FanHouse Rough Draft

In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 10 of 10 (read Chapter 9 here) installments that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

At 6:35 in the morning, gray mist encircles the stone barracks of West Point. First-year cadets stand in the hallways counting down the minutes until formation, Cadet Caleb Campbell tucks in the corner of his bed, the green cover tight and without wrinkles. He adjusts his hat and steps outside of Eisenhower Barracks room E313. It's 6:39 in the morning. Look quickly across the timeless cadet procession standing in the courtyard, past the parade ground bleachers that say Beat Navy, and it could be any year, any time, but only one place: West Point at morning.

In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 9 of 10 (read Chapter 8 here) installments that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

The corner of Craig Stevens' left eye is twitching. He can't stop it. We're sitting across the table from one another and again and again the eye twitches, a metronome of ocular discomfort.

"Can you see it?" he asks.

"Yeah," I say.

He nods, flexes his arms on the table, "I can't get it to stop. I was really worried about it, but then my girlfriend told me that sometimes your eye can start twitching when you get really stressed."

"Has your eye ever done this? Before a big game or anything like that?" I ask.

"No," Stevens says, "I think it's going to stop as soon as I finish the combine."

In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 8 of 10 (read chapter 7 here) installments that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

It's a little more than two weeks until the NFL Combine and Kurt Hester remains furious with our forty starts.

"Y'all are starting like a bunch of p*****s," he says, "They're f**king horrible."

So horrible, in fact, that for our morning workout Hester has been forced to dig into his massive collection of workout supplies, stored in large plastic blue bins. Desperation has driven Hester to pull out Velcro belts that he can fasten to our waists. In Hester's terminology these are called pop belts.

"They don't even make these anymore," says Hester as he distributes the pop belts to us. "I had to break them out of the bottom of the bins because y'all just weren't listening to me about getting good first steps."

In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 7 of 10 installments (read Part 6 here) that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

Our forty times are not improving. And Kurt Hester is coming undone over our continued failure. With less than a month to go until the combine, Hester sets up six taped lines on the field at a distance of ten yards. "I want y'all to try and run ten yards in six steps," he says. The idea behind the tape strips is to make us take longer strides so that we can get out of our starts faster. I do my best to make my strides match the six pieces of tape, but they're too far apart for me to cover in only six steps.

In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 6 of 10 installments (read Part 5 here) that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

None of those stresses of the guys I'm training with compares to Army's Caleb Campbell (right), a 6'2" 229 pound safety from Perryton, Texas. His future plans are extraordinarily simple: either he's drafted by an NFL team or he's likely shipped to Iraq as a 2nd Lieutenant. Campbell doesn't announce this to the rest of the guys he's training with. Instead he confides it to me one afternoon as I review his NFL Combine questionnaire. One minute we're talking about Wolf from the new American Gladiators television show, and the next moment Campbell unburdens himself. "I need this Bookman," Campbell says, "or else my ass is headed to Iraq."

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In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis (right) recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 5 of 10 installments (read Part 4 here) that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

The next day's workout begins quietly, Big Mike's absence has left a giant void, literally and figuratively. Kurt Hester senses the change in atmosphere brought on by Michael Oher's departure, and steps up his chatter accordingly. As we're running forty's, Hester encourages us. "This training is all about gaining an inch," he says, "I wish I could gain an inch. It would help my porn career." Greeted with laughter in between sets, Hester continues, "If I could keep gaining inches like you guys are gaining inches, I'd roll out to the bar in athletic shorts, hike my leg up, and say, 'What's up ladies?' "

In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 4 of 10 installments (read Part 3 here) that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

As the days dwindle for Michael Oher (right) to decide whether to leave school early or return to Ole Miss, we end another workout and gather in front of the television. The Program, the 1993 college football movie starring Omar Epps, Halle Berry, and Craig Sheffer, as quarterback Joe Cane, is on the television.

For the first time I feel old since most of these guys were in first or second grade in 1993, when the movie came out. In fact, the majority of the guys haven't ever seen the movie before. As we watch, in one scene the starting quarterback, Joe Cane, complains because his father has never come to see him play a football game. Sitting in a large red chair to the left of the television, Big Mike Oher reacts. "Never come to see him play a football game?" asks Oher, scoffing. "I've only seen my own dad about four times."

In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 3 of 10 installments (read Part 2 here) that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

The next morning it hurts to roll out of bed. I've completed one day of training and have two months to go. At the end of the first day's training session, Kurt Hester divided the class of 16 into two even groups of eight that were posted on the wall in the locker room. Hester wants to do this because it allows him to give the individual attention to each of the athletes. "Sixteen is just too many all at once," he tells me as we stand off to the side of the field watching the first group finish off their workout.

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In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 2 of 10 installments (read Part 1 here) that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

The night before the first day of combine training, I can't sleep. It's Sunday January 6, and all of the college players are being picked up at the airport and brought to their apartments. By now I know a couple of their names, Frank Okam (far right) defensive tackle from Texas, Caleb Campbell safety from Army, and a few other vague designations, a tight end from Cal, a linebacker from Illinois. Late at night, unable to sleep, I climb out of bed and go downstairs to the computer where I spend over an hour scanning through player rosters and player bios.

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In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis (second from the right) recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 1 of 10 installments that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

Chances are the fattest and slowest football player in the NFL is faster than you are. You don't believe this, and right now you're scoffing at the very idea. You've seen these guys run when they try and recover a fumble or try and chase down a wide receiver in the open field. You've seen their bellies come bouncing out over their pants, and you've sat at home from the comfort of your couch and laughed at them, thinking all along that if you were blessed with their size you'd be an NFL player too. These fat men in the NFL may be rich, you think, but they aren't athletes. At the very least you, king of the plasma screen domain that is your basement, are definitely faster than them.

You, my friend, are wrong.

I know this because I went through NFL Combine training with some of the top college football players in America. We were all training for the 2008 NFL Combine, our shot at glory and the 2008 NFL Draft. Well, their shot.