Don’t Take No for an Answer
Playing college football was a passion since as long as I can remember and I always dreamed of playing college football. Growing up on the west coast, I had dreams of suiting up for UCLA and the University of Washington. By the end of my senior season, my high school football coach told me I was too small to play college. With no offers to play at the collegiate level, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. During the next four years of my life, the Marine Corps instilled discipline, responsibility and a hard-working mentality. In the summer of 2001, while overseas, I taught myself how to long snap.
In 2002, after being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, I looked around at several schools on the West Coast. While coach after coach told me I was too small to play, I found a home at Scottsdale Community College. After almost being cut, I worked hard to get sufficient game film and marketed myself to over 100 colleges. I then made phone call after phone call to college coaches hounding them for a scholarship or at least a chance to play at their college. After a three month period of coaches telling me “No”, I found one college in Louisville, KY (University of Louisville) who was looking for a player to long snap. I never in my wildest dreams thought of playing football in Kentucky, but three years later with an NCAA record in one hand and the Orange Bowl ring in another, I would not have traded my college experience for anything in the world.
