“It’s always been a dream of his to play both sports,” said Storz’s father, Rich. “But he’s not doing this to just go and spend some spare time out there. He wants to make an impact. He wants to be a player.”

As Nick Storz was meeting with his high school baseball coach on Dec. 8, 2016, a prominent college football coach walked into the office as part of a recruiting visit for one of Storz’s high school football teammates.

Then, after sitting out his junior year of football to focus on baseball, Storz returned to football as a senior in 2016 as part of a team that also included Tennessee Titans first-round pick Isaiah Wilson.

“I think he’s a phenomenal football player, a phenomenal tight end,” Orgeron said during an interview with ESPN 104.5 FM in Baton Rouge. “He’s going to help us.”

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Nick Storz (left) poses with two of his high school football teammates in 2016, including future NFL first-round draft pick Isaiah Wilson (right).

While most in the sports world were only familiar with Storz as a baseball prospect at that point, Harbaugh knew about Storz because of his work in a different sport. Football.

Storz caught at least a few touchdowns, made some acrobatic catches on jump balls and delivered some decleater shots as a blocker. It’s all featured in a highlight video that LSU head coach Ed Orgeron watched a few weeks ago when he first learned of Storz’s interest in joining the football team, a collection of clips that led to Orgeron telling Storz during their initial meeting that he thinks Storz has “serious potential as a football player.”

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“Hey, you might as well come to Michigan and you can do both,” Harbaugh told him. “I can get the baseball coach and admissions on the phone right now. Let’s make it happen.”

“As a parent, you can hear the difference in your son’s voice and I just know Nick’s in a great spot right now,” Rich Storz said. “It’s the happiest I’ve heard him sound in a while. It’s been a hard three years with the injuries in baseball and then starting to make a comeback and COVID hitting. But he’s just ecstatic right now.”

While Storz ended up being a top-100 recruit in baseball, it was actually in football that the New York native earned his first overall scholarship offer — an offer from Miami that came after his sophomore season at Poly Prep in Brooklyn.

Eventually, after getting permission to pursue football from baseball coach Paul Mainieri, Storz was able to set up that meeting with Orgeron through head football athletic trainer Jack Marucci and has now spent the last few weeks working out with the team.

His work in the weight room is also making an impression, so much so that Orgeron shared a compliment following Storz’s first week of workouts: “We’re all really impressed.”

Shoulder and lat issues limited him to just 20 innings of work as a high school senior in 2017 and then to just two total outings during his first two years at LSU. This season — during which Storz had gotten off to a great start with a 1.04 ERA through his first six appearances — was then cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s similar to his senior year of high school,” said Storz’s high school baseball coach, Matt Roventini. “Him not playing his junior year was because of baseball and trying to make sure he got his name out there, but his senior year, he just loved football and loved his teammates so much that he couldn’t walk away from it. And I think that plays into a lot of it now. He loves football and I think he missed it.”