Through My Eyes (14 page)

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.

—C
OLOSSIANS 3:23–24

And so it was over.
But then, it continued. It really is true what is said about the recruiting process—it’s never ending.

Florida’s 2005 season had been good by most standards—9–3 overall, tied for second in the SEC Eastern Division—but not by Coach Meyer’s standards. It was his first year at UF, and he made it clear that he wanted the incoming freshman class to help the program hit loftier heights. As such, one of my first moves was to begin calling many of the other guys I’d met as teammates at the CaliFlorida All-Star game and the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, guys like Percy Harvin, Brandon Spikes, Jarred Fayson, and Carl Johnson. I don’t know if my calls made any difference at all, but we all ended up at the University of Florida together, in what was dubbed by all those who opine about such things “a talented group of freshmen.”

I wanted to prepare for the 2006 season in any way I could, and in the weeks before I made my commitment to Florida, I’d spoken to Coach Meyer about foregoing my spring baseball season at Nease to enroll early at Florida, which my homeschooling made possible.

Then about two weeks before I committed, Coach Meyer had called and suggested that maybe I would want to play baseball with my high school teammates one last time instead of showing up early at Florida.

“What’s going on, Coach?” I was puzzled, because Coach Meyer had been excited about my plan to enroll early. He came clean. In the recruiting process, no one had blinked about my homeschooling, but now the admissions office was raising some red flags. It wasn’t a matter of my coursework or test scores, but they were simply hesitant. Coach Meyer and I discussed it a great deal, and he ultimately approached the university president, Dr. Machen, directly, personally guaranteeing my academic performance.

Two weeks after I’d committed, it was still unclear if I was going to start at Florida in the spring semester or if I’d have to begin in the fall with the other freshmen. Coach Meyer was also concerned that I might go pro in baseball if I didn’t enroll. In early January, I played in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio, but as I returned home, I still didn’t know whether I was going to begin my college career the next day as we’d originally planned. And then after landing, I got word from Coach Meyer that everything was arranged. As of the next day, I was going to Florida.

I arrived at the University of Florida that January like a typical freshman, without much fanfare. Actually, I may have arrived with even less fanfare than most; the night before my first class was to begin, I caught a ride to Gainesville with Peter in his pickup truck, carrying only a duffel bag’s worth of possessions with me.

I slept on Peter’s couch in his apartment for a few hours until I had to head over to our first workout in the wee hours of the morning. Football started right away—even before classes. We met that morning in the Team Meeting Room in Florida Field, a precursor to orientation to football and early workouts. Then I had to shift gears and head off to my first class.

My first class at Florida was in public speaking with Professor Stephanie Webster. I know I was at an advantage with regard to most of my classmates, because of all the times I’d already spoken in the Philippines and elsewhere. But it was still interesting, and never ceased to amaze me, how concerned people were about standing up and speaking before a group. This class itself was particularly easy, because our exercises were all simply short talks on any subject we chose that we knew something about, like, for example, where we bought our shoes. Nevertheless, I remember students saying that they couldn’t wait until the final exam, knowing they would have gotten past the period of having to give two-minute talks in class.

My brother Peter, an engineering major, spent the better part of the spring semester appealing the school’s denial of his high school language credit, an issue on which he found himself growing more irritated with the bureaucracy with the passing of each day. I didn’t have the same problem when I was admitted to Florida—they looked at my two years of Latin and accepted it immediately to meet my language requirement. That was appropriate, I felt, since Mom had brought in a teacher with a degree in Latin, who knew the language very well, to help me: one of the benefits of homeschooling, again, in my opinion. As for Peter, in fairness, UF hadn’t had to deal with that many homeschool students at the point of his enrollment, or at least that was our perception, which may have added to the problem.

Why was Peter so irritated?

Well it was because . . . we took the very same Latin class, sitting side by side for two years. Finally, Peter got his credit, but not until I had a chance to point out just how advanced my language skills in Latin, at least, were in the eyes of the university.

Two weeks later I presented myself in the old Florida Gym for the first of our off-season workouts. It was mid January, very early in the morning, and still dark out. I was totally fired up. By now that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

I am too young to have ever seen Florida play basketball in the Florida Gymnasium, affectionately nicknamed Alligator Alley, which was home to the basketball games for the Gators from 1949 to 1980. It was an intimate setting—small and very cramped—and always good for at least a ten-point advantage to the beloved home team and the scene of many a miraculous upset within the stretch of a long and difficult Southeastern Conference season. Since those days, it has functioned in various capacities for classes and teams, as well as pickup basketball games for would-be Gator basketballers of any age. It also served as Mickey Marotti’s personal torture chamber.

That first morning I was not concerned with its history. Like the rest of the newcomers, some of whom had just finished their freshman football season but hadn’t yet gone through a stretch of off-season workouts, I was simply concerned with survival. Being able to walk out of the doors of Alligator Alley each week under my own power was an achievement.

I’d first met Coach Marotti during the recruiting process, and while I had heard the stories of his legendary workouts, I also knew that hiring him was one of Coach Meyer’s first acts of business when he arrived at Florida. If Coach Meyer believed what Coach Mick did as head of the football team’s strength-and-conditioning oversight was that important, then I was all for it.

And, like with most everything else I undertake, once it began, I no longer wanted to simply survive; I wanted to excel. Especially if it was going to make me a better player.

On that first day, I learned to love Coach Marotti’s mat drills. Love. We had done a version of mat drills at Nease High School, but these in Alligator Alley were far more intense. To be more accurate, the mat drills were awful, and to say that you love them should put you first in line to see the psychologist at the campus infirmary. However, I loved them because they gave you the chance to compete in drills that were unique because they blended both the mental and physical aspects of becoming better—not just as a player, but in your approach to anything you might face. Anyone could be in great shape, but to compete against another person . . . I viewed it as a test of will.

They began with Coach putting us into two separate lines. The first player in line A took his position on the wrestling mat, lying facedown. Coach then grabbed the first player from line B and had him lie facedown also, but on top of the first player who was already facedown on the mat. On Coach’s whistle, the player underneath had to use whatever means he could—run, walk, roll, or crawl—to reach a line ten feet away, while the second had to use
whatever
means he could (use your imagination) to keep him from reaching the line.

That first day, after spending forty-five minutes on conditioning and quickness drills, we did a variety of mat drills to finish the hour, pitting one against another, to the point of complete exhaustion. I was pleased, however. I hadn’t lost one drill. It might have been all the farm work. It might have been the years in the barn, lifting. The protein shakes certainly helped. So far, so good.

On the whole, my classes went well that spring. To be honest, it just wasn’t that hard. My mom’s homeschool classes had prepared me incredibly well. I’d thought college was going to be much harder than it was. I learned it was important to attend all my classes, stay up on my reading, and do my assignments. I was living with Percy Harvin, and some of the football players and I spent our free time playing pool basketball at an apartment complex near campus. Between football, classes, and pool basketball and the occasional paintball games, we all stayed pretty busy.

Throughout the spring we continued to work on our conditioning with Coach Mick. Days were varied in the exercises he had us do. Some days we had mat drills; some days, running, like running all the stadium steps at Florida Field. I loved it. One morning during conditioning drills in our regular weight-room session in the stadium, I was paired with a defensive tackle in tug-of-war. Unlike times when I’d done a tug-of-war in the past, here there was no line to pull the other guy over that would have marked victory and ended the drill. Instead, this tug-of-war lasted until one of us conceded.

Again, a drill with a mental aspect.

We battled against each other and neither gave up until he eventually lost his balance. But he didn’t quit. I dragged him hanging off the end of the rope, walking backward with him all across the room. He still didn’t concede. I kept walking and dragging until I reached the wall. Still didn’t concede. By that time he had scrambled back onto his feet, and as he did, I saw that I was next to the door to the men’s room. I kicked the door open, positioned my body into the opening, and kept pulling and pulling, backing my way into the room. I did the same thing once I reached a stall door, kicking it open and continuing to pull, hand over hand, pulling on the rope with him hanging on and pulling as hard as he could against me from his end of the rope, pulling him into the bathroom and toward the stall. Finally, when I had pulled him into the stall with me, Coach Mick blew the whistle and brought an end to the drill.

About a month into off-season conditioning, I still hadn’t lost at tug-of-war, and Coach Meyer decided to up the ante for everyone.

“Offense, defense, pick your best two!” Offense vs. defense, two-on-two tug-of-war, with the loser having to run suicides (repeated sprints) across the field. A lot of them. The defense selected Joe Cohen, a senior defensive tackle weighing over 310 pounds, and junior Brandon Siler, a 240-pound linebacker, while the offense selected a big offensive lineman, over 300 pounds . . . and me. Coach Meyer later told me that he was stunned that the players had chosen a freshman, someone who had only been on campus for a few weeks. Maybe it was because of my coming in and lifting 225 pounds twenty-five times on the bench press that caused them to put such confidence in me. Maybe it was my performance dragging the defensive tackle into the bathroom stall, or maybe it was my relentless determination to never lose any of the drills; but for whatever reason, the offense selected me—a freshman quarterback. I was so excited.

We killed them and watched as the defense had to run.

All those drills, in addition to physical conditioning, were also great psychological and confidence conditioners for us as a team, even for the guy who ended up in the bathroom stall. Because for the next four years, whenever we took the field, we knew that our opponent hadn’t gone through anything at all similar to what we had. Coach Mick’s mind-set dovetailed perfectly with my mantra:
Somewhere he is out there, training while I am not. One day, when we meet, he will win.

We
were the ones doing the extra work, and we knew it.

On top of all that conditioning, spring football practice in 2006 went well also. I knew that it was Chris Leak’s team as the starting quarterback. He was a senior, he knew the system, and he had a lot of experience. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to contribute that first year, but I certainly hoped to have the opportunity to do so and was prepared to compete for playing time. Coach Meyer always said that he felt blessed to have two leaders at the quarterback position that year.

I played pretty well in the Orange and Blue Game that spring and led my team to victory, but the thing I was most proud of? I never lost once in Coach Mick’s mat drills, and after that first year of drills, he told me that I wasn’t going to be doing them anymore. As a quarterback, they apparently didn’t want to risk my getting hurt trying to open a bathroom stall door.

And, thankfully, throughout everything, Coach Meyer didn’t pay attention to any of the media reports. Some sports writers took it upon themselves to write articles proclaiming that my style of play would never work in college football. In many ways I thought I’d silenced this debate from my freshman year of high school with how I’d played, and yet here I was again, four years later, hearing the same old “playing position by body stereotype” argument—only this time it was disguised as analysis:

My type of quarterback wouldn’t work in college.

I didn’t have the right body type to run the spread offense.

I wouldn’t survive in the SEC with my style of play against the kind of defenses we would see.

I could help the team more at a different position.

I should be a tight end.

Or a fullback.

I read the articles, and they simply served as more fuel for all my workouts. I would show them, and I would stay a quarterback.

After all, I think I did okay in high school. My first summer at Florida, my mom and I went to pick up a trophy at an awards ceremony at the National Quarterback Club in Washington, DC. I won for high school, Vince Young for college, and Ben Roethlisberger for the pros. The trophy was enormous—it came up to my waist. Making matters worse, I couldn’t check it for the flight, so I had to carry that huge trophy through the airport and onto the flight. Embarrassing.