Effort.

Evans, David Allan

For starters, my wife Peg had our first child, Tammy, in May, and when she was just two weeks old I took a bus all the way from our hometown, Hartley, Iowa, to Edmonton, Canada to try out for a pro football team. I knew Peg was capable of handling things without me, but I still didn't like leaving her alone with the new baby if I could help it. My boss at Wal Mart, where I'm in charge of the Lawn and Garden Department, wasn't too happy about me taking so much time off. I also wasn't crazy about living in a dorm room for three weeks. I'd never been away from Peg for more than a weekend. I was already missing her when the bus pulled out of the Hartley bus station.

I was one of the four rookie defensive tackles. Two of the guys were from the Big Ten and another guy was from Oregon State. Of the 16 rookies in the camp, I was the only one from a small college, St. Jude's College in Alba, Iowa, which isn't exactly in the habit of sending players to the pros. In fact, as far as I know, I'm the first player from St. Jude's to try out for any pro team in any sport.

The reason I was in Canada was because a line coach from the Edmonton Huskies, Charlie Dawkins, saw me play in a game against a college in North Dakota. He happened to be scouting a player for the other team. But he must've liked me because he came down to St. Jude's just after the season ended and talked to me and my coach, timed me in the 40-yard dash, and put me through some drills. Then about a month later he sent me a tryout contract. If I made the team, I could then sign a regular contract for one or two years.

I made sure I got myself into good shape before I went to Edmonton. I had the whole winter and early spring to work out, and I spent a lot of time in the Hartley YMCA. Even though I had a full-time job, I lifted every night--lots of bench presses and curls. I did some jogging too, and some step climbing at the baseball stadium. My friend Max Hayslip, who was going back for his last season at St. Jude's, worked out with me, and we'd time each other in the 40. I was averaging 4.7, which is very good for a defensive tackle who weighs 270.

It didn't take more than a couple of days in the camp to find out that the coaches were high on both me and Ed Duprey. He was one of the three black rookies and was from Michigan State. I don't know if they told Duprey the same thing they told me, but what they told me was that there was definitely room for one more defensive tackle on the team, and it would probably be either me or Duprey. I couldn't tell for sure, but I was thinking at the time that maybe that was a way to hype a guy up so he'd try harder. Tell him that he's only got one man to beat out. That was what one part of me was thinking, anyway. Another part was thinking that what the coaches said was fiat-out true. The coaches also said that whoever won the spot had to play both defensive tackle and defensive end. In the Canadian league they don't carry as many men on a squad as they do in the NFL, so you have to be more versatile. I'd played defensive end in high school and in my freshman year of college, so I knew I had an edge on Duprey because he'd never played anything but defensive tackle.

Duprey was from the rough side of Chicago, very scrappy, and his hands were huge. Just by looking at him, you knew he'd been in a lot of tough situations, on and off the football field. He was six-four, like me, and he weighed 285. On the first day, both of us ran a 4.7 40, the fastest time of all the linemen. But when we started knocking heads on the second day, with tackling drills, I noticed right away that Duprey was a fierce hitter. I'd heard of his reputation for flattening running backs, but I had to see him hit to believe it. I knew there was no way I could compete with Duprey on the matter of hitting people. But I'd also heard that he didn't always have patience. Most running backs, if they're good, will find a way to adjust to the big defensive power players who come right at them in a straight line every time. A good runner will learn to slide off of them or fake them out. And so defensive linemen have to have patience. And yet, a guy like Duprey, when he gets a big finger on you, you are usually going down, and going down hard. Hitters like him can really ring your bell.

I've never been a huge hitter, but I do have good speed, as I said, and excellent lateral movement, and some patience. And so in certain situations and against the tricky running backs I knew I could be a surer tackler than Duprey, if not as vicious. It was obvious that neither one of us lacked effort. That's the word my Hartley High coach, Mr. Johannson, used all the time. Effort. In the locker room before a game or at half time, you might hear that word 20 times. He said you either have it or you don't have it. And if you have it you might as well use it because it can take you a long way, on the football field as well as off of it. Some of the players thought he was a little corny, but everybody respected him as a coach because he knew how to win football games. His teams won 37 games in a row, and that's still an Iowa record.

The first three days in the camp were for rookies only. They had us doing all kinds of tackling drills, and we had a lot of sessions in the classroom learning plays and overall strategy. And then the veterans came in on the fourth day and we started to scrimmage and go head to head with them. Everybody knows that the pros are a big step up for a college athlete. In my case, coming from a small college, it was several steps up. But one of the exciting things about being in a pro camp is that you see these veterans in action and even go against them, and you figure out that if they can invite you to try to take a job away from one of them, you must be pretty good yourself. It makes you feel worthy just to be wearing the same uniform.

Even though I was really missing Peg and Tammy, the first week in Edmonton was okay. That week I had the best time in the 40 of all the linemen except for Harvey Pinkston, the starting left offensive tackle who's been all-pro for the last three years. He had to have been born an offensive tackle, and I mean that word "offensive" sincerely. No coach can teach a man the things that Harvey Pinkston can do on a football field. They could put a blindfold on him for the season and he would still be all-pro.

One night I got to talking with one of the veterans, a tight end named Ross Berrington, and he told me a story about Pinky, which is what everybody calls him. Berrington and Pinky had been good friends ever since they played for the same junior college in California, and they'd talk to each other on the phone sometimes. Berrington knew Pinky was a first-rate player, but also that Pinky had pretty much lost interest in football after junior college. He had scholarship offers from some

of the big schools on the West Coast, but he got married and took a job in a factory. One day near the end of his first season in the CFL, Berrington called Pinky up and they were talking, and Pinky mentioned that he might be laid off because the company he worked for was cutting back. Then Berrington said to him, "Come on up, man, they're not that good." And sure enough, Pinky got himself in shape and because of Berrington he got a tryout before the next season, and the rest is history. Pinky is the flat-out best offensive tackle in the CFL, and he makes around a million a year. In fact, he's so good he may be going to the NFL in a year or two, if he wants to.

The second week at camp we got down to serious business. Knocking heads with the veterans was not easy, especially when one of those veterans is Harvey Pinkston. Charlie Dawkins made sure that Duprey and I got plenty of work opposite Pinky, who of course knows all the tricks in the book. He can beat you in a thousand ways. I could hold my own with him some of the time, but the truth is, I dreaded the days I had to go against him. By the time the scrimmage was over, I was exhausted, both mentally and physically.

Duprey didn't do any better against Pinky. There was just no consistent way to get through him to the backs or the quarterback, except if you were lucky or if Pinky was having a bad day, which was pretty rare. Whenever the other two rookie tackles went against him, he just ate them up. One of the guys quit after the second scrimmage with the veterans, and everybody knew the reason he quit was because he'd had enough of Pinky.

After the second week, my attitude began to change. I was really missing Peg and Tammy, and the tryout camp was beginning to be a drag. The practices and scrimmages kept getting longer and longer and I was liking it all less and less. The pressure and competition were so fierce that every day you had to go out and prove yourself all over again. And yet I was still hanging in and impressing the coaches. Duprey and I were going back and forth. He'd have a good day, then I'd have a good day, and so on. And it was the same old story: He had mostly power and I had mostly speed and finesse.

By the third and final week of camp, 11 rookies out of the 16 had either quit or been cut. The only defensive linemen left were me and Duprey and the guy from Oregon State. As for the player from Oregon State, whose last name was Clark, I didn't know what was keeping him there, because even though he wasn't short on effort, there was no way he could compete with me or Duprey for speed and quickness and tackling ability. And yet he reminded me of those guys in high school and college who maybe weren't the most talented athletes, but they had so much desire that the coaches had to find a place for them. When the whistle blew to start the game, they'd always be out there on the field with an attitude, ready and eager to hit somebody.

In that final week I was missing Peg and the baby so much that I was calling her every night after supper. We'd talk about our future, I'd tell her that the coaches were very high on my chances of making the team, and then I'd mention the bundle of money a rookie could get if they signed him. I figured that I could get anywhere between eighty and a hundred thousand, just for the first year, which is a whole lot more than I get at Wal-Mart, I can tell you.

Then we'd talk about buying a big house and another car and even a cabin next to a lake in Minnesota. Then, talking about all these things, I'd start to get even lonelier, and sick of football, sick of banging heads every day, something I'd been doing ever since junior high. And then I'd tell Peg that all I wanted to do was go home and be with her and Tammy. I was torn, and she knew it.

It was Thursday morning, the next to the last day of the tryout camp. We were in the locker room suiting up for another scrimmage. Taking my time putting on the pads, I was in an agitated state of mind. So much so that something came over me I'd never felt before; it was a strange feeling that almost made me laugh, it was so strong and insistent. The feeling came just after I tied my shoes. I suddenly noticed that I had two knots instead of the usual one knot. All through high school and college I had the habit, before any game, of tying a double knot. I think it was more or less symbolic of my wanting to dig in, to let go with some effort, as coach Johannson would say. Looking around at Duprey and Pinky and the others, especially the ones I knew I was going to go out there on the field and bang heads with, I was feeling extremely confident. Cleats make you taller--not just literally but in other ways--and I was about seven feet tall by the time I walked out of that locker room.

And then I went out and had my best scrimmage by far, and I even beat Pinky a few times and made two great solo tackles and was in on three others. On one play I busted through right between Pinky and another veteran and got to the ball carrier before he could make his cut--really put a hit on him, clean but hard. When he finally got to his feet, he was woozy, and his face was the color of Kentucky Bluegrass. The coaches were high on me for that, and they didn't chew the veterans out for letting me get through them either--they just praised me.

When I walked back into the locker room afterwards, I was still seven feet tall. Duprey, who'd had no more than an average scrimmage, didn't say anything to me, but we never talked much anyway, though there was mutual respect between us. I noticed he was a little stooped and downcast when he stepped into the shower, not as upright as usual. Any man who competes in sports knows that posture and that look. Nobody has to say anything because words have absolutely nothing to do with it. I didn't go around talking cocky either. When you flat-out beat somebody, and they know they've been beaten, it's best to just shut up. That day I made an important discovery: I could make up my mind to do something and then go out and do it. It was the best I've ever felt as a football player, and maybe as a human being.

But then later when I was at dinner with a few of the players, I wasn't feeling quite as confident. The high had pretty much worn off. I was saying to myself: Don't be so stupid as to think Duprey can't come out tomorrow morning with the same feeling you had in the locker room before the scrimmage today, and do what you did.

After I got back to my room I called Peg and told her I was quitting. The first thing she said was that she wondered if I was afraid I'd regret the decision, maybe not now but someday down the road.

"I honestly don't know," I said, "but I know I don't need this anymore."

Peg can tell when I'm serious.

"You know I want you home," she said. "If that's what you really want."

"That's what I really want," I said.

The next morning before practice I went to Dawkins' office and told him I was quitting. Looking up from his playbook, he looked stunned. "What the hell are you talking about.?" he said.

"I'm going home," I said.

"Hey, listen," he said, "everybody here knows you can make this team."

"I know it," I said. He kept staring up at me, and I just stood there and looked down at him. The silence held us, and he started to shake his head.

"This is what you really want to do," he said.

"Yes," I said. Then I thanked him for letting me try out, shook his hand and left.

By noon I was on the bus heading for Iowa. I was feeling terrific and sad at the same time. Ten years of football were suddenly over. Two years in junior high, four years in high school, four years in college. I was elated, knowing I would never have to pull on a cold, wet jockstrap again, or knock heads with guys like Harvey Pinkston. And yet at the same time I knew that I would never again be in this good a shape. The day before had to have been the peak of my life as a football player, and yet it was also my very last day as a football player.

About five miles out of Edmonton, I began to settle back and look around a little. Across the aisle and three rows down, I saw a huge, familiar head. I kept my eye on it, and when it turned slightly, I saw who it was. Ed Duprey. He had quit too, on the same day. All I had to do was stick it out one more day and I could've no doubt had my contract and maybe a hundred thousand bucks. The thought nailed me like a Pinky forearm to the jaw. I closed my eyes a few seconds and imagined the big house Peg and I and Tammy would have, the cabin up in Minnesota, all of it. One more day, and it could've been ours, just for signing my name on a piece of paper.

I had second thoughts, I can tell you.