Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00INY378W | Format: PDF
Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile Description
Nate Jackson?s Slow Getting Up is an unvarnished and uncensored memoir of everyday life in the most popular sports league in America - and the most damaging to its players - the National Football League.
After playing college ball at a tiny Division III school, Jackson, a receiver, signed as a free agent with the San Francisco 49ers, before moving to the Denver Broncos. For six seasons in the NFL as a Bronco, he alternated between the practice squad and the active roster, eventually winning a starting spot - a short, tenuous career emblematic of the average pro player.
Drawing from his own experience, Jackson tells the little-known story of the hundreds of everyday, "expendable" players whose lives are far different from their superstar colleagues.
From scouting combines to training camps, off-season parties to game-day routines, debilitating physical injuries - including degenerative brain conditions - to poor pensions and financial distress, he offers a funny, and shocking look at life in the NFL, and the young men who risk their health and even their lives to play the game.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 8 hours and 19 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Audible, Inc.
- Scheduled Audible.com Release Date: March 25, 2014
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00INY378W
There is a good amount of well-written football books. There are also many football books penned by current and former players. Unfortunately, there has generally been little overlap between the two. NFL memoirs are often cash-outs after particularly improbable seasons or impending bankruptcy or financially-ruinous divorces. The player's voice is generally diluted by a co-author who invariably has a penchant for lame cliches and generic athlete platitudes. Thankfully, Slow Getting Up, Nate Jackson's reflections on his eight years on the fringes of the NFL, features quality prose and brings a fresh and insightful perspective to a rather stale format. It is one of the most entertaining football books released in the past few years and is a worthwhile read for football fans interested in learning more about the trials and tribulations facing professional football players.
After beginning with a 2008 hamstring injury that ultimately spelled the end of Jackson's career (physical maladies and the arduous rehabilitation associated with them will be a common theme throughout the piece) Slow Getting Up chronicles Jackson's improbable journey from Division III star at Menlo College to making an NFL roster and sticking around and contributing in the league for several years. Each chapter generally covers a season and the book moves at a fast clip and reads like a series of fleshed-out blog posts. He devotes early passages to outlining the draft process and his attempts to stick with the San Francisco 49ers as an undrafted free agent. Jackson is eventually traded to the Broncos during training camp in 2003 and he initially manages to stick on the practice squad before spending a few years as a backup tight end and special teamer with Denver.
I grabbed the book on my Kindle on the 17th and read through it in two nights. Jackson writes in a bloggy style that makes for easy reading. To give you some context of the time in the NFL that Jackson writes about, he was there right in the middle of the Plummer/Cutler transition in Denver. He started in San Fran, went to Denver and then spent a camp with the Mangini led Browns.
The main takeaway is how Jackson absolutely humanizes the everyday player. You feel for him, even if he comes as a little douchey at times. He tells a backroom story of the NFL that focuses on the players' struggles through the mental/physical side of the game. The NFL definitely comes off as the No Fun League for players.
He doesn't spend much time, at all, talking about superstars. He does talk about Shannon Sharpe, Rod Smith, TO and Plummer a little. He was very high on Plummer, calling him an iconoclast. But most of the time the story focused on his experiences through scout team, NFL Europe, rehab in Birmingham, the NFL and then the UFL. While reading it, the physical brutality of the game and the immaturity of the players, to a lesser extent, really came through.
A couple of things that really stuck out, and some of these are obvious from excerpts released from the book.
Jackson had NO love of Mangini, he bashed him in the last little bit of the book and it's not pretty. You wonder, if you followed Welker's comments on Belichick, if Mangini picked it up from the Hoodie.
Jackson didn't believe that many players in the NFL use HGH. He never saw it being used and never heard talk of it. At the end of the book he tried it to get back into the NFL but got nowhere with it. Not what I expected to read at all.
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