Gator Country

Former Gator great wide receiver Travis McGriff spent some time last week talking about the differences in college football and pro football. Having gone through the draft process and playing in the NFL after his Florida career, he offered some insights on what it must have been like for Brandon Siler to have to wait until the seventh round.

Travis also took some time to talk about his wide receiver camp which will debut in the summer.

The audio is below the transcript. Enjoy!

TM: It is the NFL and where pro sports is different than college football is that a lot of times the way you draft is does determine a little bit of that … the shock that they had. You know they’re going to hang in the first round or much more stronger than they will the seventh rounder but that being said you really do have to forget where you were taken and just show up and compete. And you know somebody like … like Brandon Siler --- not Chris [Leak] because he’s a quarterback and that’s all he does --- but you know Brandon Siler being a seventh round pick will come in and they will have no intentions of him playing right away and certainly not starting so he’ll have to be the guy that jumps on special teams in a hurry and does some good things and hopefully gets noticed. And you know you just got to show up and compete it’s what these guys have been doing their entire life and you just got to keep doing it.

BA: Former NFL wide receiver and Gator wide receiver Travis McGriff is with us. A final thought about the NFL draft is you know I’ve often heard from guys who’ve made it to the next level --- of course I wasn’t drafted … I’m still waiting around Travis --- but you’re drafted. It hasn’t happened but guys who go from high school to college which I made that jump; college to the pros becomes more and more of a business. I know by the end of my college career it wasn’t quite as much fun except on game day as it was when I first got there. How much of a business is it when you go to the next level and do you ever lose the fun when you’re at the pro level?

TM: I can’t speak for everybody Brady. I know for me, I didn’t lose the fun because I really, really like to play and it’s fun for me to practice it’s fun to play so that wasn’t lost. But it is much more of a business in the NFL than it is in college. And you know certainly nowadays big time college football is very much a business. For me it didn’t take the love out of the game but it does change it. You know you do understand that you know in college you get 4 or 5 years nobody’s going to cut you. You’re going to get your time there that doesn’t mean it’s going to work out like you want it to but you get your get your time there and in the NFL what it takes a little while to understand. I mean a little while being there a couple of years is that there’s so many factors that go into a successful pro career. And it’s not just the coaches thinking you’re a good player I mean you have to fit in the salary cap, the front office has to like you. There’s so many factors that have to line up. It really in some respects they’re out of your control and there’s people making decisions on you and you might have never even seen them. You know this is in some back office and you’re out there trying to impress coaches thinking well this is all I have to do because this is all I’ve ever done. And it’s just really not true so it’s a business sometimes it’s very hard to not take things personal but if I could pull the emotion out of it and just give blind advice that would be one of things is that you know sometimes decisions are made on players you got to just go with it. You got to understand they’re business decisions and they’re not so much personal decisions or an attack on someone as an individual it’s just a big giant business and it’s becoming more and more so.

BA: For now Travis you’re obviously involved in a lot of business ventures and other things to keep your time busy but the one reason I really wanted to talk to you today was about this receiving camp. Tell folks about this receiving camp that you’re involved in what it’s about and where it is located.

TM: Well it will be this year, Brady. It will be our inaugural camp … the name of the camp is “Travis McGriff Select Wide Receiver Camp.” And all that term
“select” Brady means is that we cap it at 100 kids. We won’t take any more than that. And it’s just something that I’ve really wanted to do you know whenever I had time and still long enough to do it because I’ve always thought that, you know, really the wide receiver spot is an incredibly under taught position. Most people just think that you take the kids that are tall and can run pretty good take them out wide and just kind of run around and you throw them some balls. And you know certainly I’m not a guy that’s the prototype by any means so you know for me to be effective I had to be better technically than other people I had to be in better shape than other people…blah, blah, blah. And that’s really what I wanted this camp to be about is really teaching in great detail all the finer points of that position. So it’s not a babysitting camp … very different than the university camp and that we won’t accept that many people and you know I’m certainly not criticizing the university camp but I love them I grew up going to them but their concepts and you know this Brady you have been involved with them because there’s so many kids. What you can teach is very general and we didn’t want to do that so we’re taking minimal kids and we’re just going to take three and a half days and teach them that spot in great detail. And I think also the fact that we’re a camp that’s dedicated to one position really maximizes what you can do time wise because we don’t have to spend time on anything else.

About the author

Brady Ackerman

Brady Ackerman is a former running back at the University of Florida from 1987-1991. He is currently a college football analyst on Sun Sports and you can hear his radio show "The Brady Ackerman Show" in Orlando on Espn AM 1080 and the Space Coast on Espn AM 1060. His radio show is Monday-Friday 3-6pm and you can listen on-line at www.espnflorida.com. Ack's email is brady@espn1080.com.

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