The Proving Ground: A Season on the Fringe in NFL Europe - Hardcover

Anderson, Lars

 
9780312269753: The Proving Ground: A Season on the Fringe in NFL Europe
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0312269757 ISBN 13: 9780312269753
Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Life in the minor leagues of football, which NFL Europe has been aptly dubbed, can be funny, sad, profound and ludicrous all at the same time. At its heart, this six-team league is a short-stop away from either the glamour of the NFL or the bottom of the professional football scrap pile--a crossroads full of real-life drama where the joy of "making it" can be tempered by failure or injury with one misstep; where the difference between a multimillion dollar NFL contract and abject poverty may only be one play away. Just ask Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner.

Author Lars Anderson brings to life the compelling drama of NFL Europe by spending a season with the Scottish Claymores. Anderson lives with the players at a hotel in Glasgow, Scotland, spending every waking minute with them-eating and heading out to the pubs as the Claymores make their championship run. Along with detailing the life and times of the Claymores, Anderson digs deep into the background of the players and coaches to help explain why some succeed and others fail in their quest to make it to that shining city on the hill--the NFL.

Through the eyes of Anderson, the reader experiences what it means and what it's like to be a football player in Europe. The men that make up the Claymores are the strength of this book-a funny and complex lot that face many of the same issues we tackle every day. An inspiring portrait of both new beginnings and bitter ends, The Proving Ground will shock and delight readers, while showing them another side of the professional football player.

Of The Proving Ground, Frank Deford, award-winning author and commentator, says "Anderson deftly shows that you can take the football player out of America, but... he's the same creature, loving the game and scrambling for one more chance."

Life in the minor leagues of football, which NFL Europe has been aptly dubbed, can be funny, sad, profound and ludicrous all at the same time. At its heart, this six-team league is a short-stop away from either the glamour of the NFL or the bottom of the professional football scrap pile--a crossroads full of real-life drama where the joy of "making it" can be tempered by failure or injury with one misstep; where the difference between a multimillion dollar NFL contract and abject poverty may only be one play away. Just ask Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner.

Author Lars Anderson brings to life the compelling drama of NFL Europe by spending a season with the Scottish Claymores. Anderson lives with the players at a hotel in Glasgow, Scotland, spending every waking minute with them-eating and heading out to the pubs as the Claymores make their championship run. Along with detailing the life and times of the Claymores, Anderson digs deep into the background of the players and coaches to help explain why some succeed and others fail in their quest to make it to that shining city on the hill--the NFL.

Through the eyes of Anderson, the reader experiences what it means and what it's like to be a football player in Europe. The men that make up the Claymores are the strength of this book-a funny and complex lot that face many of the same issues we tackle every day. An inspiring portrait of both new beginnings and bitter ends, The Proving Ground will shock and delight readers, while showing them another side of the professional football player.

Of The Proving Ground, Frank Deford, award-winning author and commentator, says "Anderson deftly shows that you can take the football player out of America, but... he's the same creature, loving the game and scrambling for one more chance."

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Lars Anderson received his Masters degree in Journalism at Columbia University and now writes for Sports Illustrated. He is the co-author of the critically acclaimed Pickup Artists: Street Basketball in America, honored by the New York Public Library as one of the best books of 1998. He lives with his wife Sarah in New York City.

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Lars Anderson received his Masters degree in Journalism at Columbia University and now writes for Sports Illustrated. He is the co-author of the critically acclaimed Pickup Artists: Street Basketball in America, honored by the New York Public Library as one of the best books of 1998. He lives with his wife Sarah in New York City.

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1
The Dream
Glasgow, Scotland. Morning of Game Seven
EVERYTHING WAS SET. The woman was scheduled to arrive at three o’clock. She would enter the stadium, walk through the crowd, and emerge on the field behind the home team’s bench. There she would wait, trying to blend quietly into the shadows. Then, if all went according to plan and she got the signal from a player on the sidelines, she would slip out of her clothes and take off running into the cool spring afternoon—and straight into professional football history.
For a week, whispers of the event had circulated among the Scottish Claymores. The anticipation grew by the hour, the players becoming as agog as seniors on prom night waiting to see what will be exposed by evening’s end. No two Claymores had more at stake in the streak than Matt Finkes and Rob Hart, the brains behind the brave act. They had negotiated the fee, plotted the getaway, and even crafted a few backup plans to ensure that the world’s largest peepshow would go off as smoothly as a Broadway production. “If we do it with class, we can pull it off,” said Hart, the team’s place kicker to Finkes, a linebacker. “We just have to make sure that she doesn’t get caught.”
“If this works,” said Finkes, “it will be our legacy.”
Fans sprint onto professional playing fields all the time in Scotland. But Gillian Stevenson, a twenty-six-year-old with auburncolored hair and a double-D chest, was willing to take it a step further. A waitress in Glasgow, Stevenson had a break-your-heart smile and sparkling green eyes. In those eyes, if you looked closely, was the glimmer of mischief. This partly explained why Stevenson, in all of her model beauty, agreed to gallop across the field naked in the third quarter of the Claymores game against the Barcelona Dragons. Not only that, she consented to rent out space on the curves and swerves of her body on which the players could either write messages to friends back home in the States or print their uniform number. If it all worked out then football, at least for a few moments, would be the sexiest sport on this green earth.
Yet the flesh show would cause more than just heavy breathing. For Finkes and Hart were betting that the $450 they were paying Stevenson would also accomplish something on a grander, worldwide scale. They hoped the stunt would grab the attention of folks back home. Attention—when you’re an NFL Europe player—is the one commodity that’s as precious as a bag of jewels. “When we pull this off, it will be the highlight of my career,” said Finkes, who in 1996 was an All-Big-Ten player at Ohio State.
Orlando, Florida. First Day of Training Camp. March 13, 2000
Three months earlier at the NFL Europe orientation, Finkes and Hart were among the 450 players sitting in the Reflection Ballroom at Orlando’s Harley Hotel. These were the players who would compete for roster spots on the six teams of NFL Europe for the 2000 season. Each of these men—141 of whom had been loaned to the league by NFL teams; all the others were free agents—had his own reason for being here. Some were veterans trying to salvage their waning careers. Others were younger players, green on and off the field, looking to gain experience. Yet others were past-their-prime graybeards, there because they didn’t want their dream of playing professional football to die.
It was 8:30 in the evening. The room was quiet, everyone hushed in expectation. Outside the tall windows of the fourth-floor ballroom, the last blush of sunlight licked the Florida sky. Inside, Bill Peterson, the thirty-five-year-old president of the league, stepped up to the dais. Peterson, who was named president in November 1999 after spending three years as general manager of the Amsterdam Admirals, cleared his throat and then put forth an all-out sales pitch, trying to convince these players that NFL Europe mattered. “Welcome to our league,” Peterson said. “One of the first things you all should know is that videos of every game we play are sent back to every NFL team. If you play well, you’ll get noticed. It’s certainly happened before.”
Peterson then stirred the echoes of past NFL Europe greatness, showing the players a five-minute video. Sitting in the darkness, the players saw on a big screen highlights of quarterback Kurt Warner, Jon Kitna, and Brad Johnson playing in Europe. They saw wide receiver Marcus Robinson, who reeled in 84 receptions for the Chicago Bears in 1999, catching passes for the Rhein Fire. They saw defensive tackle La’Roi Glover, now an All-Pro for the New Orleans Saints, rush the quarterback for the Barcelona Dragons. More than anything, though, what the players really saw on the screen was hope—for their careers, their futures, and their bank accounts.
“Just knowing that players have gone on from Europe to become stars in the NFL gives you a lot of motivation,” said Aaron Stecker, a running back for the Claymores. “That’s why I came, to help my career and make people know my name.”
In the year 2000, NFL Europe would field teams in Amsterdam (the Admirals), Barcelona (the Dragons), Berlin (the Thunder), Düsseldorf (the Rhein Fire), Frankfurt (the Galaxy), and Glasgow (the Scottish Claymores). Each team would play each other twice, which made for a 10-game season between April and June, with a three-week training camp in Orlando. At the end of the season the teams with the two top records would play in the World Bowl, which is NFL Europe’s equivalent to the Super Bowl.
“This isn’t a holiday you’re on,” continued Peterson. “In these next three months, you’ll be expected to act like a professional and play like a professional. If you do that, I promise only good things will happen for you.”



THE NEXT AFTERNOON, at 3 P.M. sharp, the Scottish Claymores officially began their season with a team meeting back in the Reflection Room. Most of the players had never met, so before Coach Jim Criner and his staff spoke to the team the players introduced themselves to each other. There were players from big schools (Nebraska and Ohio State) and small (Murray State and Western Illinois). They were from the North (Michigan), the South (Clemson), the East (University of Massachusetts), and the West (USC). Some even came from outposts as far away as England and Japan to try out for the Claymores, a team named after a large, double-edged broadsword once used by Scottish Highlanders. For all the players, this moment before the coaches marched in the room was rich with meaning. Because there before all of them, dangling like an apple waiting to be plucked from the tree, was something that most people never get: a second chance.
In the room there were sixty-two souls. They were competing for forty-three roster spots. Twenty-one of the players had been allocated to the Claymores by NFL teams; the rest were free agents. Some would eventually make it to the NFL, some would quietly slip back into anonymity, and one would suffer a life-altering injury before the season was done.
Forty-two of the players were black. Eighteen were white. Two were Asian. This team was an ethnic cocktail, and racial tension would eventually flare. Players would segregate themselves—black players would sit in the back of the bus, white players in the front. In the most frustrated moments of the season, whites would accuse blacks of playing dirty on the field, and blacks would resent them for it.
But as players sat in the Reflection Room on that soft...

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Verlag
St Martin's Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312269757
ISBN 13 
9780312269753
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

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