It was never easy being Club Q in Colorado Springs.
I grew up here in the Mile High City, and that meant coming up with ways to make it seem more exciting than it actually was. Like the time the football team would play every Friday night of the football season. Or the time someone would call out “Big Cheese” on the public address system, and everyone would yell, “Big cheese!” It was a little silly, but who wasn’t?
As a college kid on his own, it meant finding out about sports, finding out about the college team that he didn’t go to, and trying to make the most out of what limited free time he had. At the time, he did this by going to games and making friends with friends who went to games and making friends with friends who didn’t.
There was never enough free time — unless you counted football season — because while I was trying, everyone else was doing something else. In Colorado Springs, it was going to college parties, or attending school events. But there was one thing that he always kept his eye on — the college football team. The Colorado Football Cardinals.
The idea was for him to make the team. The idea was that it wouldn’t be anything to be a college football player, except a little more than you can eat on a Friday. He wasn’t just talking about himself — he was talking about the whole school, all those other kids who did well in their classes, and everyone else who wasn’t. He wasn’t just talking about himself — he was talking about the whole community and the whole state.
I remember him being a little bit of a rebel. I remember him saying things like, “I will not go to that party” when he would go to his friends’ parties. I remember him saying things like, “I will not go to this school event” when he would go to his friends’ school events. I remember him saying things like, “I will not eat at the cafeteria with those people” when he would go to school to eat at the cafeteria with his friends.
I remember him being a little bit of a rebel even though it would be against everything that he believed in. Everything that he wanted. He knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to play in the NFL, and he knew exactly what it would take to get there. He knew that