The Michigan Daily - SPORTSMonday -- Monday, November 1,1993- 3 [e±''& I Q&:[AS IGTN E DSK~14 IN MATT ELL4JIO qq-r- Elliott Former Michigan center discusses his football career Offensive linemanMattElliotthad a standout career for Michigan from 1987-90. He wasthe lastplayerpicked in the NFL draft in 1991 by the Wash- ingtonRedskins, yet he hasestablished himself as a valuable asset, earning All-Rookie honors last year. He is out for the year because of the new in- 'jured reserve rules Daily Sports Writer Melanie Schuman spoke with him recently. Daily: As a Michigan alumnus and former U-M football player, how do you think Michigan is playing right now? Elliott: I'm really disappointed to see three losses (prior to Saturday) on the schedule. For some reason, I just *don't see theteam playing with alotof fire right now unfortunately. I think the biggest problem where I look at, and mostexperienced footbalipeople would say, the heart and soulof a teamis the offensive line. I think other than(Marc) Milia, they'restill very young and very immature from tackle by tackle, not coming off the ball as well as you might expect them to be. They look to bejustalittlebithesitantintermsofthe running game, which is difficult. I would hope that the team has enough character to come back. D: On a college or professional level, what do you think it takes to make a truly great offensive lineman. Is there some secrpt ingredient? E: It's avery delicate combination. The first thing you're going to have to be is very intelligent. In the NFL, you're elot going to find a good one that's dumb. After that, it really depends on the type of player you're going to be. Some are stronger than others, some are lighter on their feet than others. Quick feet is amust. How quick (they) are, you make up (for) with strength and other things. Then there are the immeasurables: the heart and desire the player has to get the job done. D: What are therivalries like in the 4NFL compared to the college level? E: In the NFL, it's interesting be- cause they can be a lot longer-lasting because guys play more than three or fouryearsona team. Guys willplay ten years. Not unlike the Big Ten is the NFC East, which is the division where I play and it has a very long, violent history of football. It's got the greatest teams in the NFL. * It's not unlike the Big Ten where they'll come in and knock your head off and any team can beatany other on a given day. A lot of itis personal too. You don't get to know the players on other teams in college, but profes- sionally, you get to know them. You see them in functions off-season; you played them in college. Then, there are the journeymen who travelaround; ,(from whom) you get a sense of what the entire team is about. It's a very deep-seated hatred formore ways than one, rather than the pride and colors of your school. D: Going back to Draft Day. You had the distinction of being the last player to be picked. What was it like waiting out the day? E: Hell. Pure, absolute, unadul- terated hell. I had talked to a couple of ,different teams who told me they were going to take me fourth to sixth round. One team absolutely guaranteed, 'if your still there in the sixth round, you're a steal and we're going to take you.' Obviously, those prophecies didn't come true. It was really unnerving. Yes, it's really disappointing and I'm very saddened that something like that happened, but I could not be happier than where I am right now. It was funny because Ididn'texpect tobedraftedonSunday,solhadkindof apartyoveratmyhouse inCannel.One of the guys suggested tome, 'Hey Matt, why don'twedrinkuntilyou'lldrafted?' I thought about that a couple of days after andIhad to chuckle as to what I would have done to myself. To make a long story longer ... come Monday morning the draft started again at 9 a.m. and I woke up at 9:05, so I never got a chance to shower all day. I just ran right down- fly you out ... they have an opening ceremony where they bring you in on a 90-foot cutter into Balboa Bay Club; there is a few hundred people there waiting to greet you. They're carrying banners, signs, and your photograph. It's really, really funny. Then there's a roast, and the whole week is a lot of festivities. It's all geared towards you andit's ribbing, butit's well intentioned. I mean, I got picked. You can't look a gift horse in the mouth. D: In the 1991 Michigan media guide, you said the greatest memory was winning your state football cham- me they were putting me down for the year because I really thought I had been playing well in camp. I was rotating in with the starting three in the middle. The coaches thought I was coming on realnice.The vetsaresaying tome they think I'mgoing to be here for a while and to look at it as a year that'm not hurting the rest of my body. And I'm still getting a paycheck. I'm working down in the D.C. area with the network affiliates and I'm doing a lot of charity work. I'm also heavily involved with the Na- tional Children's Hospital on the Have A Heart Campaign Board of Direc- tors . D:What was your startin the NFL like? E: The first game I started [at cen- ter] was Monday night atNew Orleans, just before Thanksgiving. The [next] game we played Phoenix at home and I started that game also. I played in all 18 games last fall. I was on punt team, kickoff return, and I snapped for the extra points and field goals. At the end of the season I was named first team All-Rookie by the NFL. I never had time to get nervous before Kansas City. AgainstK.C., one ofthe offensive lineman came limping off. The positioncoach yelled atme to get in the game and I was already halfway on the field. We were playing catch up most of the game. Right after, the offensive line coach named me starting center for the next game. Idon'tthink Iplayedas wellas they say I did. I'm my own worst critic. I take everything with a grain of salt. I thought I could have played better. D: What's the difference between playing in ahuge college stadium like Michigan's and in a smaller pro sta- dium as RFK? E: The fans just go nuts. It's reli- gious. They're comparable to college football in the South. It's like life and death to them. It's quite 'awesome' if you're not prepared. The stadium itself is old and romantic. It was originally built for baseball and we come out of dugouts. It's two levels, natural grass, loud, and colder than the Dickens. It's the way it should be. D: What effects will the current expansion have overall? E: What it means to me is that you'rejustdiluting the solution again. You're making it more available for mediocre players to make the NFL. I think we should stop expanding. Basi- cally, the only reason it's done is be- cause of TV revenue. It's done forpure business. Theyhaveno thoughtorcon- cern about the fans. The owners fig- ured out that they would make more money if they had more teams in the league. Youcan betyour bottomdollar that the next one is going to go to St. Louis. That's why it was delayed. D: What do you plan to do when you finish your pro football career? E: I'll play football so long as it stays fun. If that lasts a week, a year, or ten years, as long as it's fun, as long as they'll have me back, I'll keep trying. It's a passion to do what you do. When rm done, I'm going to think about finishing post-graduate work. I have a couple of opportunities with network sports, producing and directing. RYAN HERRINGTON The R.H. Factor The legend of the Fab Five will live forever ust as midterms wind down and your eyes slowly begin to focus correctly after all the late night cramming, it had to happen. You'd finally detoxicated from the caffeine rush that accompanied the 13 Mountain Dews ("Biggie" size, ofcourse) used to maintain consciousness during the past two weeks, only to realize that there is still work left. One more book has been added to the syllabus at the last minute. Three hundred sixty-eight pages, nonetheless. OK, so it might not be the challenge of Homer's "The Odyssey" or Law and Economics, but it is another text that will be required reading for anyone who has followed the crusade of five freshmen turned sophomores turned megastars turned millionaires (well, at least one of them for now). Fab Five - the book. Yes, the legend continues to grow for the five darlings/bad boys as their brief but historic hardcourt career together at Michigan is chronicled by Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom in a book to be released in the next few weeks. Albom's analysis and description of the players are on the mark, as he charts the quintet's emergence from their days as high school prospects, through their unprecedented run as first-year starters in the 1992 NCAA tournament, to their more turbulent 1993 season when the swagger and attitude that made them playground heroes also turned them into the team America loved to hate. The book focuses primarily on the rise of Jalen, Juwan, Jimmy, Ray and Chris to national pop icon status. In the process Albom tries, with a good deal of success, to describe the innate qualities these 20-year olds possessed that enabled them to become not just the talk of the college basketball world, but that of everyday America. I never fully understood why the Fab Five took off the way they did or exactly how large they had become. It was one thing for students and fans in Ann Arbor, or even for others within the state of Michigan, to become enamored with this group of brash individuals who had more talent than any five players on any college campus. Students would say "They're ours!" in the same possessive way that people use when referring to their favorite teams. ("We scored two touchdowns in the fourth, but we couldn't pull out the victory.") That was expected, given they did go to school in Ann Arbor. But the hype and the flash and the image spread much farther than the surroundings of southeast Michigan. The Fab Five were the team to either love or despise. Regardless of how they felt, it seemed everyone had an opinion about these young men and enjoyed expressing it. This summer, when I played in a three-on-three basketball tournament in Long Island, I was astonished to see just how beloved these guys really are. The parking lot that hosted the tournament was a sea of baggy yellow shorts. Not just one or two individuals. Try 25 or more. In the same manner, a Michigan No. 4 jersey was about as rare as a college hoop game involving trash talk. And then there were the socks. Those black socks. The same ones you wouldn't be caught dead in when you were nine-years old and here, it seemed like everyone was wearing black socks (by Nike, of course). It didn't stop at the tournament. Everywhere I went, when someone found out I went to Michigan the first question would be, "Do you see the Fab Five on campus a lot?" Not "What's the campus like?" or "Is it tough academically?" Michigan means one thing now to most people - the home of the Fab Five. It's ironic then that as much as the book attempts to quantify and describe the phenomenon of the Fab Five it, in and of itself, adds to its mysticism. Here is a book about a bunch of guys, four of whom are still playing college basketball. Books are supposed to be written about players who have finished their college careers, not those who are halfway through. And will it stop at just a book? What about Fab Five - The Movie? Fab Five - the TV show? What's there to stop this media roller coaster from spinning out of control? Then again, this is the Fab Five. Love them or leave them, they are an entity in and of themselves. And now, as if this would be a problem, there's a book that will make sure they will not be forgotten. BYPASS THE BOOK STORE Buy Or Sell Used Textbooks With Other Students from your College. Sell your textbooks for the price that you want. List your book with LINK UP for only, $3.00 per book, until sold. Buyers call to find the books you need in minutes. There is no cost to receive information. stairs and I was still sitting in my pajamas. My mom grabbed some clothes and brought them down to me and I changed in front of the TV. Probably the worst part was sitting there having to watch all the aerobics shows and they justhad the crawl at the bottom of the screen, scrolling all the picks and me still not getting a call. Every time the phone would ring, I'd jump through the roof. Finally, (in) the beginning of the twelfth (and final) round Atlanta called me and they said, 'If we had another pick we would have taken you, but we'd like you to come down as a free agent. We really think you've got a good shot to make the squad'. Wewere updating [draftsheets] also and I thought, 'screw this, I'mjust going to be practice meat.' SoI was cordial on the phone, not to bum any bridges, but by the same token I was kind of disappointed. With about ten minutes left to go, the phone rang one last timeanditwasMike Hagen, whois a scout from the Redskins. He says, 'Hey, we want to take you in the last pick of the draft,' and I just started going nuts. My dream my whole life is to be drafted in the NFL. I wanted to play, but to playIhad to be drafted first. If I would have been a free agent, I don't thinkI would have tried out fora team, just for the pure honor and prestige of saying I was drafted. D:YoureceivedatriptoDisneyland for being last pick. How was it? E: Agentleman has been doing this for the last 18 years. What it has come down to is the city of Newport Beach, Calif.,putsonabig party foryou.They WASHINGTON REOSKINS pionship. What is it now? E: At that point in time that is what it was. I think after that, I would have to say all others pale in compari- son to being the starting right guard in Bo Schembechler's last game. You can talk about playing pro ball all you want, being the last man drafted, start- ing a few games last year, being named first-team All Rookie, or if I were to ever go to apro bowl, whatever. Play- ing for Bo Schembechler highlighted my life, athletically. I can name no prouder accomplishment. D: You're not playing right now. In fact, you're out for the season. How did you injure your left knee? E: It was about the tenth day of camp. It was during a pass play and I was uncovered. One of the defensive tackles from the left side got thrown to the ground and he fell on the side of my leg. It bent in such a manner where it's not built to do that, thus tearing my MCL. D: What are you doing with your- self these days? E: I'm 13 weekspost-injury, sol'm 100% healed. I go in at 7:00 each morning and rehab, strengthening the muscles in my legs. When we start meetings at 9:30, I go with the rest of the players. We're on the field at two for practice and at that point I'm done for the day. It was harsh to me when they told LINK UPD CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-686-LINK Buying or Selling stcite Streevt +Sports TP REASONS TO BUY S10 ARollerblade.S 10. 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