‘I Experienced Everything’ : Training Camp Is Another in a Long Line of Tough, Hot Summers for Greg Joelson

“My name is Greg Joelson, and I swear that everything you are about to read is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter what Burt Grossman will tell you later.

“I’m spending my summer here in La Jolla trying to make it as a defensive end with the Chargers. Hardest summer I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some.

“When I was 12, my mom and dad packed me off for the summer to live in a tent and work on a rock crusher shoveling gravel from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. Pulled a 36-hour shift once.

“Flying rock everywhere. Hot and dirty. I had to keep the gravel from piling up under the conveyor belts. If you wanted a break, you’d have to shovel like crazy for three hours, take 10 minutes, and then come back and shovel like mad to catch up. Did it for three straight summers.

“If school ended June 4, I was shoveling rock on June 5. If school started Sept. 4, I came home Sept. 3.

“When I was 15 they sent me to the mountains to fall timber. I set choker; you put these heavy-duty chains around the logs to pull them to the top of the mountain for the trucks. Did that for three years. Really tough work, climbing up and down a damn mountain all day, especially when it gets muddy.

“I had a friend . . . a cable snapped and it cut him right in half like knife through butter. I heard this noise, hit the deck and looked up and watched his torso fall off his legs. And then his legs buckled. After that, my dad had me come down the mountain.

“Then he sent me out to sea. He said, ‘By God, that will make you tough, Son.’ So I’m on this tugboat pulling a barge and I’m an oilman in the engine room working from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. and then from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. It’s loud, it’s probably 105 to 110 degrees down there, the diesel fumes are something else and the boat is heaving, snapping and swaying.

“We’re two months on the sea to Hawaii and I’m telling you, it’s lonely. I see this dolphin or something on the bow and I’m trying to talk to him. I’m hoping he responds, you know, toss me a flipper, just so I can communicate with somebody.

“We had this problem with a barge and the dock, and well, a rope breaks and I have to tackle the captain to get him down so he doesn’t get hurt. . . . Then there’s the time I was floating out to sea. . . . When we docked I ran out of money and had to arm-wrestle sailors in the bar for food. . . . I experienced everything.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not like I couldn’t call home every summer, but I couldn’t whine. Heck no, I couldn’t whine. If I whined, they would have hung up on me.

“Shoot, every Christmas vacation I would work in the sawmill--morning till night. That’s the way it was, and I didn’t know it was supposed to be any different. I didn’t know you could run and lift and play; I’m living in Coos Bay (Ore.), and it’s a hard living, tough people.

“That’s the way my dad grew up, too. Hard work. He dug sewer ditches, and that’s one thing he never made me do. Maybe the hard work inspired him to get his education. He’s an attorney now, real successful, and maybe he thought it worked for him and it would work for me. I was all for it; I figured I’d come back to school each year and be the toughest guy around.

“The thing is, I wanted to play football in high school, but the deal was I was working, and when I came back each year the coach would tell me I couldn’t be on the team. He said everybody else had been running, doing daily doubles learning the system and I just couldn’t expect to show up and play. They let me sit on the bench.

“When I finished high school I enrolled at Willamette University, a college known for its law school. I messed around in football and track. I’d run the 100 and 200 in track and finish third or fourth, and I played tight end for the football team. I was having fun.

“One day I’m watching the Rose Bowl, and I see 100,000 people cheering for Arizona State and I’m watching these guys who are getting their education paid for and I’m thinking, I can do that. So I take all my clothes and load them into my little Dodge Colt and head for the interstate.

“I go south although I really don’t know where I’m going. I stop at Long Beach State and walk around the campus. I stop at San Diego State and walk around, but I think, if I’m right on the beach I may never see a diploma, so I take a left and head for Arizona. I have a friend who lives in either Tempe or Tucson. I don’t know for sure which, but I track him down in Tempe, and he convinces me to enroll at ASU.

“I tell him I want to play football and he reminds me that ASU has just won the Rose Bowl and has 10 guys who are going to get drafted by the pros. He says, ‘Be serious, you haven’t even played high school football.’ I am serious.

“I walk on, and my first day I’m with the other tight ends and my coach just starts screaming at me and tells me to stand over by a fence and not get in the way. So I stood there for 20 spring practices.

“In the fall they tell me I can’t go with the rest of the team for their training camp because they have room for only 95 scholarship players and five walk-ons.

“A friend of mine takes a big chance and goes to his defensive line coach and tells him I’m as good as some of the other guys on the team. The coach has never heard of me, but I tell him, ‘Time me in the 40-yard dash and if you don’t like what you see, I’ll never bother you people again.’ They put the clock on me and I run like a 4.56. They say do one more. I go 4.52. They say do one more. I do a 4.49.

“The defensive line coach was amazed. He said I can join the team, and then he wants to know my background. I tell him I’ve never really played defense. Never really played football. I don’t even know how to get into a stance. I know zero.

“But by the first game, I’m working second-string. I still know zero. My coach gives a test to the defensive linemen the night before our first game and I get to the back page and there’s a question about our ‘G period, L period’ defense. I have no clue. I struggle for 20 minutes before just making something up. The next day my coach goes nuts. ‘What the hell is this?’ I tell him I have no idea what ‘G period, L period is?’ He says, ‘It’s goal line, dummy.’ I say, ‘Oh, yeah.’

“I’m starting the next game--Armstrong is hurt--and it’s our home opener and there are 75,000 people there. By the time we play our third game they’ve given me a full scholarship, but I’m so raw; I’m just hitting anybody who stands in front of me and chasing the ball.

“After my senior year nobody drafts me. Nobody wants to bring me into camp and take a look. I get my degree in German and then stay on and get another degree in economics. I go to Canada, I play for British Columbia and then I figure I’m ready now for the NFL. My agent thinks the new World League is the best avenue to take to get to the NFL, but before they even have their tryouts in Orlando, I get this letter from the World League that tells me my athletic ability is not comparable to those competing for the same position. I’m cut before they have seen me and I’m ticked.

“I pay for my own airfare and hotel and go to Orlando. I find out where the WFL coaches are staying, where the scouts are staying and I go door-to-door with a resume, videotape of my workouts and my cleats in hand. I tell them there’s a park outside the hotel and I’ll run for them. I get kicked out of the Citrus Bowl by security guards when I try to get in for the workouts. I leave Orlando with nothing.

“I say to hell with the WFL; if I’m not good enough for them, then I’ll play in the NFL.

“I started calling each team. I’m getting a lot of secretaries, but then San Francisco tells me that they will have a scout in the area. It’s make it or break it. Dwight Clark, the former 49ers receiver, shows up on a Friday and I run a 4.6-something 40 and I weigh 268-270 pounds. I have a 36-inch vertical jump and bench the heck out of 225 pounds 30-some times.

“By the following Wednesday they have Federal Express-ed me a contract. One week I can’t get a look from the World Football League and the next I’m signing with the four-time world champions. I’m confused, but excited.

“I played in four games for the 49ers and then I liked what I heard when I talked to San Diego and signed with the Chargers on Plan B. It’s been tough, though. Right before camp my wife, Gea, injured her patella tendon while competing in the Olympic trials. She was ranked fifth in the world in the heptathlon, and would have been a serious contender for a medal in Barcelona.

“I haven’t been able to give her much support, because this is so difficult. It’s hard work, tougher than shoveling rock or falling timber. I remember my dad telling me that when I get my education I wouldn’t be doing this stuff anymore. For some reason I’m still doing manual labor . . . and loving every minute of it.

“People ask me about my dad, but I never really talked to him about it.

“My dad’s real proud. It’s been a long journey, all right, and who knows, maybe those summer jobs paid off. I know he said if we had known maybe we would have done it differently each summer, but if they had known and we would have done it differently, then it may never have worked out like it has.

“I was told all along that everybody else was missing out. I believed every word of it, and looking back, my dad was right.”

“My name is Burt Grossman, and I swear, where do they get these guys?

“Does everybody in Coos Bay wait five days before washing their hair?”

“Don’t you think that’s a lot of stories for one person? You remember that cartoon where they would have that guy from England and he would say, ‘I remember when I was in the south of France and 10 lions attacked me.’

“You hear these stories and you expect somebody worldly like Indiana Jones and then you see this country bumpkin who should be pumping gas and spitting tobacco in Coos Bay, the inbred capital of America.

“The cut-in-half story is my all-time favorite. But have you heard the one about how he fell off the tugboat and was floating away to sea? They managed to save him, you know, by throwing him a rope. How far can you throw a big old rope? Sure, he was floating out to sea? He was probably right there and they handed him this rope.

“He says he talked his way into the NFL. You ever hear him talk? He says no one in the World League wanted him. You ever seen him practice? He says he speaks fluent German. I speak fluent Ugandan. Who’s going to say I don’t? You know Ugandan?

“Everybody has their sad, sad story about how they struggled to get here. Shoot, look at me. I went to a private high school, was an All-American and had to choose a track or football scholarship from 80 to 90 schools. I go to Pittsburgh on a full ride, become an All-American, get drafted in the first round and get paid more than $1 million to sign. He’s not the only poor slob who has suffered.”

“My name is Gordon Joelson from Coos Bay, Ore.

“This is tough country; people work hard, people play hard. I thought the chances of my son proceeding to a higher level in sports were pretty slim. Work provided all the answers in my mind. Greg has never been afraid to pay the price, and what he has already accomplished is phenomenal.

“And by the way, tell Mr. Grossman he’s invited to Coos Bay. I’ve got some jobs for him.”