Patrick Flowers, a five-star talent from Missouri, is the most promising prospect to come out of Joplin High in years. Nicknamed Speedy, his game carries shades of star NFL quarterback Lamar Jackson — blending quickness with stop-and-start ability and pinpoint accuracy — and he spurned national powers such as Clemson and Alabama to become the quarterback at Michigan State.

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Speedy works hard. He wants to win. He knows his potential, and he’s not afraid to tell you about it.

“Of course,” he said when asked during a livestream of his college commitment whether he would win the Heisman Trophy. “I’m Speedy Flowers.”

But there’s a catch: Speedy Flowers doesn’t exist.

Flowers is a video game character born in an East Lansing, Mich., apartment. Jad Safadi, a student at Michigan State, made the profile on his Xbox 360 while playing the beloved EA Sports “NCAA Football 14” game, which allows characters to start at random high schools and go through the recruiting process. The game hasn’t been made since 2013 and helped spur student-athletes’ movement to gain control over their name, image and likeness from the NCAA.

Without much to do during COVID-19 quarantine, Safadi created a Twitter account for Flowers, posting the profile’s “scholarship offers” for the world to see. Trying to sound like a real recruit, he incorporated emojis into the tweets, thanked God in every post and tagged the programs’ real-life coaches.

Strange as it may sound, Flowers is not alone. Creating parody accounts based on video game recruits became something of a phenomenon this spring. It’s started to intersect with the ever-evolving world of actual college football recruiting, humoring real recruits and even throwing off at least one FBS coach.

The Flowers account is at the center of it all.

“It was more something I thought would be fun to do because I was just really bored during this time,” said Safadi, a sophomore who is studying journalism and pre-law. “More just for entertainment for myself, and it kind of just took off.”

He has Northern Illinois coach Thomas Hammock to thank for that.

Shortly after Flowers’ Twitter persona was born, the account posted on April 15 that Speedy had received an offer from NIU. Later that evening, while on a call with some friends, Safadi received a Twitter message from Hammock, who thought Flowers was a real recruit trying to gain exposure.

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“I’m the only person that offers scholarships and I did not offer you,” the coach messaged. “We don’t play those games here.”

Safadi, egged on by his friends, had a back-and-forth exchange with Hammock via direct messages. The conversation ended with Flowers’ account posting screenshots of the messages and saying that he no longer had an offer to NIU.

After a discussion with @NIUCoachHammock I no longer have an offer at Northern Illinois university… this is incredibly sad for my and my family as I worked so hard to get to this point. I will come out of this stronger, as God always has a plan for me #AGTG 🙏🙏🙏🙏😭

— Patrick Flowers (@Speedy_Flowers1) April 16, 2020

“I can’t imagine being 20 years old, playing a video game and then posting, ‘Hey, this school offered me a scholarship,’” Hammock said in an interview with The Athletic. “That just never registered in my mind. It’s hard enough to keep track of all the people we’re recruiting. I wasn’t thinking ‘OK, this is some fake account.’”

When Safadi went to bed, his Flowers account had 65 followers. By the next night, he said he’d gained a few thousand more as the exchange with Hammock went viral, drawing more than 1,000 retweets. Tommy Brockermeyer (All Saints Episcopal/Fort Worth, Texas), the No. 4 recruit and top offensive tackle nationally in the 247Sports Composite for the Class of 2021, jokingly tweeted that he and Flowers were a package deal.

Hammock, meanwhile, had no idea the exchange would take off. He said he simply felt concerned because he takes pride in offering scholarships — he stresses that all of NIU’s offers are committable — and didn’t know the name Patrick Flowers. By the next day, though, he realized the account was for a video game character and tweeted “he got me,” with a pair of crying-laughing emojis.

Due to NCAA rules I’m not allowed to comment on specific recruits- even from the class of ‘14. I would like to state that all of our offers are committable & come personally from me. People pull offers every day, we’re not in that business. Honesty is a policy. Man he got me.😂🤣

— Thomas Hammock (@NIUCoachHammock) April 16, 2020

“I can joke on myself all the time,” Hammock said. “I have very thick skin, so once I realized this was becoming a story and people are retweeting and everything else, then I wanted to at least put it out there that, ‘Hey, you got me. That was a good one.’”

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Flowers isn’t the only video game character tweeting out offers and commitment videos. Safadi got the idea from other accounts he saw on Twitter, and plenty of others have popped up since his exchange with Hammock, including Luke Bradford, who posted a highlight video of himself winning the Sugar Bowl for Washington State.

“Their academics are somewhat in question,” Washington State coach Nick Rolovich said on Twitter when asked about the video game recruits, “but their highlight is unreal.”

The Twitter account Road Dogs helped popularize the trend by sharing users’ offers and commitments but has since asked users to stop linking parody accounts to their profile because their following “is creating mass confusion and anger among actual NCAA coaches.”

Jake Smith, a high school senior and co-operator of the Road Dogs account, is believed to be the first person to tweet out offers for his “NCAA Football 14” character. His player, Normand Woody, played at Washington State for a season but suffered an ACL tear in the video game and transferred to Florida, posting a commitment video complete with Tom Petty music.

“You know how this quarantine stuff is happening?” Smith said. “I was just really bored and I thought it would be a funny, cool idea to do this.”

Smith said Rolovich, Florida coach Dan Mullen and Penn State coach James Franklin all briefly followed his account. They all unfollowed him, though, presumably when they realized it was a parody account, not a real recruit.

The rise of parody video game recruits is not connected to the more sinister trend of fake college coaches on Twitter, who are messaging recruits asking for money via digital apps.

Of the parody player accounts, though, Flowers has become the most popular, accumulating around 8,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram. His commitment video — made by an East Lansing-based graphic designer — has more than 180,000 views on Twitter.

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As the account grew, Northern Illinois made amends, sending a graphic of Flowers in a Huskies jersey.

Big shoutout to @NIU_Football for the sick edit‼️‼️‼️ momma always told me if I work hard I’ll earn respect from all‼️‼️

— Patrick Flowers (@Speedy_Flowers1) April 16, 2020

“Join the Pack,” it read. “But only if Coach Hammock offers.”

That was far from the only Speedy Flowers graphic. After Brockermeyer — one of Texas’ top targets — tweeted about the video game character, the Longhorns staff sent a graphic to Brockermeyer and his twin, James, whom the school is also recruiting.

“It was really funny just because he’s not real and they’re acting like he’s real,” James said. “It was pretty hilarious when we first saw it.”

The twins each tweeted out the graphic. It was one of the reasons Flowers left Texas as one of his top five schools. Missouri — the home state school — Clemson, Michigan and Michigan State were the other finalists.

🤘

— Tommy Brockermeyer (@TBrockermeyer) April 16, 2020

Safadi, who plays tuba in the Michigan State marching band, said he was always going to have Flowers join the Spartans. But, wanting to fire up the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry, he kept the Wolverines around.

“I saw recently Michigan has lost out on a bunch of big recruits,” he said. “I kind of wanted them to lose out on another one.”

Class of 2021 Michigan State commits Derrick Harmon and Tyson Watson messaged Flowers on Twitter to welcome him to the team. Former Spartans tight end Matt Seybert even sent Flowers a message before his commitment, urging him to choose Michigan State.

With the recruiting stage behind him, Flowers’ college career has begun in the video game, and Safadi tweets out updates on his character. He had three passing touchdowns in his first college start, a win against Purdue, and Safadi plans to make Flowers an NFL profile when the time comes. If he uses “Madden NFL 20” on Xbox One, he’ll be able to stream games for people to watch.

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“I feel like I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands this summer to do it,” he said. “Hopefully he can play his pro career out if people stay interested in it.”

So far, people are. Hampton Fay, a real-life three-star quarterback recruit at the Brockermeyers’ high school, recently committed to Michigan State. When he did, James Brockermeyer made sure to text him about who he’ll have to go up against.

“It looks like,” Brockermeyer said, “he’s going to have to beat Speedy out.”

(Top graphic courtesy of @MichiganSEdits)