Some big thank-yous from No. 97 in order

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/03/2012 (5111 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Now that retirement has befallen me, to ease my transition outside of the game, I have begun searching for opportunities similar to the makeup of what I have been doing for the past 15 years.

If you hear of any job openings that run between June and November exclusively that offer the prospects of a six-figure signing bonus, feel free to direct them to my attention.

In all seriousness though, there are many people to thank when you have had a degree of success as a player in a single organization for 11 years. There are board of directors, management teams, coaches and obviously the players you were surrounded with. So to close out a career without acknowledging the impact and importance of these pieces would be negligent and they will all be recognized when I have more than an 800-word forum at my disposal.

That being said, a special thanks must go out now to the individual that impacted my career in the most fundamental of ways, ensuring I was healthy enough and had the right physical training and conditioning to compete at the highest level for an inordinate amount of time — and the fans that supported me and provided a football experience unlike no other.

One of the things I am proudest of in my tenure that I can’t take credit for is what Bud Grant declared at the Blue and Gold Legacy dinner in 2010 as the most important attribute any player can have: durability. No matter how athletic, explosive, talented, or smart you may be, without the ability to withstand punishment and perform consistently at a high level, your value to any franchise is limited.

When I first walked through the doors of Elite Performance Centres back in 2005, I was concerned with those very issues, my durability and the continued sustainability of my professional football career. At that point, due to chronic tendonitis in both my shoulders and knees, I couldn’t press more than 225 pounds without pain and had given up on squatting for some time — two fundamental football exercises. I hadn’t been an all-star in three seasons, and going into my 10th total year on the line of scrimmage at age 30, I was at a crossroads.

Now retired, seven years later, the thing I’m most grateful for is not this extension of playing when I thought it was coming to an end, or the all-star recognitions that followed each year of my involvement under his tutelage. The thing I, and my mother in particular, are most pleased with is that in a decade-and-a-half of being employed in a profession that treats the human body like a butcher shop, I escaped without a single surgery.

There is no infallible way to avoid injury in professional football. Regardless of how you recover, prepare and train during the season, I have still broken countless fingers and toes, and a nose, fractured an orbital bone, ruptured tendons, suffered concussions, sprained ligaments and even contracted viral meningitis from a mosquito bite back in 2009. Injury is a certainty in football, and there is always a degree of luck that follows you out onto the football field no matter how committed you are to your training and diet.

Be that as it may, because of my involvement the last seven years with Jeff Fisher and his training schedules and sciences, though, I had two advantages going into every game in the last half of my career when I should have been experiencing a period of decline. One, that I would be as fully recovered from any and all trauma I had received on a weekly basis to the greatest possible degree. And two, that I could be confident entering every game with the knowledge that my opponent could not and would not have prepared to the same extent and with the same level of intensity that I had.

Lastly, but certainly not least, since Wednesday, Blue Bomber and CFL fans alike have been congratulating me and thanking me for my 11 years of service within this close knit football community. It’s an uncomfortable feeling receiving praise and acknowledgements when you are the one who was lucky enough to represent a province of passionate supporters that exceed all others, and were honoured to don the colours of a franchise that is steeped in championships.

To you all I say thank you for allowing me to work alongside you for so long, and for impressing upon me and opening my eyes to just how special and embedded this football team is in this community.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press. Contact him on Twitter @DougBrown97