Jack Negen has had his fill of Emmanuel Karmo, and that’s a compliment. Negen, the Armstrong High School football coach, has had to scheme against Karmo, the standout Cooper linebacker, six times over the past three seasons.

The top high school player in Minnesota, Robbinsdale Cooper’s Emmanuel Karmo, signed with the Gophers Wednesday afternoon at Cooper High School. Karmo is considered a four-star recruit, and will play linebacker for the Gophers.

The Gophers nearly had the top-rated in-state recruit sign with the U in three straight classes, but Cooper defensive lineman Jaxon Howard went to Louisiana State for a year before transferring back to Minnesota. He played 118 snaps for the Gophers as a redshirt freshman this fall. .

Cooper linebacker Emmanuel Karmo verbally committed to the Gophers in the spring, but that didn’t make the weeks and months leading up to the early football signing day less suspenseful. Michigan, Nebraska and Wisconsin kept recruiting the four-star linebacker hard,