A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL Hardback - 2008

by Stefan Fatsis

Drawing on rare access to an NFL team's players, coaches and facilities,the author of The New York Times bestseller Word Freak trains tobecome a professional-caliber placekicker. As he sharpens his skills,he gains surprising insight into the daunting challenges physical,psychological, and intellectual that pro athletes must masterIn Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis infiltrated the insularworld of competitive ScrabbleĀ players, ultimately achieving'expert' status (comparable to a grandmaster ranking inchess). Now he infiltrates a strikingly different subculture profootball. After more than a year spent working out with astrength coach and polishing his craft with a gurulike kickingcoach, Fatsis molded his fortyish body into one that could standup barely to the rigors of NFL training. And over threemonths in 2006, he became a Denver Bronco. He trained withthe team and lived with the players. He was given a locker anduniforms emblazoned with #9. He was expected to perform allthe drills and regimens required of other kickers. He was unlikehis teammates in some ways most notably, his livelihood wasnot on the line as theirs was. But he became remarkably likethem in many ways: He risked crippling injury just as they did,he endured the hazing that befalls all rookies, he gorged on4,000 daily calories, he slogged through two-a-day practices inblistering heat. Not since George Plimpton's stint as a DetroitLion more than forty years ago has a writer tunneled so deeplyinto the NFL.At first, the players tolerated Fatsis, or treated himlike a mascot, but over time they began to think of him as oneof them. And he began to think like one of them. Like theother Broncos like all elite athletes he learned to perfect amotion through thousands of repetitions, to play through pain,to silence the crowd's roar, to banish self-doubt.While Fatsis honed his mind and drove his body pastexhaustion, he communed with every classic athletic type theaffable alpha male, the overpaid brat, the youthful phenom,the savvy veteran and a welter of bracingly atypical playersas well: a fullback who invokes Aristotle, a quarterback whoembraces yoga, a tight end who takes creative writing classes inthe off-season. Fatsis also witnessed the hidden machinery ofa top-flight football franchise, from the God-is-in-the-detailsstrategizing of legendary coach Mike Shanahan to the icy calculationwith which the front office makes or breaks careers.With wry candor and hard-won empathy, A FewSeconds of Panic unveils the mind of the modern pro athleteand the workings of a storied sports franchise as no book everhas before.