Verwandte Artikel zu Every Down, Every Distance: My Journey To The NFL

Every Down, Every Distance: My Journey To The NFL - Hardcover

Chrebet, Wayne; Carucci, Vic

 
9780385496308: Every Down, Every Distance: My Journey To The NFL
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0385496303 ISBN 13: 9780385496308
Verlag: Doubleday, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

The NFL's most popular wide receiver tells the remarkable and inspirational story of how he went from an undrafted walk-on to an everyman hero and star of the New York Jets.

Growing up in hardscrabble Garfield, New Jersey, Wayne Chrebet was always too small or too slow or too something to be taken seriously as a football player. And even after an impressive career in high school, he wasn't even a blip on the recruiting radar screens of the big-time college programs.

Instead, Wayne went to Hofstra University in Long Island without a scholarship. Mom and Dad paid the eighteen-thousand-dollar-a-year tuition, and Wayne held up his end of the deal by earning a degree while setting record after record on the football field. But even after tying an NCAA mark held by Jerry Rice, Wayne's name was not called during the 1995 NFL draft. Undaunted, Wayne dedicated himself to being ready if and when he got the chance to prove the skeptics wrong.

Four remarkable years and hundreds of catches later, Wayne has been singled out as one of the key ingredients that turned the Jets from laughingstock to Super Bowl contender. His secret is simple. He plays as if every down and every distance to go were his last.

Full of inspiration, motivation, and charm, Every Down, Every Distance is the perfect book for football fans who root for the underdog.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Wayne Chrebet was born and raised in New Jersey. He now makes his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey.

Vic Carucci is the pro football writer/ columnist for the Buffalo News. With numerous writing awards to his credit, Carucci has cowritten a number of autobiographies, including Armed and Dangerous by Jim Kelly. He makes his home in East Amherst, New York.

Aus dem Klappentext

st popular wide receiver tells the remarkable and inspirational story of how he went from an undrafted walk-on to an everyman hero and star of the New York Jets.<br><br>Growing up in hardscrabble Garfield, New Jersey, Wayne Chrebet was always too small or too slow or too something to be taken seriously as a football player. And even after an impressive career in high school, he wasn't even a blip on the recruiting radar screens of the big-time college programs.<br><br>Instead, Wayne went to Hofstra University in Long Island without a scholarship. Mom and Dad paid the eighteen-thousand-dollar-a-year tuition, and Wayne held up his end of the deal by earning a degree while setting record after record on the football field. But even after tying an NCAA mark held by Jerry Rice, Wayne's name was not called during the 1995 NFL draft. Undaunted, Wayne dedicated himself to being ready if and when he got the chance to prove the skeptics wrong.<br><br>Four remarkable years and hundreds of catch

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Sleepless in Baltimore

Why am I here?

I asked myself that question--over and over--as I was lying in bed in a Baltimore hotel room.

It was the middle of the night. My eyes were wide open.

The calendar said it was April 1, 1995, but unfortunately, this was not the middle of some goofy April Fools' joke.

In only a matter of hours, the sun would be up and I would be at Johns Hopkins University for a tryout camp hosted by the Baltimore Stallions (known at the time as the Baltimore Football Club) of the Canadian Football League.

This was not to be confused with the NFL's annual scouting combine, which invites more than three hundred draft-eligible players in the country--as rated by league scouts--to spend a week at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, showing their stuff to coaches, general managers, and scouts.

After finishing up a pretty good career as a wide receiver at Hofstra University, I though I might get a chance to be among that top three hundred.

I guess my invitation got lost in the mail before it reached my parents' home in Wanaque, New Jersey.

I was one of about a hundred and ninety guys that paid fifty bucks each and signed an injury waiver so that members of the Stallions' player personnel department could see us. Their roster was already pretty well set from the team that had lost the 1994 Grey Cup to the British Columbia Lions on a last-second field goal, so it wasn't as if they were looking for a particular person to sign. It was like, no matter what you did, they were going to say, "Sorry, we're not interested."

How do you get up for something like that?

I had only gone to Baltimore because Kenny Colon, one of my fellow wide receivers at Hofstra, was going and asked if I wanted to come along. My CFL negotiating rights already belonged to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, but the rules in that league were loose enough that the Stallions would have had no problem signing me if they wanted to.

Besides, I figured it might be worthwhile to show what I could do in front of some pro football types, regardless of where they were from. At that time, my agent couldn't even get phone calls returned from something called the United Football Association, which I don't think ever played a game.

NFL teams were sending me nice warm letters like this one:

March 13, 1995

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your interest in the Philadelphia Eagles. We have received your film and statistical history and have reviewed it accordingly.

The college draft and the free agent market provide us with such a significant number of available players that it makes it impossible to offer tryouts to everyone who may desire one.

At this time, those players currently available to us are more in line with the caliber of player that we are looking for to fill the few roster spots that will become available.

Should you decide that you would like to further pursue playing in the NFL, you will find a card enclosed with the phone number for NFL International.

Best of luck in the pursuit of your future goals.

Sincerely,

John Wooten
Vice President/Director of Player Personnel
Philadelphia Eagles Football Club, Inc.
What he really was saying to me was: "Look, kid. We know, even without ever actually having scouted you, that you're not good enough for the NFL. Maybe you should see if you can cut it in our version of the minors, the World League of American Football, before you try to hang out with the big boys."

Once I got to Baltimore, I realized that what the Stallions were staging was just a giant meat market. The only thing missing was a USDA approved stamp on my butt.

And the only thing I was going home with was a lost night of sleep.

That's because the night before I got up close and personal with one of the loudest, most annoying sounds I had ever heard in my life: my father's snoring! And I do mean SNORING!!!

Now, you have to understand that my dad, Wayne Sr., and I are as close as can be, so it was automatic that he was going to make this trip with me. Our relationship is much more like that of best friends than of a father and a son. We're buddies to the end. In fact, a lot of times I don't even call him Dad. I call him Dude.

I just had never given much thought to the sleeping arrangements in the hotel room we would be sharing. Kenny had one of the two beds, of course. That left Dad and me to share the other, something we had never done before as adults.

Believe me, it is something we will never do again.

Dad wasn't just snoring up a storm. He was snoring up a hurricane. The guy was making furniture move.

So as I was lying in bed, still staring into the darkness, I'd finally say, "Dude, you're killing me. I have got to sleep."

"I'm sorry," he'd say before turning over.

Then he'd start again five seconds later. And I'd be saying to myself, Oh, man, come on . . .

This went on all night. It was horrible. It was the closest I ever came to taking a whack at him.

I wound up standing in front of the window, watching the sun come up. Before I knew it, we were out the door and on the field. I was the piece of meat with the bags under his eyes, yawning. Had it not been so cold, I probably could have gone to sleep right there on the field.

The first clue that this was not a high-class operation was the fact we were given no warm-up. It was like: "OK, we want you to run this pattern . . . then run that drill . . . then run this drill . . ." If the idea was to see how many guys could pull their hamstrings in one morning, this was the perfect way to do it.

There must have been about twenty-five receivers out there. There were quarterbacks, but most of them didn't throw the ball as well as I was used to. Carlos Garay, my quarterback at Hofstra, had a great combination of strength and accuracy that was pretty hard to duplicate. Unfortunately, he wasn't there.

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Doubleday
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385496303
ISBN 13 
9780385496308
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Doubleday
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/doubleday/

Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY, 14-1
NEW YORK
NY
10019
USA
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar