Camp is now beginning to draw to a close, and only now can I begin to appreciate the gigantic level of power output my body has endured for the last couple of weeks. If I have any advice for my buddy Ryan Doyal (who will attempt to walk on at Syracuse next year and is chronicling the oft-hilarious process of doing so on his blog, Hopeless Walk On), it would be this: miss as much training camp as possible, buddy.

In all seriousness, it hasn’t been that bad. We’ve definitely bonded a lot as a team, and I just feel blessed to still be able to play the game that I love. And now, thanks to the Grinnell College Football Blog (the wonders of symbiosis in action), you can check out what we’ve been up to via YouTube. Keep an eye out for left guard #50 running train out there:

I find myself writing this post because for the first time in quite a while I actually have a minute or two to do so. I happened upon some time to kill between my 8:00 and 11:00 classes. Having multiple classes is still a somewhat novel concept for me, considering that CC’s block plan had me taking one class at a time last year. I must now reintroduce myself to the skill set of time management, which most likely means I should be reading one of my 23 books instead of blogging (another advantage of CC’s block plan: I didn’t ever have to buy 23 books at once).

Things have continued to go somewhat swimmingly football-wise (I use the word swimmingly because due to the last two days of nonstop rain here in Iowa we basically have been swimming. Puns: a liberal arts education at work). I’m starting to understand the nuances of Coach Hawsey’s shot-run offense, which leaves my legs feeling like bullet-riddled bags of sand before, during and after practice.

Every team has its own little quirks and its own vocabulary. At CC, Joe Karwin was the only person I had ever heard call girls “bitties” and I thought he was a lunatic for doing so; here at Grinnell the word is commonplace. There are more Packers fans on this team than I had previously met in my entire life, which is likely the main reason that I lock my door at night. Then there is also the curious phenomenon of naming positional units. The wide receivers and tight ends call themselves “The Justice League”. For the offensive linemen, I created the name “Party of Five”, which refers both to the amount of offensive linemen on the field and to our ridiculous lack of depth at the position.

However, the positional name that is easily the most ridiculous of them all is the defensive back group led by junior Marquis Bradley, who calls his unit “G-Force”. Granted, the name refers mainly to Grinnell’s Honor G logo and is somewhat clever. Unfortunately when the defensive backs originally coined this name, they had no way of knowing that Jerry Bruckheimer would soil their reputation by turning their monicker into an animated guinea pig movie.

Above: “G-Force”: a fearsome group of defensive backs or a fun-loving romp for the whole family? Or are these two things even mutually exclusive?

Marquis and his defensive brethren have attemted to save face by beginning to pronounce the name “G-Fowce”, but the damage has been done. On the bright side, whenever opposing teams throw a pick they’ll have to come to terms with the fact that they just gave up a turnover to a bunch of guinea pigs.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at chris@thed3experience.com All original material copyright © 2008-2009 Chris Jarmon

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Posted: 08|28|09 at 2:51 pm. Filed under: My Life as a D3 Player.
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