Players Turned Fans: How Former Griz Adjust To Being Fans In The Stands
Picture this: You're a football player who committed countless hours to football. You trained your tail-end off for years to hone in your skills on the gridiron. You spent several summers under the blistering sun in full pads and uniform to get better at the game you love.
Then it comes to a grinding hault because the rest of your life awaits you after college. That's what happens to most Montana Grizzly Football players after they graduate. Very few go on to the NFL, so then they transition to being just a fan watching from the stands. Some stay in the game and others need a break from it. Over the last couple of weeks, former Griz Levi Janacaro and Braxton Hill were guests on The Daily Drive With Ace Sauerwein, so I asked each of them what it's like to be only a fan watching the Griz. With no control over how the game is played, Janacaro and Hill had different responses.
"I'd been downplaying it a lot with people at work and people that have asked me 'Oh, are you excited for the season?' Yeah, you know I'm excited to be a fan and go and cheer on the guys, but you know, I'm not gonna be too invested. I had my time. That's done now. I'm just gonna go and enjoy it," said former #37 Janacaro.
It wasn't as easy as you'd think.
"And boy was that not the case," said Janacaro. "I was edge of my seat, bouncing on the stands, like, raising my arms trying to get the crowd going, yelling. I was way more into it than I thought it would be."
Janacaro embraced the role of fan—he's one of us. Braxton Hill took a more methodical approach to viewing the game.
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"I would say I'm a little bit different in that sense," explained Hill. "I was pretty calm. I was kind of just taking it all in. To be honest man, I was looking at trying to see what the coverage was, what the front was, what the stunt, like, I was really trying to see what they were doing."
The duality of man: The rabid fan and the overanalyzer. The full conversations with Janacaro and Hill can be found below.
Montana-Born NFL Players (1971-1982)
Gallery Credit: Ace Sauerwein