Senior Year Box Set полностью

“It’s an old southern town with small-town values. It’s sort of amazing that they’ve built such a football power here. On game day, it goes from a speck on the map to the largest city in South Carolina by a country mile. Half of the 300,000 people who show up have no affiliation with the school. They are a bunch of good-ol’-boys from the Blue Ridge Mountains, farmers, ranchers, and military guys from the Second World War and Korea. Back in those days, it was Clemson A&M. They love the school and are fiercely protective of it and respectful of those who attend and graduate. You may be a ‘sissified college boy,’ but you’re their ‘sissified college boy,’” he shared.

This kid was a fount of information that I decided to take advantage of.

“What about the football players and coaching staff?” I asked.

Cole stopped our tour and smiled.

“I have a friend on the team, and he says coming here was the best decision he ever made. The coaching staff cares about the players. I have another high school friend who went to a big-time program, and he told me that they only were interested in what you could do for them. He got injured, and they pushed him to play. He ended up hurting himself worse and may never take another snap. The sad part is they’re trying to get him to transfer so they can free up his scholarship. That would never happen here.

“Coach Swank and his staff aren’t like that. They recruit character. They will pass on a four- or five-star player for a three-star if the better-ranked recruit has an attitude problem. Their philosophy is that they can coach up someone with the right attitude and work ethic. Once you commit, it’s ‘until graduation do we part.’

“From everything I’ve heard, the players love the coaches. You need to know that they don’t tolerate bad behavior. If you mess up, they’ll even send you home from a bowl game. They did that with the number-one receiver before the Championship Game with Alabama. It cost us the game, but everyone understood they were doing it for the team.

“My friend on the team says that they work hard to prepare them for possibly playing in the NFL. Coach Swank told him that only a handful will make it, so he makes sure that every football player gets the best possible education he can,” Cole said.

“I think I want to play for him,” Wolf’s dad said.

All the parents seemed to like the sound of what Clemson had to offer. I’d looked up how they ranked as far as academics for football players. They were ranked fourth compared to the top 25 football teams, behind only Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Stanford.

We were returned to the new football facility. Their head of recruiting had been sent to 36 football buildings around the country. They’d tried to take the best ideas from each to make the best facility in the nation. Two things stood out for me. They had a nap room. Hey, naps are important. You could also get your hair cut. I thought they had done a good job and didn’t see anything missing that I’d want. This was big-time football, and they knew what they were doing.

They’d also done their homework because I knew our chaperone. Terry Halsted was one of my receivers from Elite 11. My mom gave away that we’d met when she stepped up and hugged him.

“It’s so nice to see a friendly face. How have you been?” Mom asked.

He caught us up on his exploits during his senior year in Syracuse, New York. They’d made it to their state championship game, but had lost. He was currently riding the bench for Clemson but had seen some playing time over the last few games.

“I thought Elite 11 was insane with the talent we faced. I was cocky when I got here and thought because I was a star back home, I’d just step in and play day one. It was a wake-up call when I competed against players who have been in the system for three years and had developed physically. Once I figured out that the only way I would see playing time was to up my game, I started to see the field.

“Your skills will only get you so far. You have to show you deserve it,” Terry explained.

I’m not sure what I’d assumed about playing time. There would be competition, but I’d always been able to prove I was the best. What Terry said was one of those ‘aha’ moments you have when you figure out something that should have been obvious. Terry was a tremendous talent, and he hadn’t started from day one. It would have to be the right situation for me to do that. No coach in his right mind would turn the keys to his program over to an unproven quarterback, no matter how good he was.