“My dad was a farmer and worked in the shipyard, and I saw how he worked hard. “Discipline and hard work had always been my M.O.,” he says, his voice a rich baritone. He’s smiling, always smiling, even while hoisting the weight of a lawn tractor. And he would be if not for his expression. With his physique and markings, you would expect him to be an intimidating figure. On his right biceps, an inked pit bull sits quietly, menacingly. Tattooed superheroes-Superman, the Incredible Hulk, and even Wonder Woman-seem to leap off his left arm, each striking out at unseen foes. It took a beefy lineman, All-American Jake Grove, to finally topple that impressive mark.Īs he lifts the bar through a second set of reps, grapefruit-sized pecs threaten to rip his ribbed tank top. As a Virginia Tech football player, he squatted over 600 pounds and set the push-jerk record It holds more than his weight, but you’d never know it from the ease with which he pulls it up to his chest and lowers it to knee-height. His shaved head gleams as he heads to the squat machine and slides a couple of the gym’s heaviest plates on each side of the bar. He still bears the muscular form of his playing days: a v-shaped torso that culminates in cinderblock shoulders. Wayne has just finished three miles on the treadmill. Imagine what that must feel like, the endless reel of possibilities spooling out before you. Letters from college coaches stack up on his dining room table and his telephone rings most nights that regulations allow. On the recruiting trail, he is a wanted man. During his senior year of high school, he not only plowed through rivals for over 2,300 yards and 40 touchdowns, he also played defense, amassing more than 50 tackles and five sacks. He is a freight train of a running back who can already bench 400 pounds. It is the fall of 1996 and this is what life is like for Wayne Briggs. Mimicry morphed into mastery and soon you were the one putting on a show, compiling highlight-reel footage for others to gawk at. Once the afternoon game wrapped up, you’d run outside to mimic the latest plays by Barry Sanders, Rocket Ismail, and Kordell Stewart. On Saturdays of your pre-teen youth, you’d play Little League baseball games then beg your dad to drive you home immediately afterward so you could watch college football while Keith Jackson spouted stats and Brent Musburger announced touchdowns while they were still ten yards outside the endzone. You’ve had one since Pop Warner football when other kids were either a step slower or couldn’t pull you to the ground once they caught you. Some will slip into cabs of farm equipment and others will bounce around between local businesses cashiering or stocking shelves, never leaving the county.īut you have a Plan. Your fellow graduates, for the most part, are still hanging around the hometown with no idea what they want to do with their lives. Your rural high school was a single-A entity that got little to no attention even in its own home state of Virginia. Imagine you’re a nineteen-year-old football player spending a year at Hargrave Military Academy before heading on to college. The life, death, and resurrection of a football player’s dream.
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