Zeprock posted an interesting thread over on the baseball forums asking the question of how far did you make it in baseball. Figured I'd shamelessly steal the thread and rebrand it for football.
I played lots of pickup two-hand tag games growing up. Freshman year in Iowa I played offensive guard for the scout team... about as banished as you could be on the frosh squad. The conference had a 5th quarter rule that let bench warmers get in for some game time once the official game was over which was cool, I got to play a couple minutes. Mostly I was the slowest and poorest conditioned guy on the team.
Moved back to Chicago Sophomore/Junior years and played in the Chicago Park District flag football league. We also all scrimmaged against each other playing full tackle without pads. Ah to be a dumb teenager again. It was these years I added inches and weight.
Senior year we move to northern Wisconsin. We toured the high school towards the end of my junior year and I recall the head coach seeing me in the lunch room, shooting up from the table and walking over to me and my mom asking me if I'd play football next year. I said I would! We move up and in training camp I won the starting left tackle post for the varsity team and started all 9 games, earning the most improved player of the year award. I don't recall my bench or squat numbers but I ran the 40 in 6.09 seconds.
I was recruited by half a dozen small schools (mostly DIII and one JuCo) in the IA/MN/WI area and visited 3 of them, settling on Carroll College (now University). As a freshman in training camp I secured the 2nd string right guard position but wound up leaving the team to focus on studies. The guys were putting in a ton of time in film study and weight room and being the only computer science major on the team I didn't have time to balance all that plus play massive amounts of video games
.
Years later work colleagues and I start up a work "league" that's two-hand touch and all about raining TDs all over the field. And yes, I did make custom cards for everyone this last year and it was AWESOME!
High school pics
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/football927.jpg"></a>
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/football_B10-5g.jpg"></a>
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/hodagfootball1.jpg"></a>
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/hodagfootball.jpg"></a>
Upper Deck card back when you could order them through their website
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/Card01a.jpg"></a><img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/Card02a.jpg"></a>
The work league
<img height="525" width="375" src="http://jplarson.com/projects/Quad/Larson.jpg"></a>
I played lots of pickup two-hand tag games growing up. Freshman year in Iowa I played offensive guard for the scout team... about as banished as you could be on the frosh squad. The conference had a 5th quarter rule that let bench warmers get in for some game time once the official game was over which was cool, I got to play a couple minutes. Mostly I was the slowest and poorest conditioned guy on the team.
Moved back to Chicago Sophomore/Junior years and played in the Chicago Park District flag football league. We also all scrimmaged against each other playing full tackle without pads. Ah to be a dumb teenager again. It was these years I added inches and weight.
Senior year we move to northern Wisconsin. We toured the high school towards the end of my junior year and I recall the head coach seeing me in the lunch room, shooting up from the table and walking over to me and my mom asking me if I'd play football next year. I said I would! We move up and in training camp I won the starting left tackle post for the varsity team and started all 9 games, earning the most improved player of the year award. I don't recall my bench or squat numbers but I ran the 40 in 6.09 seconds.
I was recruited by half a dozen small schools (mostly DIII and one JuCo) in the IA/MN/WI area and visited 3 of them, settling on Carroll College (now University). As a freshman in training camp I secured the 2nd string right guard position but wound up leaving the team to focus on studies. The guys were putting in a ton of time in film study and weight room and being the only computer science major on the team I didn't have time to balance all that plus play massive amounts of video games
.Years later work colleagues and I start up a work "league" that's two-hand touch and all about raining TDs all over the field. And yes, I did make custom cards for everyone this last year and it was AWESOME!
High school pics
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/football927.jpg"></a>
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/football_B10-5g.jpg"></a>
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/hodagfootball1.jpg"></a>
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/hodagfootball.jpg"></a>
Upper Deck card back when you could order them through their website
<img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/Card01a.jpg"></a><img src="http://www.jplarson.com/projects/hodags/Card02a.jpg"></a>
The work league
<img height="525" width="375" src="http://jplarson.com/projects/Quad/Larson.jpg"></a>