FRA's Luke Masterson grew up in Carolina blue thanks to sports nut dad. UNC football was easy choice
Brian Masterson knew he'd have to set his own pride aside and accept that his son, Luke, could be wearing Duke colors if it came down to it.
Luke Masterson, a Franklin Road Academy 6-foot-6, 275-pound offensive tackle had a number of college recruiters interested, including Mack Brown and North Carolina. But he was also intrigued by the idea of playing at Duke, 29 miles away from Chapel Hill, where Brian spent graduate school in the late 1990s falling in love with Carolina blue.
"I grew up a UNC fan, but I really tried to keep an open mind about my recruitment so I wanted to visit Duke," Luke said. "I was kind of surprised that my dad was OK with it. He told me, 'If you go to Duke, I might have to throw on the royal blue'."
To Brian's relief, it never came to that. The pull of Carolina was too strong. Luke grew up listening to too many stories of his dad's excursions to the Dean Dome, traveling with his dad to Chapel Hill to watch the football team play and finding his own love for a program Brian talked so glowingly about.
Luke committed to the Tar Heels in April, ending any thoughts in Brian's mind of his son playing Saturdays in Durham.
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"We did have that conversation," Brian said. "But I told him this is not my journey. This is your journey. If you feel that Duke is the right place for you, then I'm on board. If you play at Duke, I'll be rooting for Duke when they play UNC. But I wouldn't root for them in basketball."
Masterson is ranked as the state's 30th prospect in the class of 2024, according to 247Sports Composite. He's No. 11 on The Tennessean's 2022 Dandy Dozen, a collection of the top college football prospects in the Nashville area as selected by the newspaper.
Masterson's football recruitment rockets up
Coming off a 10-2 season and a Division II-AA state quarterfinal loss to Chattanooga Christian last fall, Masterson watched a line of college football coaches and recruiters come through the doors at FRA.
Seven schools were at the Panthers' facility in late January and Luke picked up five offers in one day, from West Virginia, Memphis, UNC, Austin Peay and Liberty. He stacked up 16 offers from schools like Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Duke and Georgia Tech.
"I've never seen this before," FRA coach Justin Giesinger said in January. "It really goes to show you the kind of athletes we have here at FRA and the kind of football that's played in Division II."
North Carolina is home for Masterson family
But North Carolina was familiar to Luke. Even before his visit to the university on Jan. 19, he could point out landmarks on campus.
"The passion for North Carolina, the pull of it was just too strong," Luke said. "Coach (Mack) Brown was great. The players were great and it holds a very special place for my family. I wouldn't have it any other way."
Brian earned a law degree at UNC in the late 1990s after getting his undergraduate degree at Lipscomb University in 1995. After law school, Brian took classes and taught law at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Luke was born in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River, but Brian moved his family back to Nashville when Luke was a year old.
Brian played basketball for Don Meyer at Lipscomb from 1992-95 but wanted to pursue a graduate degree in law at a school that had a strong tradition in both basketball and football.
"There was really three reasons why it was UNC for me," Brian said. "It was wanting to be around big time college sports because I'm a sports nut. But also it was UNC had a top 25 law school and the tuition was really a bargain at the time."
Brian was at UNC from 1998-2001 and attended as many football and basketball games as he could, watching Carolina legends like Antwan Jamison, Vince Carter and Julius Peppers. By the time, Brian left North Carolina he was a die-hard Tar Heel fan.
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Even as Brian, his wife Jennifer, daughters, Blythe and Ella, and Luke moved back to Tennessee, North Carolina sports dominated the household. And whenever he could, the family would fly to Hawaii to watch Carolina play in the Maui Invitational.
"We have photos of Luke high-fiving Carolina players," said Brian, who gave his daughter the middle name Carolina after initially wanting that to be her first name. "Because of my experience at Carolina as a law student, that had a profound affect on Luke growing up as a Carolina fan."
Reach sports writer George Robinson at grobinson@gannett.com and on Twitter @Cville_Sports.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Luke Masterson: UNC football commit for 2024 grew up in Carolina blue
