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Title details for A Few Seconds of Panic by Stefan Fatsis - Available

A Few Seconds of Panic

A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL

by Stefan Fatsis
Stefan Fatsis
Audiobook
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1 of 1 copy available
In Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis infiltrated the insular world of competitive Scrabble players, ultimately achieving expert status (comparable to a grandmaster ranking in chess). Now he infiltrates a strikingly different subculture—pro football. After more than a year spent working out with a strength coach and polishing his craft with a gurulike kicking coach, Fatsis molded his fortyish body into one that could stand up—barely—to the rigors of NFL training. And over three months in 2006, he became a Denver Bronco. He trained with the team and lived with the players. He was given a locker and uniforms emblazoned with the number 9. He was expected to perform all the drills and regimens required of other kickers. He ws unlike his teammates in some ways—most notably, his livelihood was not on the line as theirs was. But he became remarkably like them in many ways: he risked crippling injury just as they did, endured the hazing that befalls all rookies, daily gorged on 4,000 calories, and slogged through two-a-day practices in blistering heat. Not since George Plimpton's stint as a Detroit Lion more than forty years ago has a writer tunneled so deeply into the NFL.


At first, the players tolerated Fatsis or treated him like a mascot, but over time they began to think of him as one of them. And he began to think like one of them. Like the other Broncos—like all elite athletes—he learned to perfect a motion through thousands of repetitions, to play through pain, to silence the crowd's roar, and to banish self-doubt.


While Fatsis honed his mind and drove his body past exhaustion, he communed with every classic athletic type—the afable alpha male, the overpaid brat, the youthful phenom, the savvy veteran—and a welter of bracingly atypical players as well: a fullback who invokes Aristotle, a quarterback who embraces yoga, and a tight end who takes creative writing classes in the off-season. Fatsis also witnessed the hidden machinery of a top-flight football franchise, from the God-is-in-the-details strategizing of legendary coach Mike Shanahan to the icy calculation with which the front office makes or breaks careers.


With wry candor and hard-won empathy, A Few Seconds of Panic unveils the mind of the modern pro athlete and the workings of a storied sports franchise as no book ever has before.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 17, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400127672
      • File size: 335002 KB
      • Duration: 11:37:55

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 990
    • Text Difficulty: 5-7

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      The story of one sports journalist's stint with the NFL's Denver Broncos in 2006 is refreshing. Fatsis trained for a year to get himself into shape in order to vie for the position of placekicker with the team. While the story is an engaging account, interesting in every possible way, Fatsis's narration leaves much to be desired. He's a strong writer, but his performance ability is lacking in strength and command. Racing through his memories at a hurried pace, Fatsis sounds uncomfortable in the role of narrator, and the result is a lackluster listen that deteriorates to monotony in just a few minutes. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 12, 2008
      Fatsis (Word Freak
      ) is dwarfed by any of the NFL athletes who put their bodies on the line each Sunday. But that doesn't stop him from asking to attend the Denver Broncos' training camp in hopes of learning “one very specific athletic skill”—that is, placekicking—and not to become an NFL-caliber kicker, but to become a “credible one.” Fatsis is treated like any rookie, from having to sing his alma mater's fight song minutes after stepping into the locker room to carrying the team's duffel bags and bunking in the hotel with all the other rookies. But his vibrant enthusiasm for improving his kicking ability helps his Bronco teammates accept him as one of their own. With that, the reader gets a glimpse of the true NFL, in the tradition of George Plimpton's Paper Lion
      . We see the crippling injuries that are kept secret for fear of losing playing time; the heartbreak of standing on the sidelines in camp, just aching to prove one's worth; the tears that come when the NFL dream could be over. Fatsis, too, has his own personal highs and lows through camp, enduring the long days, the trainer's visits and the sting of failure in front of coaches and players. It's an incredibly fascinating read for football fans, squashing the notion that the life of an NFL player is always glamorous.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:990
  • Text Difficulty:5-7

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