<B>Drawing on rare access to an NFL team’s players, coaches and facilities, the author of <I>The New York Times</I> bestseller <I>Word Freak</I> 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</B><BR><BR>In <I>Word Freak</I>, 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 Stefan Fatsis http://lakenet.llcoop.org/search/t?SEARCH=a+few+seconds+of+panic&sortdropdown=-&searchscope=1 2008-06-20T14:21:46-04:00 The author of Word Freak recounts his experience of becoming a placekicker for the Denver Broncos, an effort during which he gained rare access to top NFL players, coaches, and facilities while enduring the grueling process of professional-level athletics training. 2123 9781594201783