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Story behind rise of New England Patriots' Danny Woodhead - The Bonus - SI.com
I really like this kid.
Woodhead's brother was a junior wide receiver at Chadron State, a school named for a French fur-trapper, in the Nebraska Panhandle. Student size: 3,000. Stadium capacity? About the same, except in Danny's years, when the overflow added 1,000 more or so. Freshman year, in his first game he gained more than 300 yards. Second year, word began to travel: Who is this kid? After the third year, when he'd averaged more than 200 yards per game, he won the Harlon Hill Trophy, the Division II Heisman. By the end of his fourth year, when he won the trophy again, he'd set the alltime yardage record for the NCAA in any division.
He and his brothers twisted the football off the top of one of his Harlon Hill trophies and used the base as a stool for three-way video game tournaments. Which more or less sums up Danny Woodhead's regard for glitz.
Danny doesn't have kids yet. So when I ask him, "How do you want your kids to think of you?" he takes a second to answer. But when he does, the words have weight.
"I don't think I'm going to want them to look at me as a football player," he says. "I'll want them to look at me as their dad. This is my job. Not who I am. I don't look at my dad as a teacher or coach. I look at him as my dad. And the kind of man he is.
"I'm hoping that's something I'll be able to do. Think of me as the type of man I'm going to be. Or will be. Or was."
I really like this kid.
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