the returning offensive linemen) can. I do it for a minute or two, and my legs aren’t used to it. I have put on a lot of weight, and my legs have to get a lot stronger to hold that weight and to be able to move like I want to. I get in that stance, and I want to get up and move quickly to block, and he has to stop me. He said I need to take baby steps.”

Christian Holloway is moving to the offensive line after starting his football career in high school at defensive end (photo by Bishop Montgomery HS).

Because rules prohibit workouts with coaches, Holloway has had little interaction with his new teacher: offensive line coach Bob Palcic.

“I don’t know him real well yet, but I can tell he’s different from (defensive line) Coach (Bert) Hill,” Holloway said. “(The other linemen) said he definitely knows his stuff — they say he’s a great teacher.”

In Holloway, Palcic is receiving a player with ample physical gifts and potential … and very little experience. He played just two years of high school football at Bishop Montgomery in Torrance, Calif., and the NCAA delayed his eligibility, meaning he could not play or practice with the Mustangs until this semester.

“I had the grades,” Holloway said. “I had the grades, but in some cases, the NCAA just wants to be reassured about everything, I guess.”

Awaiting his chance, Holloway said, was trying, and earned him some good-natured ribbing from his teammates.

“They gave me a lot of heat,” he said. “They kept saying, ‘you’ve got it easy.’ I couldn’t practice, but I was working out in the weight room, but it was hard not practicing every day. It definitely motivated me to get in the weight room, to get bigger, faster, stronger.

“Now I have this chance to play, this chance to play offense. I never even thought I would be able to play football in college. I thought I might be able to play basketball, but not football. Now I’m moving to offense, and Coach Jones says if I get my stance and technique down, and get stronger and work hard, I have a chance to be an elite tackle.”

When a player moves successfully from defense to offense, coaches often cite the player’s ability to bring “a defensive mentality to the offensive side of the ball,” which is exactly what Holloway expects to do.

“On defense, your job is to find the guy with the ball and attack, go get him” he said. “Now my job is to protect (quarterback) Garrett (Gilbert), but it’s kind of the same, because he’s my teammate, my family. Our job, as offensive linemen, is to make sure nobody touches him.

“If you go after him, we go after you. Offensive linemen always did things we (defensive linemen) hate. Now I get to use what I hated about offensive linemen to protect our quarterback.”