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Extroversion
Undrafted, this Free Agent is Still Hoping for a Tryout
Dodged by the NFL Draft – Tebow-ed, to boot
Posted April 30, 2013
A friend writes:
Last week, NFL teams drafted their would-be stars. In diversifying and upgrading their player portfolios, teams invested for quick returns and current yields.
In years past, I was – in a manner of speaking – a buy-and-hold Blue-Chip. These days, despite my low volatility, I am not preferred stock. Still, I put on my best suit and tie, and waited for my name to be called at Radio City Music Hall, where the NFL conducted its draft “stock exchange and trading floor.” Maybe I’ve been wait-listed.
Mock draft aficionados had speculated about the likely picks in the first and second rounds. They projected the new net-worths of the latest class of 22-year-olds. Some franchise partisans – and fans of the game “when it was a game” – groaned about how the likely seven-figure and eight-figure purchase prices might nudge or bust a team’s salary cap; how other players’ contracts might have to be re-structured; how some players might have to be traded or sold to reduce the payroll.
It is now 45 years – 45 consecutive years – that I have not made the slightest dent in any team’s payroll. Of all the prospects bandied about in all the sports blogs and sports bars, in all the towns, in all the world.... not one pundit uttered my name. This egregious oversight continued through the entire draft.
How could that be? I sent my CV to all the teams. My free-agent status and my maturity date may have worked against me. There were no bids in response to my most modest asks. There was, I thought, an attractive call provision. It seems that “head-hunters” and “head-hunting” mean something very different in the football world.
Price point: Deeply depreciated and discounted, I would be a bargain from a financial, moral, and eldercare standpoint. I made it quite clear that I would be quite happy with a salary shy of 6-figures. By putting me on the league’s (or the players’ union) medical plan, the NFL would get credit for reducing impact on Medicare. Covering me would be the NFL’s own affordable care act.
In my cover letter, I highlighted my standout attributes: I would be glad to sign a one-year contract and pledge (cross my heart) not to bother the coaching staff for playing time. Most assuredly I would be over the moon to be on the sidelines for the entire season. One and done.
In truth, though, I did not get off to a good start in the NFL Combine, in which I pitted my athletic prowess against legions of well-muscled and low-body-fat 22-year-olds. Executives, coaches, scouts and doctors from all 32 NFL teams were there to conduct an intense, four-day job interview in advance of the NFL Draft.
My time in the 40-yard dash was notable for its lack of acceleration, and speed. We were timed at 10-, 20-, and 40-yard intervals. It seems that scouts were looking for an “explosive” speed from a static start. My sprints did not get me off to a good start. My employment prospects are a case study of accelerated depreciation.
The bench press segment posed a test of strength and endurance as scouts counted our reps with a 225-pound bar bell. My bench press was an isometric exercise – affirming the laws of gravity and the physics of an immovable object at rest.
In the vertical leap and the broad jump, we propelled ourselves upward in one test and forward in the other. Our lower-body strength was tested. I was relatively earth bound, which would seem to be a mark of stability that would serve any team well in off-the-field encounters and engagements.
The 3-cone-drill and the shuttle-run tested our agility, and our ability to change directions at a high speed. Let’s just say that my performance was deliberate, well-considered, methodical.
I tried to explain to the player-personnel folks that what I had to offer would not show in those “measurable drills” – but that I could be a force for, well, stability. I would not be a rival. I would not be a threat. I would, in fact, be a lifestyle model, and could be a life-skills mentor:
I could help my teammates with –
• their penmanship so that they could deliver more legible autographs and thus become better goodwill ambassadors;
• their vocabulary and their diction so that they would deliver better “quotables” for media consumption, risking less fan disaffection and defection; and
• their checking account statements, to encourage some balance between incoming and outgoing.
As to public safety and preservation of team investments: I do not own a gun, and thus am not likely to shoot myself in the leg or groin; am not likely to shoot a teammate and thus jeopardize the team’s investment in a true performance player.
As to public safety and reckless endangerment: I do not drink and drive. I do not drink; well, yes, a lemon-grass-and-wheat-germ-and-ginseng-infused peppermint-flavored green tea, and maybe an occasional 16-ounce Dr. Pepper. Even under such influence, I drive a decades-old Volvo whose reliable cylinders strain to accelerate up to the neighborhood of 70mph. The Volvo’s zero-to-forty would not compare favorably to the times of the 22-year-olds in the Combine’s 40-yard dash.
As to public disorder and moral turpitude: Night clubs don’t want my kind. I have book value – literally book value – but no face value. As to celebrity, no accrued interest.
I frequent public library Friday night film shows. I attend monthly Life After Cancer sessions at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Occasionally, I attend lectures about Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists at a Unitarian Church. NFL material?
My wardrobe sports a roster of two-button and three-piece suits. In my “closets,” no palimony suits, no paternity suits, no child-support suits, no spousal abuse suits, no arrests or restraining orders.
Drug Use: Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I had to confess that I would test positive for acetylsalicylic acid and nicotinic acid. Yeah, I take a “baby aspirin” along with vitamin B-3 (Niacin) to deal with hyperlipidemia and elevated low-density lipoprotein (bad cholesterol) while reducing cutaneous reactions and raising my high-density lipoprotein (good cholesterol). I will waive my physician-patient privacy rights to provide full access to my cardiologist.
Proclivity or propensity to embarrass: I do not tweet – I do not have a Twitter account. I do not have a Facebook page. I do not send text messages for my antediluvian flip-phone resists such intrusions and would never agree to taking a picture of anything remotely private – let alone sending such a photo. Would my employment prospects be advanced by a candid photo of me in a library responding to job postings?
In hotels, I am spare in my use of towels and tidy up before leaving for the day. I have never trashed a hotel room.
I wonder though, when I asked a scout about acquiring hotel-stay points and frequent-flyer miles did I jeopardize my draft status?
In its description of what’s looked for – and valued – at the Combine’s skill drills, the NFL repeatedly uses the word “explode” or “explosive.” Okay, I’m not the explosive type. Isn’t that a good thing.
