Rough Draft: One Soldier's Story

In "Rough Draft," lawyer-turned-writer-turned-football-player Clay Travis recounts his experience training for the 2008 NFL draft alongside some future pros. The following is Part 6 of 10 installments (read Part 5 here) that FanHouse will roll out every weekday leading up to the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25.

None of those stresses of the guys I'm training with compares to Army's Caleb Campbell (right), a 6'2" 229 pound safety from Perryton, Texas. His future plans are extraordinarily simple: either he's drafted by an NFL team or he's likely shipped to Iraq as a 2nd Lieutenant. Campbell doesn't announce this to the rest of the guys he's training with. Instead he confides it to me one afternoon as I review his NFL Combine questionnaire. One minute we're talking about Wolf from the new American Gladiators television show, and the next moment Campbell unburdens himself. "I need this Bookman," Campbell says, "or else my ass is headed to Iraq."

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(Ed. Note: The above photo of Campbell was taken after the draft, not at the training camp written about here.)

The juxtaposition between training for a career in football while his classmates prepare to graduate and go to war is not lost on Campbell. Nothing, in fact, is lost on Caleb. Being able to pick which food to eat from the menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner while training? A godsend compared to the regimented lifestyle at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Not having to get up at the crack of dawn, put on a uniform and attend class all day prior to working out? Heaven on Earth. Campbell owes his ability to train for the NFL Combine to this unique status: he's the first non-kicker to ever be invited to the NFL Combine from Army.

Campbell wears this distinction with a mixture of pride and discomfort. When the other guys talk about the big games they played in or the bowl game trips, Campbell stays silent. Later he might pull me aside and confess to feeling as if he doesn't quite belong. "I don't want to have a chip on my shoulder," he says, "but it's there and it's not going away."

Campbells's gnawing self-doubt attacks him from the inside. "Before I tore my ACL, I ran a 4.42, a record for safeties at school. Now I'm not sure I'm as fast as I was." Perryton, Texas, where Campbell played high school football is seven miles south of the Oklahoma border. Campbell's high school had just 700 students, and he played quarterback and safety. The middle child of three sons, Campbell's mother was a teacher and his dad worked for an oil company. "It was just a small Texas town, 10,000 people." Campbell says simply. "The closest mall was 90 minutes away."

His younger brother, Jeremy, missing a leg, is a member of the US Paralympics team training for the Beijing Olympics. His older brother, Jacob, is a professional bull-rider. "They tried to get me on a steer one day, and I said, 'No, thanks."

A four year starter at Army, Campbell spent a year in prep school before entering the United State Military Academy. "I had two offers, Tulsa or Army," he says. The day he arrived at West Point, cadets went to the barber shop and had their heads shaved. Shortly thereafter they learned that everywhere they went on campus they had to keep their hands clenched beside their bodies. If an upperclassman saw them with their hands unclenched, the first years were in trouble. "I got hazed so much," says Campbell, "they didn't let up on me at all."

On the football field, Campbell quickly asserted himself. "I started by the end of my freshman year," he says, "as a sophomore I had five interceptions and led the team in tackles." After his sophomore season at West Point, Campbell, like every other student at the academy, took an oath committing to the school through graduation and to five years of service after. This was a tough decision because at the time other schools were pursuing Campbell, asking him to transfer and chase an NFL career with them.

During training for the combine, unlike every other player at D1, Campbell has remained in school, commuting back and forth between the academy and football. Several times, Campbell has finished a forty, taken off his shoes, and left for the airport. Once I asked him what would happen if he wasn't back to West Point on time and stayed to train.

"Then I'm AWOL, they'd put my ass in Fort Leavenworth."

Asked how much more difficult his football playing experience was than the average player at a Big 6 conference, Campbell laughs. "I was kind of bitter about that for a long time. Because at the academy it goes: 1. academics. 2. the military and 3. sports. So you had to really balance those three different requirements out." Unlike other students, Campbell didn't get to take a reduced academic load during the fall. "We're taking 21 or 22 credit hours during the fall. It was tougher, but that's why we're the elite, why we're in the military academy. It got me at times. But I used it as motivation. Hey, I'm tired now, I've been awake for the last 28 hours, no sleep, but I gotta work because someone out there is taking my job now. That's the way I look at it." He pauses for a moment, thinks and then continues, "I'm not going to lie, there's been times when I've broken down and didn't think I could keep going anymore."

As the combine nears, Campbell frets over his draft status. "I don't know if teams understand that I can really play," he says. In fact, Campbell's owes his status as a draft eligible player to a 2005 policy enacted by the academy that rewards students with "unique talents and abilities." If Campbell is drafted he'll have an obligation to serve as an Army recruiter in the time he's not playing pro football. The rationale behind the policy is simple, in a time of war the Army needs potential recruits; a successful NFL player is more valuable to the Army on the football field than in the desert sands of Iraq. But the policy is new and Campbell will be the first football player to receive the special exemption. And he's not sure how teams will respond to his draft eligibility. "My agent gets calls all the time from teams saying, 'Wait, are you sure he's going to be able to play for us next year? It's tough to wait when you don't even know if NFL teams know they can take you.'"

Campbell masks his nervousness with an easy smile and a regal posture as he walks, shoulders square, eyes raised, chin thrust forward, after almost four years training to be a soldier, he's learned that bravery isn't being fearless, it's continuing to do what you're supposed to do even when you're scared s**tless.

He learned this when they put the cadets inside rooms filled with chemical gasses. "They'd have us drop and do push-ups, screaming, 'Trust your mask.' Your skin is burning and you're trying not to panic. Then they make us pull off our masks and we have to recite our names and social security numbers and where we're from. You breathe it all in and next thing you know you're choking, people crying, puke everywhere." Or on missions in the Catskill Mountains in the heat of summer when you were so tired you weren't sure whether the tree directly in front of you was one or two trees, whether it was dawn or dusk. When all your body begged to quit and sneak into town and sleep in a bed and be away from it all if only for a moment. That's what being a soldier meant to Caleb Campbell, finding out what injustices your body could take, and then pressing past that threshold. Ultimately, football was easy.

"Up in the mountains the worst thing is called prickly heat. Not a lot of people know about it but when you're up in the heat working for four days in a row and you haven't showered, the salt in your body crystallizes, so your pores crystallizes and it's like a thousand fire ants biting you or thousands of needles poking you at the same time. That's the worst part about being out in the field."

The second worst thing is getting in trouble at the Academy. "They give you something called hours when you get in trouble," Campbell says, "that's when you put on your full uniform and walk in a square carrying an old wooden musket for six hours in a row. On Saturday, your only real day off. At the end of every hour you get a ten minute break. It's awful, just walking around and around and around. I should know, I've done over 200 hours."

Unlike most college guys, interactions with girls are limited at the academy and governed by rules. "If you're in the same room with a girl the doors have to be open. And neither of you can ever sit down on any horizontal surface at the same time." Asked whether the Army football players receive beneficial treatment relative to the other cadets, Campbell responds quickly, "We get more food at mess," he says, "that's about it."

Campbell says he's hoping to run "consistent 4.5's at the combine. One of my weaknesses is my hips, I don't have good mobility when I backpedal, opening up, that kind of hurts me sometimes. So some teams have talked about moving me to linebacker. Put me in the box where my hips don't have to be as loose."

The path from Army to the NFL was not one that Campbell expected to follow. When he signed with Army, Campbell didn't believe he'd have a future in the NFL, and on his visit to West Point he came away amazed at the tradition, the history, at the way the soldiers marched with their shoulders squared and their heads pointed high into the air. It was the walk, he felt, of a fearless soldier, of a leader, and if Campbell couldn't be a professional football player he would be a leader of men. But now, after four years of football, after a torn ACL midway through his junior season that had him questioning his decision not to transfer to a football powerhouse a year earlier, after all this, what would come next? Football was not his life, but it might save his life.

Asked where he'll be watching the draft, Campbell says, "I don't think I'm going to watch the draft. Realistically, I'm a second day guy. I just want to be somewhere with good cell phone reception. Sometimes the stone walls inside the barracks kill the signals." Campbell will be starting draft weekend as he starts every other day, with breakfast in the mess hall alongside 4,000 other cadets.

Currently Campbell is far away from Kurt Hester in West Point, New York rehabbing a hamstring injured in the drills preceding the East/West game. In phone calls Campbell explains how difficult it is to train after draining days as a cadet, how frustrated he is with the hamstring injury, with sitting on the banks of the Hudson River while the men he's competing with for NFL roster spots train freely all over the country. Before he can be drafted, Cadet Campbell believes he has to receive leave from the academy to return to Nashville and recommence his training with Kurt Hester.

"Bookman," he says, "you need to come up here and see what it's like at West Point. I can't even describe it to you." Later he ends the phone call, "I've gotta go Bookman," Cadet Campbell says, "it's 11:30 here, lights out."


Back in Nashville Craig Stevens, a 6'5", 250 pound tight end from California, sits watching nine-year olds play 7-on-7 flag football on the indoor field at D1. It's almost time for the afternoon lift, yet Stevens sits watching the kids dart among one another, attempting to rip off each other's flags. "This was back when football was really fun," he says. "When you're just running around and there are no coaches yelling at you or people waiting to criticize what you do. It's just about having fun."

Craig Stevens has three brothers and is from a lower middle-class family in Palos Verdes, California. "The first time I ever flew in an airplane was for my recruiting visit to Cal," he says. Stevens has bright blue eyes, blond hair, a square jaw, and hands the size of frying pans. Prior to combine training, he'd been to Tennessee once, for Cal's 2006 opener against Tennessee in Knoxville. On that visit he was knocked cold on the opening kickoff, and spent the remainder of the game on the sideline. Later, on the flight back to California, he was asking teammates whether Cal won or lost.

Shortly after receiving Dixieland Delight, Stevens opened up the book and flipped through to see whether or not I'd mentioned him being knocked out in the book.

"Was it in there?" I ask.

"No," he says.

I breathe a sigh of relief. "Well, most UT fans wouldn't remember that at all."

"Really, you don't think so?" Stevens asks rhetorically.

This turns out to be a lie. When I mention his name to a couple of UT fans, both immediately respond, "Oh, the Cal guy who got knocked out on the first play."

We watch the kids play their game, until it's time to begin our lift. Once we begin lifting the kids on the sideline -- they are frequently subbing in an out at the direction of a parent -- start picking on Oregon offensive tackle Geoff Schwartz. "You need to cut your hair, you look like a girl," says one blond-haired kid to the 6'7", 340 pound Schwartz. Schwartz laughs it off. Ten minutes later he nonchalantly strolls over to me and says, "So I'm thinking about getting my hair cut before the combine."

The kids keep riding Schwartz. Eventually one of them, a brown-haired boy with freckles, approaches Schwartz.

"How much do you weigh?" asks the kid, inclining his head back and staring up at Schwartz.

"Guess," Schwartz says.

The kid is taken aback. He calls in his teammates and they gather in a large circle, occasionally looking back over their shoulders at Schwartz. Finally, after consultation with his teammates, the brown-haired kid returns to Schwartz and says, "140 pounds."

"They must have heard about your run against USC," I say, "how light you were on your feet." Earlier in the season during their game against USC, Oregon quarterback Dennis Dixon ran an option play and somehow Schwartz, the right tackle, ended up behind him. Just before being tackled Dixon pitched the ball to Schwartz. The resulting three-yard gain has been viewed thousands of times on youtube and Schwartz believes the legend of his run will continue to grow. "In five years it will be five yards. A few years more, it's a first down. Twenty years from now it will be a touchdown," Schwartz says.



Schwartz and Stevens are both nursing nagging injuries from the East/West game. Schwarz's right wrist has been aggravated so that he can't grab the bench press bar correctly and Stevens' right index finger is swollen purple so that he can't grip the bar while he's bench-pressing either. Stevens' finger was so badly broken in the past that "it will never be normal again. It gets a little better and then I mess it up again as soon as we play a game."

In addition to the game, both players are glad to be back training away from the prying eyes of scouts. "I hate those scouts at the games," says Schwartz. "They completely circle around you, and everyone is writing about you while they're looking at you. Then you do your drills and later you hear what these guys have written. It's so sneaky."

Most players tell the media that they pay no attention to what scouts or draft experts say about their status. But if you're around them long enough most guys acknowledge being aware of what scouts and internet critics write or say. "Yeah, I see some of it," says Kory Lichtensteiger. "It's hard not to." They acknowledge the awareness sheepishly, always hedging it with statements about how they know better than to take something seriously that has been posted online by someone they don't know or mentioned on television by scouts famous for their television presence more than their ability. All have been told by their college coaches not to monitor the internet, read message boards, or Google their own names. Even still, they can't resist expressing anger about being judged before they even had the opportunity to perform at the NFL Combine. "They don't know what work we're doing every day Bookman, they don't know," says Marcus Monk. Yet each day while they worked to get better at their chosen craft someone who wasn't working to get better at anything is judging them. The dichotomy is galling. "I'd like to judge the scouts, call them on their b******t," says Schwartz.

Injuries and anti-scout bias aside, everyone is in good spirits. Schwartz spends the previous night watching a television show about Bigfoot. Consequently he's full of statistics about yetis. Inevitably Schwartz's specially made Nike-shoe size, he wears a 19-EEE enters into the conversation. Our conversation centers on what would happen if an actual Bigfoot were found. In the midst of the lift we discuss various and sundry potential outcomes. Finally, Frank Okam, defensive tackle from Texas, settles the debate. "The government would cover that stuff up," he says. Everyone agrees. Later, I wonder what the governmental interest in suppressing knowledge of Bigfoot would actually be.

We're working on our explosiveness by doing step-overs with a weighted bar. The step-overs require us to step up to a high box across the leg that's closest to the high box. So if you're standing on the right side of the box, you'd step across your left leg and step up onto the box with your right foot. Then you bring your left leg up onto the box. Step across again with your right foot and step down to the ground on the left side of the box. Then you'd repeat only this time you'd step across your right leg with your left leg.

This exercise is designed to help our forty times, which we work on the next day. Right now Hester is furious with us because our starts are not good enough. So he's given up on running the rest of the forty and is focusing with laser-like precision on springing out of our stances and attacking the beginning of the fory. "Y'all have to explode on the start or there's no point in doing this. If you can't run a fast ten yards, then you're forty time is gonna suck."

To encourage us to spring out of our start, Hester lines up in a stance and explodes forward by way of example. Seeing our arched eyebrows, after his cannonball-shooting out of a cannon-esque start, Hester says, "If it was a ten-yard dash, I'd beat all your asses. I'm explosive as hell."

Hester has us do a single start while he squats down beside us, and marks where our first step lands with a piece of tape, which he initials. After we've all gone he says, "Y'all's first steps have to be at least 2.5 times your foot length." My first step is almost 3 feet, nearly a yard. Hester applauds this. "Bookman is kicking y'all's ass out of the start," Hester says. "You got to cut the number of steps you take." He claps his hands. "Otherwise you can't gain that inch. Trust me, your girlfriends all want you to gain that inch."

On our next set we all exceed our first steps. Hester marks up the difference with a new set of taped starts. "Better," he says, "but y'all still aren't exploding out like you need to."

That's partially because the complexity of the forty has everyone flummoxed. We're all overloaded with so many things to remember, that many of us aren't fluid in our movements yet. There's something about staring down that expanse of eight five-yard intervals that gives even the best athletes pause.

The forty is the single most important measurement in American sports today and there isn't a close second. Equal parts silent explosion, weighty lightness and organized anarchy, in its few seconds' wake lies the totality of gridiron life.

Told that most average fans believe they can break a 5.0 in the forty, Texas defensive tackle Frank Okam is apoplectic. "Put them on the clock and make them do it in front of people." Geoff Schwartz is blunter. "Take their money from them," he says. "Set up a forty gambling ring."

For this part, Kurt Hester is fascinated by the amount of disinformation surrounding the forty. "High school coaches are liars," he says, "They tell a kid he runs a 4.5 and the kid believes hem because they're the coach. Then they show up at a camp and we get them and they're barely breaking a 5.0. These kids may look like they're running a 4.5 on tape, but it's because the guys they are playing against are running 5.5's."

After our forty starts on this day, an entire team of high school kids from one of the top programs in middle Tennessee arrives for a combine workout. One-by-one they line up to run a laser-timed forty. No one breaks a 5.1 on the laser. Not one single player. Told their times the kids shake their heads and argue with the coaches. "It's a damn laser, it's right" Hester says. "See, any coach can steal time with a stopwatch." To prove it, Hester stands beside me and holds a stopwatch. As a kid runs he starts the stopwatch. When the kid finishes the forty, Hester clicks to stop timing. The stopwatch shows a 4.87. "What's the laser say?" Hester calls.

"5.3," says Mark Sutton.

"You didn't even notice that I started late and finished early, did you?"

I shake my head.

"That kid just ran a 5.3, his high school coach tells him he runs a 4.87. The kid doesn't know any better, he doesn't have the stopwatch. That's half a second. The difference between a legit 4.5 and a 5.0 is huge. With a stopwatch, if it isn't timed properly, you can hardly tell the difference."

College strength coaches are just as bad, potentially worse when it comes to forty times, because showing measurable improvements justifies their salaries. Says Mark Sutton, survivor of the crocodile attack, "Look, strength coaches get paid by making guys look faster and stronger than they actually are. They want measurable differences so they can show the head coaches and say, 'Look how much faster and stronger I'm making your players.' Lots of coaches and players buy it too. Then they start training for the combine and we time them and they say we're wrong. But we're not. They've just been lied to for so long about their times that they don't even know what their actual times are anymore."

Right now Kurt Hester is focusing on the most important part of the 40, the first step. "It's gotta be a controlled explosion," says Kurt Hester, smacking his hands together. If the oxymoron troubles him, he shows no concerns.

Since starting several weeks ago, we've put all the elements of the forty into work that Hester has taught us: Put all your weight forward on your right hand so that you'd immediately tip over if you moved that hand, line up your right leg behind your left leg (ideally just at the back of the left foot which is lined up as close to the line as you can manage and still have the lean), tuck your chin into your chest and when you explode out of the start don't raise your head up, cock your left hand up just above your back and fire it forward at the exact moment of your start, don't flinch at all before you start because as soon as a flinch occurs they start the clocks, control explode forward as far as you can with your first step and immediately commence pumping your arms as fast as you possibly can while striding as far as you possibly can with each step, don't breathe until the fifteen yard line, then take one gulp of air and continue through the finish. That's all. Oh, and you have to do all of that at the exact same moment with millions of dollars relying on each element working perfectly. And the difference between a great time and a poor time is .2 seconds, about as much time as it takes to smack your hands together.


After we work on our forty starts, the lifting workout comes to a screeching halt as Marcus Monk and Weston Dacus, Arkansas teammates, get into a loud debate about who has the better vertical. Finally, trainer Mark Sutton moves the vertical testing rod and sets it up just down from one of the benches. "Let's settle this thing," he says.

Sutton has Dacus, a 6'1", 235 pound linebacker, stand beside the vertical testing rod and reach his hand up as high as he can. Sutton uses the tip of his middle finger as the point from which he should raise the rod (the rod has multi-colored strips of plastic in half-inch increments that you're to jump and swipe. The higher you can touch the higher your vertical, the lowest strip is 18 inches.) To truly test your vertical you take no running start. Instead you just squat and jump.

Dacus lines up underneath the colored strips of plastic, squats once for practice and cocks his eyes back up at the plastic strips above him. Then he squats down and explodes up. At the pinnacle of his jump he nails the 37.5 vertical line, a 235 pound linebacker has just demonstrated a vertical leap of over three feet.

"S**t," says Frank Okam, defensive tackle from Texas.

"Those," says Chris Brown, "are some major hops." Everyone is in awe, but Marcus Monk. "Okay, Dacus," says Monk as he claps his hands (still covered in lifting gloves), "Okay. Let's set that mug up."

Sutton has Monk stand and reach as high as he can and then uses this mark to raise the vertical bar above him. Monk is already 6'6", and his arms are so long that by the time the tip of his index finger is accounted for the vertical bar is soaring far into the air. Frank Okam stands beside me and cranes his neck up at the fifty foot ceilings. "Why don't you just touch the ceiling instead?" he asks.

The vertical bar almost seems to be swaying in an air current we can't even feel back down on the ground. Monk steps underneath the towering vertical rod and does one stretch. Then he sinks down on his haunches and soars high into the air, just 36 inches, a mere three feet. Dacus wins by 1.5 inches, and exults over his victory.

Monk accepts defeat graciously, "I told you I had hops," he tells everyone, "but Dacus got hops too."

Frank Okam, a 6'5" 340 pound defensive tackle, shakes his head morosely. "The thing about people who can jump real high," he says, "is that they never look like they're trying. They just squat down and go." Later Mark Sutton pulls me aside while I stand craning my neck up at the vertical rod. "Monk could dunk on an 11-and-a-half foot basketball goal easy," he says. "Not even a challenge."

As the workout ends there's a mad rush to the D1 computers, Rivals.com has posted practice videos from the Senior Bowl. We watch Dorien Bryant, playing wide receiver for the North squad, burn three different defensive backs from the South. Word circulates, via an online scouting report, that Dorien Bryant (perhaps having heeded his agent's come to Jesus speech) is playing great football. When I mention this to Kurt Hester, he shrugs his head, "Hey, if he can do it with all the pressure after he's not been doing it here? Great for him."

Similarly, Jason Jones, defensive end from Eastern Michigan, has several dominant moves against tackles on video. Hester is not surprised by Jones' performance. "I'm telling you when J. Jones gets to the combine he's going to wow them." Former Tennessee tight end Brad Cottam is also impressing scouts with his fluidity on the field. Having been injured for most of last season, Cottam is getting the opportunity to show coaches what a tantalizing weapon he might be if he can stay healthy. Already word is trickling back in that Cottam's size and raw athleticism is driving him up draft boards. Peyton "Pretty Boy" Hills demonstrates good hands.

Other players don't seem to fare as well. Kory Lichtensteiger, center for Bowling Green who is dealing with a torn labrum in his shoulder, is beaten several times during one-on-one linemen drills. Wil Santi, my first trainer, shakes his head while sitting beside me watching the videos. "I can't believe Kory got beat like that," he says. Similarly Steve Justice is bull-rushed a couple of times and driven back far too quickly for a center. "A pocket collapsing like that is a disaster," says Santi. "Justice's feet look slow."

The players cycle through all the posted videos featuring their workout partners, but only a few of the drills are posted online and it's hard to tell which online scouts posting reports are reliable and worth listening to, and which scouts have no influence or track record of picking talent. After all the sound and fury of Senior Bowl practice week, no one has any idea who to listen to or what to expect.

"The scout's that put their s**t up on the internet for free, ain't worth reading," says Hester. "If they were that good, somebody would be paying them a lot more money to keep quiet."

That evening I receive a text message from Caleb Campbell back at West Point. "I got more leave, Bookman. I'm coming back to train!"