boutons_
12-01-2006, 09:06 AM
November 30, 2006
N.F.L. Excitement Building in Small Ohio Town
By KAREN CROUSE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/karen_crouse/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
For their annual fund-raiser, the athletic boosters at Centerville High in suburban Dayton, Ohio, recently raffled off two tickets to a N.F.L. game. Normally, that would be considered sweetening the pot with an artificial substance, there being no real substitute in these parts for football as it is played in high schools or at nearby Ohio State (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/ohio_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org).
This year is the rarest of exceptions. People who do not follow the N.F.L. were giddy at the prospect of procuring tickets for the Jets (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/newyorkjets/index.html?inline=nyt-org)’ game this weekend against the Packers (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/greenbaypackers/index.html?inline=nyt-org) in Green Bay, Wis. The reason was threefold: Mike Nugent and Nick Mangold of the Jets, and A. J. Hawk of the Packers grew up in Centerville.
Nugent, a second-year place-kicker, is coming off a four field-goal performance against the Houston Texans (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/houstontexans/index.html?inline=nyt-org) that included a career-best 54-yarder. Mangold, a rookie, has started all 11 games at center while accruing only two penalties. Hawk, a rookie linebacker, was credited with 15 tackles (10 unassisted) in the Packers’ loss at Seattle on Monday night.
For local residents, seeing three of Centerville’s own in the N.F.L. seems no less preposterous than striking oil in their backyards. The city of 23,000 is known more for its early stone buildings than for its professional football pipeline. The bedroom community is the opposite of sprawling, its tight-knit constitution reflected in half of its businesses, which employ five or fewer people.
Before Nugent was drafted by the Jets in the second round last year, Centerville had produced two N.F.L. players and none since Andy Harmon, a defensive tackle who played for the Philadelphia Eagles (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/philadelphiaeagles/index.html?inline=nyt-org) from 1991 to 1997.
“We’re a very little town,” said Mangold’s father, Vern. “To have three kids playing in the N.F.L. is unreal.”
To have players from Centerville squaring off in an N.F.L. game is also a little unnerving. Picking sides is like having to choose among communal flesh and blood.
For Rick Amos, a retired chief master sergeant of the Air Force, the question of whom to pull for is further complicated. Amos, who lives in a neighboring town, Bellbrook, bought one $5 raffle ticket in the fund-raiser and won airfare for two, lodging, a car rental and tickets to the game at Lambeau Field.
Amos, 53, does not know any of the Centerville players, though he says he feels a tenuous connection to Nugent, who signed a visor last year for his 16-year-old daughter, Katherine. But the raffle tickets were donated by Hawk, the fifth overall pick in this year’s draft, and Amos is supposed to meet him after the game. So whose colors does he wear?
“I am somewhat conflicted,” Amos said in a telephone interview. “It’s probably not a good idea to be wearing a Mike Nugent jersey when I meet A. J.”
Then again, Amos cannot in good conscience show up in a Hawk jersey after how gracious Nugent was to his daughter, whom Amos is taking to the game. “Maybe I’ll wear a Woody Hayes Buckeyes hat,” Amos said, laughing, referring to the legendary former coach of Ohio State, which Hawk, Nugent and Mangold attended. “That’s kind of neutral.”
Hawk was the first to be pegged for greatness. He was a year behind Nugent in school, but because of his athletic abilities, he often played up in age.
“It was kind of a big thing around Centerville, how good A. J. was in the sixth grade,” Mangold said this week. “He was a lot better than me or Mike. There was no question about that. He was a beast back in the day. Still is.”
Nugent’s father, Dan, who played football at the University of Wisconsin (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_wisconsin/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and the University of Dayton, said: “In sixth-grade football, there’s ambulances on the field taking off people because of A. J. He crushed people.”
At Cardboard Heroes, a sports store at the Dayton Mall, Hawk’s reputation for humility and hard work render him much more than a one-dimensional star to the shoppers who have made his No. 50 Packers jersey one of the top-selling items. It sells better than the jersey of Bengals (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/cincinnatibengals/index.html?inline=nyt-org) receiver Chad Johnson and is on par with that of Steelers (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/pittsburghsteelers/index.html?inline=nyt-org) quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who played his college ball at nearby Miami of Ohio.
Nugent was the only N.F.L. kicker whose jersey was stocked at the store until this year, when the Colts (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/indianapoliscolts/index.html?inline=nyt-org) signed Adam Vinatieri, prompting some demand for his jersey. “Nuge’s jersey sold just as good as anybody else,” said Eric Hillaker, a store employee who said he was four years behind Nugent at Centerville High.
Hawk and Nugent have known each other since they played on the Centerville Wee Elks football team. They were teammates at Centerville High, then at Ohio State. Centerville’s principal, Eileen Booher, said, “The best compliment you can give Mike and A. J. is that they haven’t changed at all.”
After attending the same parochial grade school as Nugent and Hawk, Mangold veered slightly off the beaten path. He starred at Bishop Alter High, a 700-student Catholic school in nearby Kettering, before arriving in Columbus in the same class as Hawk.
Hawk and Mangold roomed together for four years at Ohio State, and both were named captains, as was Nugent. Mangold says Hawk is so shy, he communicates mostly through text messages. “I think it took two years of us living together to actually talk to each other,” Mangold said.
Their last three years in Columbus, Hawk and Mangold lived in a three-bedroom house with another childhood friend, Jonathan Thomas.
Thomas’s family owns Doubledays Grill and Tavern, a popular gathering spot in Centerville. One evening in late October, when the place was packed, a majority of the tables were occupied by parents dining with their children. After all, said Kirk Herbstreit, the ESPN “College GameDay” analyst and a graduate of Centerville High, this is a city where families still sit down together for their evening meal.
“It’s like Pleasantville,” Herbstreit, a former quarterback at Centerville and Ohio State, said in a telephone interview.
The back wall of Doubledays is practically papered with matted and framed photographs of Hawk, Mangold and Nugent from their Ohio State days. There is one photograph of Hawk in a Packers jersey.
Nugent’s parents, Dan and Carolyn; and Mangold’s parents, Vern and Therese, arrived for a scheduled dinner together within minutes of one another and were led to a table that faced the back wall. These days, that is about as close as they get to dining with their sons.
“I called Nick the other day just to ask how he was doing,” Therese said. “He said, ‘I’m living the dream, Mom.’ ”
The table fell silent for a few seconds as everybody digested that.
The Nugents and the Mangolds, who have four children apiece, enjoy the kind of close relationship that comes from having watched one another’s children grow up. Mike and Nick attended the same Catholic grade school, and every summer for more than a decade they were teammates on the recreational swim team that was coached by Therese Mangold, who attended Wright State on a swimming scholarship.
Nugent described summers in Centerville as if he were reading from an old “Brady Bunch” script: “We’d leave the house around 8 in the morning, bike to the pool, and we wouldn’t come home until dinner.”
Therese Mangold was one of the toughest coaches he ever had, he said, “but in a good way.” Therese laughed when she heard that and said, “Mike’s the most coachable kid that I’ve ever coached in my life.”
Nick Mangold posed a bit more of a challenge. As he started to fill out his lineman’s body, he had to be coaxed into continuing to swim. “Can you imagine this body in a Speedo?” he said, his arms sweeping his 6-foot-4, 300-pound frame. “It was not a pretty sight.”
By the end, Therese had to bribe her son into competing by promising him a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, his favorite drink.
After Mangold was drafted at No. 29 over all, the first text message he received was from Nugent. When Nugent bought a condominium in a complex near the practice facility, so did Mangold. Now, instead of being separated by three miles, as they were in Centerville, their homes are divided by a single floor.
Mangold was asked recently what it would have been like settling in New York without Nugent around to be his big brother and guide. “I don’t want to try to think about it,” Mangold said. “It’s too scary.”
Hawk practiced against Mangold every day for three years when they were at Ohio State. To play against him Sunday is going to be exciting, he said. “It’s kind of special, if you think about it,” he said in a telephone interview this week.
Mangold said it was going to be “kind of neat.”
Jonathan Thomas used the same word — neat — to describe the local buzz surrounding Sunday’s game.
Doubledays does not subscribe to an N.F.L. television package, so Thomas will not have to serve the cheering hordes Sunday. Instead, he plans to be at Lambeau Field, though he, too, is not sure who he will root for.
“I definitely think it’s going to be weird seeing Nick and A. J. take the field at the same time,” Thomas said.
In the end, the final score will not matter. For Centerville, he said, “it’s a win either way.”
N.F.L. Excitement Building in Small Ohio Town
By KAREN CROUSE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/karen_crouse/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
For their annual fund-raiser, the athletic boosters at Centerville High in suburban Dayton, Ohio, recently raffled off two tickets to a N.F.L. game. Normally, that would be considered sweetening the pot with an artificial substance, there being no real substitute in these parts for football as it is played in high schools or at nearby Ohio State (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/ohio_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org).
This year is the rarest of exceptions. People who do not follow the N.F.L. were giddy at the prospect of procuring tickets for the Jets (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/newyorkjets/index.html?inline=nyt-org)’ game this weekend against the Packers (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/greenbaypackers/index.html?inline=nyt-org) in Green Bay, Wis. The reason was threefold: Mike Nugent and Nick Mangold of the Jets, and A. J. Hawk of the Packers grew up in Centerville.
Nugent, a second-year place-kicker, is coming off a four field-goal performance against the Houston Texans (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/houstontexans/index.html?inline=nyt-org) that included a career-best 54-yarder. Mangold, a rookie, has started all 11 games at center while accruing only two penalties. Hawk, a rookie linebacker, was credited with 15 tackles (10 unassisted) in the Packers’ loss at Seattle on Monday night.
For local residents, seeing three of Centerville’s own in the N.F.L. seems no less preposterous than striking oil in their backyards. The city of 23,000 is known more for its early stone buildings than for its professional football pipeline. The bedroom community is the opposite of sprawling, its tight-knit constitution reflected in half of its businesses, which employ five or fewer people.
Before Nugent was drafted by the Jets in the second round last year, Centerville had produced two N.F.L. players and none since Andy Harmon, a defensive tackle who played for the Philadelphia Eagles (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/philadelphiaeagles/index.html?inline=nyt-org) from 1991 to 1997.
“We’re a very little town,” said Mangold’s father, Vern. “To have three kids playing in the N.F.L. is unreal.”
To have players from Centerville squaring off in an N.F.L. game is also a little unnerving. Picking sides is like having to choose among communal flesh and blood.
For Rick Amos, a retired chief master sergeant of the Air Force, the question of whom to pull for is further complicated. Amos, who lives in a neighboring town, Bellbrook, bought one $5 raffle ticket in the fund-raiser and won airfare for two, lodging, a car rental and tickets to the game at Lambeau Field.
Amos, 53, does not know any of the Centerville players, though he says he feels a tenuous connection to Nugent, who signed a visor last year for his 16-year-old daughter, Katherine. But the raffle tickets were donated by Hawk, the fifth overall pick in this year’s draft, and Amos is supposed to meet him after the game. So whose colors does he wear?
“I am somewhat conflicted,” Amos said in a telephone interview. “It’s probably not a good idea to be wearing a Mike Nugent jersey when I meet A. J.”
Then again, Amos cannot in good conscience show up in a Hawk jersey after how gracious Nugent was to his daughter, whom Amos is taking to the game. “Maybe I’ll wear a Woody Hayes Buckeyes hat,” Amos said, laughing, referring to the legendary former coach of Ohio State, which Hawk, Nugent and Mangold attended. “That’s kind of neutral.”
Hawk was the first to be pegged for greatness. He was a year behind Nugent in school, but because of his athletic abilities, he often played up in age.
“It was kind of a big thing around Centerville, how good A. J. was in the sixth grade,” Mangold said this week. “He was a lot better than me or Mike. There was no question about that. He was a beast back in the day. Still is.”
Nugent’s father, Dan, who played football at the University of Wisconsin (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_wisconsin/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and the University of Dayton, said: “In sixth-grade football, there’s ambulances on the field taking off people because of A. J. He crushed people.”
At Cardboard Heroes, a sports store at the Dayton Mall, Hawk’s reputation for humility and hard work render him much more than a one-dimensional star to the shoppers who have made his No. 50 Packers jersey one of the top-selling items. It sells better than the jersey of Bengals (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/cincinnatibengals/index.html?inline=nyt-org) receiver Chad Johnson and is on par with that of Steelers (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/pittsburghsteelers/index.html?inline=nyt-org) quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who played his college ball at nearby Miami of Ohio.
Nugent was the only N.F.L. kicker whose jersey was stocked at the store until this year, when the Colts (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/indianapoliscolts/index.html?inline=nyt-org) signed Adam Vinatieri, prompting some demand for his jersey. “Nuge’s jersey sold just as good as anybody else,” said Eric Hillaker, a store employee who said he was four years behind Nugent at Centerville High.
Hawk and Nugent have known each other since they played on the Centerville Wee Elks football team. They were teammates at Centerville High, then at Ohio State. Centerville’s principal, Eileen Booher, said, “The best compliment you can give Mike and A. J. is that they haven’t changed at all.”
After attending the same parochial grade school as Nugent and Hawk, Mangold veered slightly off the beaten path. He starred at Bishop Alter High, a 700-student Catholic school in nearby Kettering, before arriving in Columbus in the same class as Hawk.
Hawk and Mangold roomed together for four years at Ohio State, and both were named captains, as was Nugent. Mangold says Hawk is so shy, he communicates mostly through text messages. “I think it took two years of us living together to actually talk to each other,” Mangold said.
Their last three years in Columbus, Hawk and Mangold lived in a three-bedroom house with another childhood friend, Jonathan Thomas.
Thomas’s family owns Doubledays Grill and Tavern, a popular gathering spot in Centerville. One evening in late October, when the place was packed, a majority of the tables were occupied by parents dining with their children. After all, said Kirk Herbstreit, the ESPN “College GameDay” analyst and a graduate of Centerville High, this is a city where families still sit down together for their evening meal.
“It’s like Pleasantville,” Herbstreit, a former quarterback at Centerville and Ohio State, said in a telephone interview.
The back wall of Doubledays is practically papered with matted and framed photographs of Hawk, Mangold and Nugent from their Ohio State days. There is one photograph of Hawk in a Packers jersey.
Nugent’s parents, Dan and Carolyn; and Mangold’s parents, Vern and Therese, arrived for a scheduled dinner together within minutes of one another and were led to a table that faced the back wall. These days, that is about as close as they get to dining with their sons.
“I called Nick the other day just to ask how he was doing,” Therese said. “He said, ‘I’m living the dream, Mom.’ ”
The table fell silent for a few seconds as everybody digested that.
The Nugents and the Mangolds, who have four children apiece, enjoy the kind of close relationship that comes from having watched one another’s children grow up. Mike and Nick attended the same Catholic grade school, and every summer for more than a decade they were teammates on the recreational swim team that was coached by Therese Mangold, who attended Wright State on a swimming scholarship.
Nugent described summers in Centerville as if he were reading from an old “Brady Bunch” script: “We’d leave the house around 8 in the morning, bike to the pool, and we wouldn’t come home until dinner.”
Therese Mangold was one of the toughest coaches he ever had, he said, “but in a good way.” Therese laughed when she heard that and said, “Mike’s the most coachable kid that I’ve ever coached in my life.”
Nick Mangold posed a bit more of a challenge. As he started to fill out his lineman’s body, he had to be coaxed into continuing to swim. “Can you imagine this body in a Speedo?” he said, his arms sweeping his 6-foot-4, 300-pound frame. “It was not a pretty sight.”
By the end, Therese had to bribe her son into competing by promising him a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, his favorite drink.
After Mangold was drafted at No. 29 over all, the first text message he received was from Nugent. When Nugent bought a condominium in a complex near the practice facility, so did Mangold. Now, instead of being separated by three miles, as they were in Centerville, their homes are divided by a single floor.
Mangold was asked recently what it would have been like settling in New York without Nugent around to be his big brother and guide. “I don’t want to try to think about it,” Mangold said. “It’s too scary.”
Hawk practiced against Mangold every day for three years when they were at Ohio State. To play against him Sunday is going to be exciting, he said. “It’s kind of special, if you think about it,” he said in a telephone interview this week.
Mangold said it was going to be “kind of neat.”
Jonathan Thomas used the same word — neat — to describe the local buzz surrounding Sunday’s game.
Doubledays does not subscribe to an N.F.L. television package, so Thomas will not have to serve the cheering hordes Sunday. Instead, he plans to be at Lambeau Field, though he, too, is not sure who he will root for.
“I definitely think it’s going to be weird seeing Nick and A. J. take the field at the same time,” Thomas said.
In the end, the final score will not matter. For Centerville, he said, “it’s a win either way.”