Succeed, or Go Home
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The invitation was shocking, unexpected. A QB from a small Texas college in the training camp of the Dallas Cowboys. He can teach you everything about seizing opportunities, or blowing them completely
By: Oliver Broudy, Photographs by: Brian Finke
Quick: name the best quarterback in the NFL. "Peyton Manning," says Richard Bartel, with no hesitation. "When he's out on the field, he's not thinking about what other people are doing," he says. "He's making all the moves. It's like chess."
This isn't a barroom dispute -- we're standing on the 45-yard line of the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas.
Six days after the NFL draft, Bartel, a quarterback fresh out of college, was invited to try out for the Dallas Cowboys. "You'll have 2 days," the scout told him. "We're either going to tell you, 'Thanks for coming,' or we're going to sign you."
Bartel is 24 years old. A born-and-raised Texan and a Cowboys fan. In Texas, football is Friday Night Lights, only amplified. At Bartel's high school, in the town of Grapevine, the head football coach earns more than the chairman of the English department. On game nights the stands are packed with 10,000 people. Bartel started at quarterback his junior and senior years, then battled his way through four college seasons (two at Southern Methodist University, two at Division II Tarleton State). Now he had a shot at becoming a part of one of the most storied franchises in NFL history.
Everyone has a dream. Most of us never realize that dream. It hovers before us like a star over water (or green AstroTurf), luring us on. The prospect of lunging forward and taking hold of that dream is a startling one, maybe even frightening. (What if you miss? What if you don't? What will you dream about if your dream becomes a reality?) But when the moment of opportunity arrives, it's the courage to make that lunge, regardless of the outcome, that separates the achievers from the mediocre.
For Bartel that moment was now.
Two days before the start of training camp, I'm sitting in Bartel's living room with him, his mom, Melissa, and his older brother, Charlie, as they talk about growing up in San Antonio. It's a small house, particularly for Texas. The ceilings are low, and the carpet (fuchsia, acrylic) is not of the highest quality. Still, you can tell these folks are trying to make the most of what they have.
The would-be QB sits across from me, wearing long blue shorts and a gray tee with the arms cut off, crushing a pink armchair. At first glance, he's more lumberjack than quarterback--246 pounds and 6'41/2", with a scruffy head of hair and a 2-day beard. Just feeding this man would be a challenge for most moms, especially for a single mother working as a nurse.
"There are definitely people in this world who have had it harder than me," Bartel told me earlier, "but I'm not going to say it was easy, either. My mom's always been there to support me, and it didn't matter that we didn't have the resources everybody else had. We were always going to find a way to get where we wanted to go."
It helped that he had an older brother who went before him, springing life's more dangerous traps. Prison, for instance, where a riot over a TV show left Charlie Bartel with a couple of puncture wounds and a disorderly-conduct conviction. Charlie played defensive tackle in high school ("The best in the biz," he says), but he was derailed somewhere along the way.
Chasing a dream is always difficult when the lives of the people close to you leave you little reason to believe you're meant for anything great. But even as his brother and other teammates flamed out around him, Bartel refused to let himself become captive to low expectations.
"I enjoy being the guy no one expects anything from," he says. "It keeps me motivated. If I end up getting cut from this team, that will not be the end of my run for the NFL. I'm going to make it, some way or another. Because I'm not going to quit until I make it. It's that simple."
Way up in the rafters, a punted football grazes the U.S. flag. Player 41 steps forward to catch it neatly behind his back. The Alamodome, with 65,000 seats and 350 metal halide lights glaring down, seems expressly designed to make a man feel small.
The Cowboys practice here. Every move is scripted and timed. To start, the team splits into units. Linemen butt up against big, blue blocking pads. Quarterbacks blast short throws at a ball boy; receivers race through sweeps; the secondary practices pursuit drills; and the tight ends work on blocking and releases. After 10 minutes, the air horn blows and everyone rotates.
Eventually, full scrimmages begin--offense in white, defense in blue. Second- and third-string players watch and wait to be rotated in. After all the practice hours, each player has maybe 2 minutes of full, engaged play each practice. For a long-shot rookie, there's no room for mistakes.
"You have to have a mind free of distraction," says Jason Garrett, the Cowboys' offensive coordinator, after practice one day. "Concentrate. Focus. These are words we use all the time with our players."
The whole training-camp environment--2 weeks of pure football--is designed to block out distraction. But mental distractions are insidious. They're the same distractions everyone faces in life. Taken one at a time, they can seem easily manageable. But it's not until you list them that you realize just how many there really are.
1. The Money Situation
Going into that first 2-day tryout in the spring of 2007, Bartel received no signing bonus and no contractual assurance whatsoever. He was being paid a per diem, not nearly enough to buy momma a house, settle his school loans, or even pay the insurance on his pickup. The minimum a rookie can expect for a 1-year contract is $285,000. It's not Peyton money, but it would go a long way toward putting a few of Bartel's financial worries to rest. But when the coach is talking or practice is under way, he can't be thinking about that.
"He's never asked me anything about the financial side of the business," says Jeff Chilcoat, Bartel's agent. "He's driven by what he thinks he was built to do: play the quarterback position in the NFL."
Financial reward can't be your primary inspiration. Nor can financial anxiety. Only the dream will suffice: the pursuit of what you were built to do. Attain the dream, and the dollars will follow.
2. The Competition
Bartel has plenty: four other quarterbacks with better pedigrees. The closest contender, another rookie named Matt Moore, played ball at two great football schools -- UCLA and Oregon State -- and had seven teams competing for him when the draft ended.
At SMU, Bartel feuded with the coach and left after 2 years, washing up at Tarleton State, in central Texas. It's exactly the sort of disparity that could gnaw away at his confidence, if he let it.
The goal right now is to dislodge the current third-string guy (the first- and second-string QB positions are pretty much locked up) or else aim for a spot on the practice squad. It's shaping up to be a long battle, which is why it comes as such a shock, on the second day of training camp, when Bartel learns that Matt Baker, the current third-string guy, has been cut.
Baker's removal is the first indication that the rookie may actually have a chance. Jubilation would seem to be in order -- but Bartel remains subdued.
"What we advise our client is, you go in and do what you can do to the best of your abilities," says Chilcoat. "The rest will take care of itself." The sentiment is a common one in professional sports: Ultimately, you live or die based on the strengths you possess. Spend your energy maximizing those strengths, rather than trying to psyche out the other guy. For Bartel that other guy is now Matt Moore.
3. Fumbles
When Bartel fumbles a snap during practice, a man from the local TV station mutters, "It'd probably be best for everyone if this kid just went home."
You want to be flawless? Go home like the man says and become a Buddhist. For everyone else, screwups are inevitable. Maybe you misjudged a new hire or failed to anticipate a crushing drop in the market. We've all been there. The bigger question is, how fast can you recover?
The greatest fumble of the 2006 season still hangs in the air at training camp. It was on a 19-yard field-goal attempt against the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC wild-card playoff game. Tony Romo, the first-string quarterback, took the snap -- and dropped it, an error that cost the Cowboys the win and shut down their season.
What no one seemed to notice in the play was how instantly Romo recovered, grabbing the football and dashing toward the end zone, brought up only at the 2-yard line on a shoestring tackle.
4. The Man in Charge
Standing on the field in the Alamodome, you can see a tiny red light burning a hole in the darkness of the second-tier observation booth at the 50-yard line. That's a camera. There's another behind the goalposts, capturing every player's every move, for further review by the coaches.
It doesn't matter what the game, there's always somebody watching, whether it's your boss, your shareholders, or your mother-in-law. In high-pressure situations, the constant monitoring can easily provoke resentment and self-sabotage.
That's a tough one for Bartel, who has a history of feuding with coaches. But success usually hinges on your ability to learn from your superiors--regardless of whether you like them. Ultimately, this may be the biggest puzzle of all: staying humble while still believing you're good enough.
When practice is over, I join Bartel on the field as a local reporter grills him about his abrupt departure from SMU. He doesn't dodge the questions. "I was 18 or 19 years old and I thought I knew it all," he says. "It's definitely some of my fault, and going to Tarleton was a good chance to reflect and really ask, What can I do to change? So I put things in order, had a good junior and senior year at Tarleton, and learned how to be coached."
It's a great moment, in its way. A player sets his ego aside and starts thinking like a true competitor. Without clear, centered thinking undisturbed by ego, there's just no way you're going to be able to consistently execute the plays to the best of your ability.
Once you sideline the distractions, there's only one thing left to think about: the game. On Thursday, August 9, the citizens of Dallas descend on Texas Stadium for the Cowboys' first preseason game. In town are the Indianapolis Colts, piloted by Peyton Manning, Bartel's role model.
The moment always comes. It's a year away, a month away, a day away, it's buzzing near, like a wasp, and then finally it lands and now you're in it. You're hurling yourself out of the helicopter, striding onto the stage, clearing your throat, starting to speak. . . . There is no future, no past, just a few seconds so saturated with data that all you can do is experience it. There's no time to think of consequences, and ultimately no point.
"If I get hit I get hit," says Bartel. "There's nowhere to go after this. I mean, what am I saving myself for?"
In the Cowboys' wood-paneled Texas Stadium locker room, Bartel shoves his pads down into his tights, laces his cleats, and blackens his cheeks with a grease stick. Don Meredith, Tony Dorsett, Bob Hayes. Legends walked here. And now he's here as well. In the humbling presence of this truth, he busies himself with trivial preparations--uncrumpling a piece of paper with the day's plays written on it, zipping up his backpack.
Eventually, Wade Phillips, the head coach, comes in and gives a brief, affable speech. Just go out there and have fun, he says. Any mistakes you make, it's not your fault, it's mine.
No one believes him. Lining up at the locker-room door, shifting nervously from foot to foot, Bartel looks down and notices the NFL crest on his jersey. This is it. Playing football with the Dallas Cowboys against last year's Super Bowl champs in Texas Stadium on national television. The thought ends there.
"One minute to kickoff, everybody out!" says Mike McCord, the equipment guy. The door blows open and the group piles down the sloping tunnel to the field. Bartel is right up front, where he can meet the roar of the crowd head-on. As they burst through the face mask of the giant helmet covering the tunnel, gouts of flames shoot up on either side, and then they're on the field, negotiating a gauntlet of gorgeous women waving silver-and-blue pom-poms in the air.
After the big entrance, the long wait begins. It's late in the fourth quarter when QB coach Wade Wilson walks up to Bartel and taps him on the shoulder.
"Hey, Richard," he says. "Go on in."
It's that simple. And then he's strapping on his helmet and jogging onto the field. "Let's just get some first downs and end this thing," he tells his players in the huddle. They break and Bartel steps forward over the big, blue star as the line forms around him at the Colts' 45. His two receivers drop into position on his right wing. His running back stands exactly three steps behind him and two to the right, his fullback five steps straight behind him. The worries, second thoughts, lessons he's tried to absorb, mistakes he's made, all of that disperses to its proper place in his mind, leaving clear room to operate. He knows this play. He's done it a thousand times. Read the coverage. Check the secondary. Step up to the center. One second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds. The coaches, the players, the thousands of fans, everyone waits for his command. At the right moment, he gives it.
In the little time remaining, Bartel executes a series of crushing running plays against the withering Colts defense. And when the clock stops, he's doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing: moving his team down the field.
"I feel like I can take this moment," Bartel tells me later, in the locker room. "I've officially played my first game as a Dallas Cowboy. It's like, damn. Where do we go from here?"
That decision rests with Cowboys management. The first cut date is August 27. On that day nine men vanish, including three veterans, but Bartel is not one of them. It's not until 5 days later, on the final cut date, that Wade Phillips gives him the word. The Cowboys are letting him go. Matt Moore, too. There will be no third-string quarterback.
The cut wasn't unexpected, but it's a heavy blow all the same and a true test of Bartel's limber psychology, which bends nearly double to keep rooted. That's when the old football wisdom comes quietly to the fore. "Don't get too high when it's good, don't get too low when it's bad." "Stay within yourself." "Focus on the next play, not the last one." And so on.
For anyone lunging after a dream, this is the real moment of truth. Because no dream is ever achieved without some blood being spilled.
The real question is whether you have the courage to put it all on the line regardless, secure in the knowledge that even if you do come up short, you're still in a better place than when you started: You know yourself better, you're less intimidated by the scope of your own ambition, and you're better prepared when the next moment of truth comes hurtling at you at blitz speed.
Because there's never just one moment of truth; in fact, there are as many moments of truth as there are games in a season or quarters in a game or plays in a quarter. Or tough calls when the game is over. There are as many as you are willing to confront.
The next moment for Bartel comes less than a day later, as he's pulling into his driveway. His cellphone rings. It's the Cowboys' head scout.
"I have some good news and some bad news," the scout says. "Which do you want to hear first?"
Bartel puts his truck in park and turns off the ignition. "The bad news," he says, accustomed, by this point, to taking the blows.
"The bad news is, you're going to have to put up with us a little bit longer," says the scout.
"And the good news?"
"The good news is we're going to sign you to the practice squad."
Bartel smiles, smacks the steering wheel. That's it. He's in.
