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Author gets inside look at Broncos

Training as kicker, journalist reveals tough life of pros

By Dan Danbom, Special to the Rocky

Published July 3, 2008 at 6 p.m.

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After missing his second kick during Broncos practice, journalist Stefan Fatsis shows his humiliation. While researching his book, Fatsis gained an appreciation for the constant pressure that professional athletes face.

Photo by Jack Dempsey

After missing his second kick during Broncos practice, journalist Stefan Fatsis shows his humiliation. While researching his book, Fatsis gained an appreciation for the constant pressure that professional athletes face.

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The idea of a journalist joining a sports team to report on what it's really like to be a professional athlete goes back at least to 1963, when George Plimpton hung out long enough with the Detroit Lions to write Paper Lionr.

In A Few Seconds of Panic, Wall Street Journal sports reporter Stefan Fatsis reprises Plimpton's idea. The difference, Fatsis explains, is that Plimpton had no illusions about his athletic prowess, and Fatsis actually believed that he could legitimately be a kicker in the National Football League - even though he was 43 years old and had two surgically repaired knees at the time he undertook his quest in 2006.

Of course, cynical, long-suffering Broncos fans might think that a damaged, over-the-hill pretender is just the kind of player the Broncos routinely sign to big contracts. But just as Fatsis was different from Plimpton, the National Football League of today is different from the NFL of Plimpton's time. The money is better, the media coverage is more intense, the sport is more complicated, and the players are more wary of reporters.

So rather than "embed" with the team, Fatsis only went through the kind of training and preparation that real players do. He hired a kicking coach, worked out regularly and generally followed the same regimen any other player would follow. In return, he got to attend the Broncos' 2006 training camp, got his own locker and jersey and was allowed to kick in a game simulation in practice, with a half-hour reduction in the team's daily practice at stake. It was like being at one of those fantasy camps, except Fatsis was the only one fantasizing.

He wanted to be allowed to kick in a preseason game, but the NFL thought it would damage the integrity of the game (as if fans forced to fork out money for exhibition games have come to expect top quality in meaningless games).

In this process, Fatsis went from being an outsider to "falling somewhere between team mascot and ribbable rookie" and eventually becoming something approaching a teammate, largely because he gained an appreciation for what players experience and a sympathy for the stress and insecurity they face.

The title describes the life of a kicker: Hours of rote practice and boredom punctuated by the "few seconds of panic" when the kicker has to perform in a game. The panic part is the part Fatsis had down best. The mere thought that he might have to kick in practice makes him hyperventilate and display the symptoms of a nervous breakdown.

In fact, it's the psychological aspects that make professional football - a business where players are the most dispensable and replaceable part - so hard. One player, Nate Jackson, tells Fatsis that probably 100,000 guys are physically talented enough to play in the NFL, but they can't handle the mental part of the game, characterized by "overbearing bosses, the zero job security, the risk that every week could result in a life- altering injury . . . "

We see this during Fatsis' time with the team, when Broncos backup quarterback Bradlee Van Pelt becomes so unnerved by a poor performance that he spirals into a quagmire of self-doubt, anger and sleeplessness that ultimately leads to his being cut from the team.

No book like this would be complete without some good dish, and Fatsis doesn't disappoint. Broncos fans looking for inside information they don't get elsewhere won't be disappointed.

My favorite is that players are allowed two free pay-per-view movies in their hotel rooms for road games. Center Tom Nalen has it in his contract that he gets three. They spend time negotiating for that?

As for team personalities, head coach Mike Shanahan - "by NFL standards a likable guy" - is a "cipher," a technocrat and a workaholic who has ". . . little tolerance for people who don't work as hard as he works, as restlessly and as constantly. Which doesn't leave much room."

Shanahan is as disdainful of the local media as he is in control of it, and " . . . has been so conditioned by years of cautious sound bites he can't expound upon a craft he has performed as well as almost any NFL coach ever," Fatsis writes.

Former quarterback Jake Plummer comes across as a betrayed scapegoat who angered Shanahan because he missed some "voluntary" off-season workouts. Former punter Todd Sauerbrun alternates between "sneering contempt" for his teammates and being "a caustically funny smart-ass who doesn't suffer fools or filter his opinions."

Tackle P.J. Alexander tries to overcome injuries with sheer will and attitude. Kicker Jason Elam is the consummate professional: proficient in his work, amiable and squeaky-clean decent. Tight end Nate Jackson, safety Nick Ferguson and fullback Kyle Johnson are thoughtful, intelligent, philosophical realists.

The media rarely, if ever, get the kind of access the Broncos gave Fatsis, and Fatsis gives depth to players who are usually known only superficially by even the most devoted fans. And he answers the book's biggest question: If playing football is willfully subjecting oneself to the militaristic, joyless, dangerous life that is the NFL, why would anyone do it - other than the fact that the average player makes $2 million a year? Part of the answer is the same reason Fatsis tried out: They are irrationally hopeful.

This state of mind infected Fatsis, as well. He took his chances at being thought of as a legitimate player more seriously than most readers will, giving the book an unfortunate "you've got to be kidding" quality.

Of course, that quality has long epitomized the philosophy of Broncos fans who, like Fatsis, take their kicks whenever they can get them.

Dan Danbom is a freelance writer living in Denver.

A Few Seconds of Panic

* By Stefan Fatsis. Penguin, 338 pages, $25.95.

* Grade: B

Bruising battlegrounds

Football isn't the only down-and-dirty competitive sport Fatsis has written about. He's also the author of the best-selling Word Freak - about Scrabble fanatics .

Comments

  • July 4, 2008

    9:19 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    JSpicoli writes:

    He needs to work on adding more of a police record to be a real Bronco. Also if he got his "goose on" like MClarette it would be in his favor.

  • July 5, 2008

    10:38 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    myerda00 writes:

    jspitcoli of the Faider blogs has gotten it wrong again.
    To write a piece for an NFL team you need to know a lot about people and a little about football.