The life of Rob Gronkowski appears to be pretty great, except for that time he had back surgery, and that time he got a forearm infection, and also that time he tore his ACL and MCL. But other than that, it's been good. Yesterday, Vanity Fair published an excerpt that reinforced that outsider view of Gronk's life, given to the magazine by the patriarch of the Gronk clan, Gordy Gronkowski. Gordy has had not one, not two, not three, not four, but five different sons snag athletic scholarships. One of the secrets of his ability to literally shoot out athletes (think about it) was pitting them against one another:
In eighth grade, I said to each of them in turn, “If you want to keep pursuing sports, you need to start training.” Gordie [Jr.] didn’t want to at first. But then he saw his younger brother Danny down in the basement getting bigger, stronger, and faster than him—then he wanted to train! It was like a virus after that—Chris hopped in, then Rob. After that, it was no problem pushing them to work harder anymore. They did it themselves. That was a great feeling, but it got very competitive in the house. I just created the environment, sat back, and watched it happen.
Once they bulked up, it was time for free higher education. At which point each chose their school based upon what was right for them:
Rob had something like 65 scholarship offers, and I asked, “Where are you going? Syracuse? Ohio State?” He goes, “University of Arizona.” I asked, “Why there?” “Dad, if you ever went to a pool party at Arizona, you’d understand.”
"Have you seen our pool parties?" seems like a college pitch any university would be proud to use in commercials. Plus it's always nice to see somebody put what they learned in college to use in the real world. Some recruiting advantages just can't be competed with. Seems like a lesson Rich Rodriguez could use to his advantage in the future, no?
[via Vanity Fair]
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