The Hy-Vee Football Academy
Kurt Warner’s sojourn as a supermarket stock boy is part of Super Bowl lore, and the NFL flame is still alive at that Iowa grocery store
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — In the retelling of Kurt Warner’s glum-to-glory career, the year 1994 serves as a montage: successive scenes of sacrifice and rejection, a dream withering each morning at dawn as he slipped into the back door of his girlfriend’s parents’ home, snagging four hours of sleep on a cot in the basement.
Warner, an undrafted free agent out of Northern Iowa, had been cut by the Packers in training camp. NFL Europe shunned him, as did the Canadian Football League, despite his numerous calls to CFL teams. Truth was, there just wasn’t much of a market for a one-year starter from a Division I-AA school. Warner spent afternoons babysitting his girlfriend’s two children (Brenda, a divorced single mom, was in nursing school) and three hours each evening lifting weights and throwing passes at UNI’s campus. At 10 p.m. he reported to work at the local Hy-Vee. Warner was paid $5.50 an hour to stock shelves, sweep floors, bag groceries and tell anyone who would listen that someday he’d be a starting quarterback in the NFL.
(MMQB.SI.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment