by Miranda G. McLeod
Staff Writer
Homemaker Patti Baker let her husband stay home with their two children Wednesday night while she went to take a tour of Alltel Stadium.
“I told my husband, when I got done, I would know more about the game than he does,” she said.
Baker is one of the most recent graduates of NFL 101, a national program just for women within many league teams. Now Baker can tell her husband that Byron Leftwich wears a size-11 shoe and John Henderson wears an 18 — the largest on the team. She can tell him there are 21,646 pounds of weight plates in the Jaguars weight room and the equipment staff does about 1,100 pounds of laundry every day. And if she listened, Baker might even be able to tell him what a quarterback sneak is.
The Jaguars held the last session of this season’s NFL 101 Wednesday night. The program started in 1996. The three-and-a-half-hour program educated a crowd of more than 450 women about the history of football, strategy, equipment, players and the field. Ladies had opportunities to ask questions as they toured the Jaguars locker room/equipment room, the weight room, the meeting room and the playing field.
Comments flew in the locker room about Henderson’s use of Dove body wash and quarterback David Garrard’s use of a loofah — and the amount of mail he has stacked up since last week’s game against Arizona.
In the team meeting room, Adam Lane, special events video producer for the Jags, told the ladies about fines players face. The women listened then gasped when Lane told them the players are fined $457 for each pound they are overweight. Coaches and trainers set the weight restrictions for players and, Lane said, they’re mostly fined during training camp.
Other fines include $9,300 for missing a practice or workout, $1,800 for failure to report an injury, another $9,300 for missing the plane or bus (and they still have to get a plane ticket), and $9,307 for losing a playbook. Most of the fines go back to the Jags.
Moving onto the field from the team meeting room, the ladies were able to see the field up close. The stadium is decked in red and yellow for the upcoming ACC Championship game and the field dwarfed the women as the more than 72,000 un-tarped empty teal seats ominously peered from above. Tracking back upstairs to the West Stadium Club, the group was served dinner followed by a sit-down session with four Jaguars, a mascot and a deejay.
Wide receiver Ernest Wilford, placekicker Josh Scobee, defensive end Marcellus Wiley and back up quarterback Quinn Gray, along with Curtis Dvorak, a.k.a. Jaxson De Ville, and Eden Kendall of FM-95.1 gave the ladies play-by-play commentary on recent games. Using a Smart Screen, the players showed an offensive play in which Wilford scored a touchdown, a defensive play in which Wiley pummeled a player and two kicks by Scobee.
The guys kept the ladies laughing throughout the the night. Whether dancing on stage or cracking jokes, they seemed to enjoy the session.
“It’s good-time education,” said Wiley. “These are the ladies that faithfully watch our games. We are just a bridge between the players and the game.”
Following the commentary, there was a question-answer session. Here are a few examples:
Question (to Gray): What’s the difference in being a third-string quarterback and now being a second string?
Answer: The only difference is the shoes.
Question (to all): Can we get an invitation to the gun show?
Answer (from Gray): I don’t have any guns, all my weapons are concealed.
Question (to all): What’s up with the referees?
Answer (from Gray): You want us to talk about the refs? Can’t do — that’s the quickest way to get money taken out of your paycheck.
Answer (from Scobee): I love them. Think they are the greatest guys.
Question (to all): If you weren’t playing football, what would you want to be doing?
Answers: Wilford would teach the word of God, Wiley would be a teacher or deejay, Scobee would be a stripper, and Gray would be a photographer for Playboy or have a career in baseball as a pitcher or catcher.