As the NFL season returns to us after the longest offseason in professional sports, let’s stop to give credit to the players in tonight’s opener not named Manning, Bush, Harrison, Brees, Wayne or Freeney.

Let’s hear it for Ross Tucker, an undrafted offensive lineman whose career opened and closed with the Washington Redskins, writes his story for Sports Illustrated. He feels lucky, but more than that - read it yourself.

It just occurred to me as I write this how fortunate I am to have a supportive wife who is happily married to an unemployed, overweight, and slightly balding 28-year-old man. I will definitely be able to get a job and lose some weight now that I am done playing, but there is not much I can do about the balding part.

Although all but a few of the cut players attended college, I’m sure more than half have no idea what they’re going to do now. Most of these young men are facing failure and rejection for the first time. Getting cut from a team or being anything less than the star has never even been a consideration for them until this point…I consider myself very fortunate in the sense that I have been preparing for this moment from the time my career started. When I first made the Redskins as an undrafted rookie in 2001, I realized that might be my only year, so I invested the money, continued driving my 1990 Jeep Cherokee, and began thinking about what I would want to do when football was over. I was keenly aware that football was just a temp job. I have a couple of business interests, such as www.gobigrecruiting.com, that will occupy my time, and I am more than excited about the possibility of writing or talking about football for a living. I figure if I can’t play anymore, that would be the next best thing.

But it is not the same as playing. Nothing else in life can replicate the feeling of running into another man in front of 90,000 people and hitting him as hard as you possibly can. My mom will probably hate reading this, but more than the paycheck or the camaraderie of the locker room, I will really miss the violence. It is just an amazing and pure primal feeling that you really don’t understand if you have never had the chance to do it.

It is hard to know when it will hit me the hardest that my time has come. It could be on Sundays when it is hard for me to watch the TV and see the guys I know playing. It is more likely that it will sink in when I sit in the stands of a random high school football game on a Friday night and my eyes fill up as they play the National Anthem…

Life goes on. And yes: I still love football.

Let’s hear it for the Ross Tuckers of football. Let’s hear it for the linemen who brutalize each other on every play with more energy than the overhyped and delicate wideouts and cornerbacks who yearn for the closeup and the highlight reel.

Let’s hear it for the undrafted and the irrelevant, for the men who never dreamed they’d make it this far, who give it all because they don’t have anything to lose - for seventh rounders and arena league castoffs, for Division I-AA players who beat out draft picks, and for grocery store clerks who hoist the Lombardi because they forgot they weren’t supposed to be any good.

Let’s hear if for the guys who don’t need big contracts, don’t need hot rides, don’t need their names on ESPN, don’t even need helmets - they just want the chance to play, to compete, to win, to have one small moment of victory.

Let’s hear it for the players who will never be on the cover of a video game, whose name will never be worn on jerseys across a stadium, who may not even be recognized when they’re seen in public.

Let’s hear it for the kids who’ll go to a stadium this weekend for the first time, who cheer as their team takes the field, and feel the whisper of that magical connection that comes with a hundred years of gridiron competition, who may not know or recognize Rice, Payton, Brown, Graham, Butkus, Nitschke, Lott, Greene, Huff, Thorpe, Unitas, Nagurski, Baugh, or Deacon Jones…but soon, they will.

Because the gridiron doesn’t care where you were drafted. It doesn’t care about your sponsorships or your forty time. It doesn’t care about your name, your faith, the color of your skin, the country of your birth. It doesn’t care if you are tired, or hurt, your body screaming against everything your mind is ordering it to do.

The gods of football care only about who wants it more. Who will see that moment as it comes, and seize it with all their might.

Game on.

I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.

-Vince Lombardi

(Originally posted by Ben on September 6, 2007)

Anyone who lived in Virginia in the ’90s heard about Michael Vick. It was impossible not to. He was another child of the Tidewater region, famous for producing some of the best athletes in the country, even to the point of rivaling California, Texas and Florida in producing football stars.

Vick never got the national coverage he deserved prior to going to Virginia Tech - back in those days, the Washington newspapers were more interested in covering Maryland sports than southern Virginia (heck, they still are) - but once he was in college, he took off like a rocket. My folks are both VaTech alums, and even though they weren’t huge college football fans, Vick’s arrival made the Hokies matter for us and for all Virginia sports fans. And his performance in a loss against Florida State made him matter to the whole nation.

It’s amazing to look back at some of the coverage of Vick prior to the 2001 NFL draft. Even then, the questions were lurking in the background: could he handle it?

In the first few seasons after Vick’s arrival, it looked like the San Diego Chargers had made a huge mistake passing on him to select LaDainian Tomlinson (he fell to number 5 - can you believe it?) and Drew Brees. He was the Human Highlight Reel. He did things that were just incredible, superhuman - I remember watching a game against the Carolina Panthers where, down to their last play and needing a touchdown, Vick somehow managed to hover an inch above the ground as he flew in to score. His amazing ability revitalized football in Atlanta, coming off 5-11 and 4-12 seasons - his jerseys were everywhere - and put him on the cover of Madden, even though the curse of that video game ultimately doomed his next season. And just last year, he broke a 34-year-old record for rushing yards by a quarterback, with over 1,000. It’s an incredible achievement, especially for a kid who just a few years ago was being wheeled around with a cast on his foot by owner Arthur Blank.

Vick wasn’t just a sideshow - he won, too. In 2002, when he was just a 22 year old kid, Vick did what no other starting quarterback had ever done - winning on the road at Lambeau Field in the playoffs, a performance that will probably go down as the biggest game of his professional career.

Now, all those physical gifts, all those amazing performances, are lost to us for the foreseeable future. Vick was foolish enough to commit a crime that had only recently become a federal offense. And in the absence of Commissioner Roger Goodell’s as yet unshared opinion on the matter, and the suspension likely to follow on Vick’s jail sentence, it’s hard to see how Vick ever sees the field again or plays a down in the NFL. On sports radio stations and in the opinion pages across the country, a lifetime ban is being discussed openly.

Let’s be clear about this: Michael Vick deserves to go to jail. He broke the law, and he will suffer a penalty. But there is no question in my mind that he deserves to play football again.

Gregg Easterbrook took what I think is a pretty brave stand on this point. While I don’t agree with him about the racial nature of this crime - I think that we would be just as likely to experience this sort of reaction and coverage if, say, Jeremy Shockey had committed the same crime, or if Tony Gonzalez was running a cock-fighting ring - I do agree that there’s a distinct lack of perspective on this. PETA and their lobbying forces have successfully convinced the sports media to turn dogfighting - a vile activity, to be sure, but one that’s engaged in all too frequently in the South - into the worst possible crime an athlete can engage in. And that’s just ridiculous.

Here’s the truth: the NFL has had more than its fair share of thugs, criminals, and drug pushers in its recent history. Easterbrook cites the obvious examples of two murderers - that you can still purchase an O.J. Simpson or a Rae Carruth jersey, and that the former is still in the NFL Hall of Fame. But there’s far more than that. There’s thief and attempted murderer Barret Robbins, there’s Lawrence Taylor and Lawrence Phillips, drug dealers like Jamal Lewis and Terrence Kiel and Bam Morris, there’s Brian Blades, Nate Newton and his pounds and pounds of pot…and of course, there’s former ESPN analyst and newest NFL Hall of Famer Michael Irvin, who’s long litany of drug related offenses reach a new level of ridiculousness each year.

But perhaps the best example of the double standard Vick is experiencing is one Leonard Little, defensive end and sack machine for the St. Louis Rams. With a pattern of DUI offenses, the intoxicated Little plowed through a red light into an intersection and killed a middle-aged wife and mother. Little got 90 nights in jail (work-release), and 1,000 hours of community service. When he was picked up in 2004, speeding again and drunk out of his mind, Little could’ve been prosecuted for a felony. Instead, he just got more probation. And a brand new multi-million dollar contract. ESPN’s Scouts Inc. predicts that Little will anchor an improved Rams defense this year.

Michael Vick did horrible things, yes. He is going to bear the punishment for his crime. But his crime should not end his career simply because of the political pressure of a powerful lobby or the hot lights of round the clock sports coverage. Vick is still a competitor, and he deserves the chance to compete and win a shot with another team in the future.

And let’s be honest about what this all means for this young man. Ending the prospect of a possibility to play football again will, in all likelihood, take Vick down the sad path toward despair and self-destruction. Commissioner Goodell’s choice on this matter - whether to treat Vick’s crime the way the media wants him to treat it, or to treat it for what it is - doesn’t just determine the future of an athlete, a commodity for his sport. It determines the future of a young man who has hoped for, worked for, and risked his body for one singular goal since he was just a kid, playing tag in the inner city streets, and dreamed of the gridiron and the bright lights of Monday night.

[ESPN's Dream Job is finally here - so I'm posting my experience in tryouts last year. Enjoy.] So it was a cold morning, dark, and I took a half day off work to go down to the ESPN Zone at 11th and E to stand in line for the ESPN Dream Job Contest. I didn’t think there would be a ton of people there – but when I showed up about an hour and a half before the thing was supposed to start, the line had already stretched down to the Borders at the end of the block. Twenty minutes later, it was around the block, so I was glad I came early.

The line moved very, very slowly. A woman and local reporters were going up and down the line interviewing people. An ESPN crew with a camera was going along asking people for their “catchphrases.” I was behind a group of guys from the University of Maryland who were funny when they were talking to each other, but froze once the camera came around. They had us fill out about three different forms about ourselves. Various sponsors handed out trinkets. They ran out of pencils and pens.

There was this one staffer who was just a total jerk to everybody, a short balding guy in a referee’s uniform who I later learned was one of the interviewers. But for whatever reason, he refused to answer any questions from folks in the line, and was taking people in who were cutting in line. I later learned that these were the people who had sent in tapes ahead of time, but he never explained that, and a lot of people were pissed at him for his apparent favoritism.

It took forever for me to get down to the front of the line. I finally went in just before noon with a group of about 10 people, including the Maryland kids, and one of the tape-senders, a short smart Indian guy. First they took us into the lower room at ESPN Zone, where there’s that basketball game from the late 1980s that’s permanently broken. We sat at long tables and had to take a sports knowledge quiz. Various ESPN lackeys told us that the quiz was timed, and very hard, and no one had gotten 100% all morning, so we should relax and do our best. I aced all the football questions, got some of the baseball and basketball questions, and crashed and burned on nearly all the hockey/Olympics questions. They didn’t tell us our total, but they told us how we ranked, and I came in second. The easiest question was: “What was Joe Namath’s number?” The hardest (for me) was: “The Calder Memorial Trophy is awarded annually to which NHL player?” Duh, Rookie of the Year (McErlain would kill me).

Then we went out and stood on the stairway for a while, until they took us into the ESPN Zone midlevel rooms with closed off sliding glass doors. Inside were several local radio DJs and sports figures – I didn’t know them all, but they included: JP from the Junkies, Mark from the 94.7 morning show, the big black dude who opens Wizards games, and a couple other people I didn’t recognize. Chamique Holdsclaw came in midway thru. We stood around a couple of tables put together, and the panelists stood on one side. A tall guy from ESPN was managing the whole thing – he was asking sharp, quick questions, moving things along, making notes as we talked. He would ask each panelist to give us a question, and then we’d debate it, like some massive uncontrolled PTI.

So this is a little weird, but: I was in the same group as Washington Times writer Patrick Hruby, who wrote about the whole thing later. You can find his article here.

I didn’t even realize he was a reporter during the thing, except that he didn’t come in with the rest of us. But it was definitely him, because when they asked us to (right off the bat) do a call of a favorite sports moment, he did that stupid thing about Canseco that he wrote about (and I seriously doubt anyone else did that). I did the only thing I could think of: the old Russ Hodges “The Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant!” In retrospect, I would’ve done the Miracle on Ice call, but I just wasn’t thinking about it ahead of time…

When Hruby writes about “the loud people,” I’m sure he’s probably including me – but I hadn’t gone in intending to be loud, it was just that whenever they asked a question, there would be dead silence for a couple of seconds. I felt like jumping in, and I think I talked on all but two questions (the ones about boxing and NASCAR), and I have a pretty deep voice, so it probably sounded louder than it was. JP asked a football question, about the best team in the NFL (I said the Colts). Someone else asked a baseball question. When Holdsclaw came in, the ESPN dude asked the inevitable “how can the WNBA be successful” question, and I (foolishly) answered it the best I could. But I think I scored some points with a few comments by making a couple people laugh and trying to be animated and quick on my feet.

In all, I would say that the Indian dude and I talked the most of anyone in the room. Some people just clammed up – I probably heard two words out of the UMD guys after they struggled through their calls. And one guy just kept making mistakes, getting shot down.

After about 10-15 minutes, the folks walked away from the table and left us, then the tall ESPN guy (I guess that was David Jacoby) came back and said thanks, they’d be in touch. We all filed out, but then another bearded guy grabbed me and the Indian dude and said that we were getting callbacks, so he needed us to fill out some paperwork and schedule a time to come back later that night. Apparently the other people got to do more things (like interview LaVar Arrington, Michael Wilbon, etc.) during their approval period, but I didn’t.

The paperwork took forever. It was literally 30 pages long. Favorite sports moments, what do you like about sportscenter, what do you hate about sportscenter, favorite anchor, craziest thing you’ve done in the name of sports, etc. etc. etc. I tried to get through it as fast as I could.

I had a callback for later that night, but when I showed up, the place was clearly working on a delay. Everyone was behind. I ended up standing around for an hour, commiserating with the Indian guy at the bar. Redskins WR Darnerian McCants was there, with not one but two lovely lady fans, eating a massive ice cream sundae.

Eventually I got called in to the office again, and they sat me down with this girl with glasses. Another one of the producers was there, and we talked a little bit – she was nice, chatty, thought I had an interesting job, but then she left to tape someone else’s interview and I was left with the other girl.

This is the point where I started to sour on the whole thing. The girl asked me a bunch of questions, but they were really stupid ones (from my perspective). She, too, asked me if I had any catchphrases. I said that I liked to use “I – Am – Bulletproof” and “Next time, you best bring some Kryptonite.” (SNL references, folks). She didn’t get it either.

I realized about halfway thru that the questions she was asking weren’t really designed to be about sports… but about Reality Shows.

She was asking stuff like: “How do you interact with groups?” “Do you consider yourself the center of attention?” “Do you play well with others?” She seemed a little down on the fact that I was married, and even more so when I thought that the Yankees and the Cubs would make for a better World Series than the Red Sox.

And then came the showstopper – she said, “So, tell me why your favorite baseball player is … [pause to look at page] … Sandy COWfax?”

I’m serious, folks. She mispronounced Sandy Koufax’s name. Maybe she thought my scrawl was a W instead of a U, but to not know how to say the name of one of the greatest pitchers of all time? Please. She was clearly a production person, not a sports person.

For whatever reason, I didn’t get cut right at that point. I know they sent some people home, but they asked me to hang around and shot some footage of me (which still exists, somewhere) reading the mockup highlight they’d asked me to bring in ahead of time - I wrote it out calling the Monday Night game from the night before, Packers at Bears. Afterward, the short ref guy told me that they’d “clearly seen something” in me, and they’d “be in touch”… which I took to be the cut, and it was.

I survived until there were only about 15 people left, so I felt pretty good. I saw Michael Quigley, the guy who eventually won the D.C. tryout and is now on the show, and he seemed pretty knowledgeable. I wish I had gotten the Indian dude’s name, because he seemed cool, and he was still there when I left, so I hoped he’d win.

All in all, though, I’m kinda glad I didn’t go any further. The worst situation would’ve been to win the city-wide search, but then get cut in the semis and not get on the show except for some token footage. I don’t really want to live in Connecticut, and it would’ve taken a lot to basically ask for a month of leave to do the show.

But more than that, it was clear to me that the contest really wasn’t going to be one of merit, but of style. It was less “Who Wants to Win a Dream Job” than it was, “American SportsIdol.” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone ends up winning who doesn’t know very much about sports, but is a comedian or an actor (I think there are four of those in the final 12), so they’re quick on their feet and capable of faking it.

In all though, it was a fun experience. I hope whoever wins has some fun on the Big Show.

(Originally posted by Ben at February 20, 2004 05:34 PM)