Open Tryouts for the Predators? You Never Know
Dan Ryan
Thursday March 8, 2001
What is wrong with this picture, other than my mangling some adjectives and/or the Bart Starr comparison? Hey, if Tim Marcum is the Vince Lombardi of arena football, then Gruden has to be Bart Starr. Discuss this amongst yourselves.
Anyhow, the head coach of the defending league champion holding a stopwatch at open tryouts is like Bob Stoops overseeing walk-on drills at Oklahoma or Brian Billick working rookie camp at Baltimore. This sort of activity is the reason God created assistant coaches and graduate assistants, right?
 Jay Gruden paces the sidelines during a regular-season game in 2000 Image courtesy of Drew Kennedy |
"Arenaball gave me a chance, and I got six more good years out of it," Gruden said. "It`s a great opportunity."
Most times, these things are little more than promotional tools. If enough wanna-bees show at $50 bucks a pop, maybe the front office can be re-carpetted. [Most teams don`t want to admit this, but proceeds from try-out camps usually helped make opening night payrolls in the old fly-by-night days]
Ninety percent of these guys will get a t-shirt, a pulled hamstring, a “thanks for coming out” and an admonition not to give up the day job. A few names will begin to circulate around the network and AF2. There are no Aaron Garcias or Kenny McInytres here, but there might be the guy who fills a need or a situation.
Last year, Gruden discovered Cliff Dell and Fred Ray at a tryout. Dell was a second option in the offense, and Fred Ray is on his way to becoming one of the best centers in the league.
"All because of this thing. You never know," Gruden says as the 40-yard sprints extend late into the Saturday morning.
Dan Ryan has been involved with all forms of arena football since 1988, including writing for ArenaFan when Joe Kauffman and Tim Capper aren’t killing his columns because they don’t get his jokes or perspective. His day job is at Bethune-Cookman University, which has produced both an NFL Hall of Famer (Larry Little) and an Arena Football Hall of Famer (Stevie Thomas) and his hobby is tracking how many f-bombs Adam Markowitz drops in the chat room on game nights.
