catmandoo
Player
Member # 1284
|
posted 11-03-2014 12:32 PM
He is not playing football this season and here is a picture of him and the latest article I could find on him. He is a very special person and football player.
REDSHIRTED HIS first year at Kentucky, and that's when his stomach turned into a gut. After the season, the coaches sent a student trainer to live with Lorenzen and get him to stick to a diet. At the beginning of spring practice, Mumme checked in. The student trainer had gained 10 pounds.
"I just said, 'Eh, nobody made Babe Ruth train,'" Mumme says.
Mumme left after Lorenzen's freshman year. The next coach was Guy Morriss, a former NFL offensive lineman. Lorenzen weighed in at 308 in the preseason. Morriss told him he couldn't play until he got down to 268. So Lorenzen played racquetball for two hours every morning, went through the normal football workouts, then swam every night. He says he also wolfed Ripped Fuel, a weight-loss pill that contained ephedra (now banned by the FDA). At the last weigh-in, the scale said 268.8. Close enough. Lorenzen grabbed a Snickers and started eating his way up the scale again.
In 2002, after his second season, Morriss left for Baylor, and Rich Brooks came in, Lorenzen's third head coach in four years. But in that time he threw for 10,354 yards -- the Kentucky career record and seventh on the SEC's career list. In practice, he'd drop to one knee at midfield and throw at the goalpost until he hit the crossbar. Mumme remembers holding a camp in Lexington for some of the top college quarterbacks in the country. He put a radar gun on them, and most threw 52 to 54 mph -- decent NFL speed. Lorenzen stopped by between classes in an Oxford button-down and penny loafers. He warmed up a little and let one fly. It was clocked at 64.
He and Tamara -- they'd been dating since high school -- had a daughter named Taylar the summer after Lorenzen's junior year at UK. Dale Mueller remembers laughing at an interview Lorenzen gave back then: I have to feed her at 9 and 11 and 1 and 3 and 5. It doesn't bother me because that's my feeding schedule too.
Somewhere in there, Lorenzen realized he might have a shot at the NFL. After finishing at Kentucky he hired Leigh Steinberg as his agent. Steinberg brought him to California in 2004 to train with a group of quarterback prospects that included Ben Roethlisberger. "Except for the visual picture of it, he was a good prospect," Steinberg says. "He had a good attitude. He just didn't lose the weight. Couldn't, or wouldn't."
Lorenzen wasn't drafted, but several teams called afterward. At first he resisted signing with the Giants -- they had just cut the deal that got them Eli Manning, the first pick in that year's draft. At home in Kentucky, Lorenzen convinced himself he didn't have a chance. He was so sure he'd get cut that he didn't report to training camp. The Giants were puzzled. His family was furious. When the Giants invited him back in 2005, Tamara said he had to try or they were through. He drove 12 hours to camp in Albany, New York, so homesick he cried the whole way.
It turned out he was good enough. He was the third-string quarterback that first year, then Eli's main backup in 2006 and '07. His career stats aren't much: 4-for-8 passing for 28 yards, two carries for four yards. But he was there on the sideline for Super Bowl XLII when the Giants beat the 18-0 Patriots in the David Tyree game. Lorenzen still has a bag of confetti from the field. He still has his bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue in its special case -- Michael Strahan gave one to everybody on the team. Lorenzen has never taken the bottle all the way out of the case.
Tom Coughlin, the Giants' coach, had weight limits for every player. The fine was $400 a day for every pound they went over. Lorenzen's limit was 292. Weigh-ins were on Friday, so Lorenzen wouldn't eat on Thursday. He'd spit in a bottle all day to get rid of water weight. Friday morning he'd put on five shirts and a hoodie, plus two pairs of shorts and two pairs of sweatpants. He'd bake in the sauna and kill himself on the elliptical machine and barely make the weight. "You would've thought, after a couple weeks of doing that, I just wouldn't eat bad all week," he says. "But I'd get off the scale and get a ham and cheese omelet."
It's the catch-22 of being hooked on food. When you feel good, you eat to celebrate. When you feel bad, you eat to feel better. And for the people around you who want you to be happy, food is a natural gift. Lorenzen has thought a lot about the coach in his youth football days who rode him so hard to make weight. When he made it, the coach brought him a plate of brownies.
Link
--------------------
http://www.ukfightsong.com/
Posts: 186359 | From: st. augustine florida 32092 | Registered: Mar 2001
| IP: Logged
|
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
posted 11-05-2014 05:56 PM
Printer-friendly view of this topic