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GREENSBORO — They took the plunge one by one, their speeches humble yet defiant, their futures separate yet together.

Four of the most embattled high school football players in recent Guilford County history, whose paths had grown so rocky and winding the last few years they had long abandoned their childhood hopes of playing together beyond high school, somehow wound up there Wednesday when all four signed binding national letters of intent with the University of California at Berkeley.

It was a huge and unexpected cross-country package for the Golden Bears, and a rare flow of talent with Guilford County ties to any one school, much less one on the West Coast:

* Northern Guilford wide receiver Keenan Allen, the News & Record Player of the Year, who bailed on a verbal commitment to Alabama.

* His half-brother, Zach Maynard, a former Grimsley star who will transfer from Buffalo.

* Linebacker Chris McCain, who played at Page and Northern and had committed to Oregon.

* And former Page defensive end Gabe King, who moved to Oregon for his senior season after the N.C. High School Athletic Association deemed him ineligible.

"We talked about playing together, fumbled with the idea," King said. "But this is a real surprise. So many people, me included, didn't think we would make it here. We made it."

Allen, rated the fifth best player in his class by Rivals.com, committed to soon-to-be national champion Alabama in November. He said that if Turner Gill was still coaching at Buffalo, he would have signed with the Crimson Tide on Wednesday.

But when Gill left to coach at Kansas last month, dominos fell quickly toward the West Coast. Maynard, who threw for 18 touchdowns and 15 interceptions as Buffalo's starting quarterback last season, said he got off on the wrong foot with the new coaching staff and decided to transfer.

The possibility of reuniting ­with Allen, to whom he had thrown 12 of his 20 touchdown passes during his senior season at Grimsley, became their first priority. Alabama would not accommodate, so they visited Clemson and Cal the last two weekends and considered Penn State before settling on Cal on Sunday.

"I'm grateful that the Lord gave me a second chance to play at a higher level and a bigger stage," said Maynard, who will be required to sit out the fall and will be a junior in eligibility in the 2011 season.

"I never thought I'd get a chance to play with (Allen) ever again. It's like it was meant to be."

Meanwhile, McCain re-evaluated a non-binding pledge he made a few months ago, poring over Oregon's depth chart and deciding it would be harder to break through than he once thought.

King, who had long favored Cal, was denied his senior season in North Carolina after the NCHSAA ruled he supplied a false address to Page in 2008, a mishap King has claimed Page officials encouraged. He attended Northern briefly before moving to Eugene, Ore., to finish his high school career. He and McCain settled on Cal over the weekend, adding Rivals' fifth-ranked defensive end and 13th-ranked linebacker, respectively, to the class.

"They're gym rats. They just love football, love to be around the guys," Cal head coach Jeff Tedford said of the four Wednesday. "As for how they're going to fit in here, I'm sure they're going to have a comfort zone with (each other) because they've grown up with them, but ... they've all kind of been away, so they know how to interact with other people."

A fifth player in the saga, defensive back James Scales, upheld his verbal commitment to Oregon at the same ceremony Wednesday. Scales, who starred for three seasons at Grimsley, transferred to Northern last year but was ruled ineligible before he ever played a snap. He started this year at Central Carolina Sports Academy with McCain.

"It was a real down point in my life, and it took a while to get over it," Scales said. "I crossed a big milestone today. I finally passed that finish line."

Allen, Scales and King are eligible academically, said Otis Yelverton, the players' mentor since childhood. He added that McCain would attempt to raise his standardized test score to qualify.

Scales, Allen, McCain and King visited Cal and Oregon among others on a 24,000-mile recruiting journey last summer with Yelverton, who is Oak Ridge Military's athletics director and is a former assistant football coach at Northern, Page and Grimsley.

"Everybody has tried to stop us," said Allen, whom Tedford said would be used as a defensive back in nickel situations. "There have been a lot of haters, people talking junk saying that we don't need to play together. We just have to push through."

It culminated in a surreal scene Wednesday, as King's plane from Oregon was delayed just long enough that by the time he got to the ceremony, Allen was playing piano to a half-empty room while a television over his shoulder showed an ESPN analyst breaking down Alabama's recruits.

In a different world, Allen would have been on that screen. In this one, he ceded the piano to King, the guy who taught him to play and who now crooned a soulful hymn about being born into sin so that he may live again.

Contact Tom Keller at 373-7034 or tom.keller@news-record.com