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

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 070.449796092
EAN: 9781594201783
ISBN: 1594201781
Label: Penguin Press HC, The
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: July 03, 2008
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Sales Rank: 6035
Studio: Penguin Press HC, The

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Drawing on rare access to an NFL team’s players, coaches and facilities, the author of The New York Times bestseller Word Freak trains to become 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 master

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 #9. He was expected to perform all the drills and regimens required of other kickers. He was 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, he endured the hazing that befalls all rookies, he gorged on 4,000 daily calories, he 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, to banish self-doubt.

While Fatsis honed his mind and drove his body past exhaustion, he communed with every classic athletic type—the affable 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, 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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Great insight into the game
Stefan Fatsis takes us inside the game of football and also takes us into his struggle to be accepted by these Sunday warriors, who battle pain, fear of failure and fear of what success may do to them.

Fatsis reminds us that most football players aren't stars who are set financially for life. Instead, they play a game that is run like a business.

Rating:

- I really got a "kick" out of this book (pun intended)
Even the most dedicated fan of the National Football League (NFL) can't possibly know what goes on "behind the curtain." Most of us know only what we see on Sundays or what we read in Monday's newspaper. Sure, we think we know our favorite players and all their foibles. You can lay all that aside after reading this book.

Stefan Fatsis suceeds in infiltrating the most sacred of grounds: the NFL locker room and the strange world that surrounds it. We get a glimpse of what it is like to know that your very job hinges on the next play in training camp. Players come and go like the tides. Coaches rule like tyrrants and the pecking order among them becomes painfully evident. So does the stress created in this bubbling cauldron they call professional football.

Reading about the personalities of the players--from the lowly undrafted rookie free agent to the highest paid super-star--reminds ... Read More

Rating:

- okay book but nothing exciting
I have been a huge Broncos fan for many years, and when I saw this book was being printed I ordered a copy right away. I think I was looking for a book that would give some real insight into what a player goes through to play in the NFL, and I was anxious to read about interesting things involving the Broncos. This book provides only small amounts of both.

First off, I must give the author credit for having the guts and determination to train and participate in the Broncos' training camps. He does give some glimpses into what life is like for players trying to make the team, and he gives slightly more detailed descriptions about some of the individual players he interviewed. But most of his book seems to focus on himself and his efforts to perform like an NFL kicker. After a while it gets boring reading about him practicing, missing kicks, wanting to perform better, standing around watching others ... Read More

Rating:

- This ain't no Word Freak
Jason Elam, the Broncos' most successful place kicker described a kicker's experience in the NFL as "hours and hours of boredom surrounded by a few seconds of panic."

A few seconds of panic set in the moment I realized Mr. Fatsis was barred by the NFL from participating in even a pre-season game. A few more seconds of panic followed as I read Mr. Fatsis' bitter and unjustified complaints about why the NFL was steadfast in its refusal to allow him to kick in a pre-season game. According to Mr. Brian McCarthy, an NFL PR personnel, "people are paying seventy, ninety, a hundred and twenty dollars and then having someone from off the street come in - it could have the appearance of an exhibition, which we fight. I wouldn't use the word joke, but..." In response, and a shameful one at that, Mr. Fatsis proceeds to call the NFL a fraud for forcing fans to buy tickets to pre-season games, and a joke because ... Read More

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