Colorado State University Athletics
Kory Sperry Combine Diary: Welcome to Indy, Gartrell
2/20/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Feb. 20, 2009
Entry 1, Feb. 17 | Entry 2, Feb. 17 | Entry 3, Feb. 19
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - I saw my man `G' today. Gartrell's looking real good. I caught up with him at a suite that our trainers from Perfect Competition got here. We can go over there and do some extra stretching and grab some food if we're hungry.
A bunch of guys got into town today. A few of them are guys we work out with who flew in from Fort Lauderdale, just like we did the other day. They had a lot of questions about the schedule, what to expect, wake-up times, what we did, stuff like that. You try to help them out as much as you can, look out for them, give `em the run down.
I thought my bench went well, I guess. I'm going to redo it at our Pro Day in Fort Collins next month. You can always redo a drill you do here at your Pro Day, even if you think you did good here; you feel a little more comfortable in your own environment. It's good exposure here, though, so you want to do your best.
At the bench, the strength coach from the Arizona Cardinals is there. He's in your face, but he definitely helps motivate you.
I also did my Wonderlic this morning. It's 12 minutes to answer 50 questions. It's almost like those SAT and ACT tests I took back in high school, with a science portion and a math portion. I've heard that the Wonderlic is only one factor in the big picture of how they evaluate you.
I actually graduated from CSU on the day we played the New Mexico Bowl, with a degree in liberal arts. A lot of players who are here don't yet have their degrees, so I feel fortunate.
I'm getting ready to head down to interviews now. We're scheduled to be done about 10 p.m. tonight. Tomorrow, we wake up at 7:30, have breakfast and then it's off to do our final testing at 9 a.m. We'll do the 40 and all of our on-field testing, on the field at Lucas Oil Stadium. I've got to check my schedule to see what time we actually leave town tomorrow night. I guess I've been so focused on just the hour-by-hour schedule, and I haven't looked that far ahead.
The interviews are a very efficient process. They take place in a hotel that looks like an old train station here in downtown Indy. We're in this big meeting room with a bunch of tables, and every few minutes, an airhorn blows - just like the horns they blow at most practices when the coach wants to move onto the next period. After the horn blows, you move onto the next team. I mostly meet with tight ends coaches from the teams.
Some of them ask about your family, how close you are to them, what they're like, how were you in school, what can bring to the team, it's just like a job interview, really. These teams invest a lot of money into guys they bring in, so they don't want any loose cannons. They want guys that can play, obviously, someone who'll work hard for them, but not someone they can't control. These interviews help them judge character.
The teams that are most interested in you bring you up to their suite, to ask you more questions. They just try to get to know you a little bit.
Well, I've got to get downstairs. Tomorrow's a huge day and I'm really excited to see what I can do.
I'm coming back to Fort Collins next week, and I'll stay there through the Pro Day workouts, and then I'll probably come back to Perfect Competition in Florida after that.
-- Kory Sperry
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