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    Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile
    Unavailable
    Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile
    Unavailable
    Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile
    Ebook303 pages3 hours

    Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile

    By Nate Jackson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the national football league

    This is not a celebrity tell-all of professional sports. Slow Getting Up is a survivor's real-time account of playing six seasons (twice as long as the average NFL career) for the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos.

    As an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup, Nate Jackson is the talented embodiment of the everyday freak athlete in professional football, one of thousands whose names go unmentioned in the daily press. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the daily rigors and unceasing violence of quotidian life in the NFL.

    Fast-paced, lyrical, and hilariously unvarnished, Slow Getting Up is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best twenty-year-old athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 17, 2013
    ISBN9780062108043
    Unavailable
    Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile
    Author

    Nate Jackson

    Nate Jackson played six seasons in the National Football League as a wide receiver and a tight end. His writing has appeared in Deadspin, Slate, Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. A native of San Jose, California, he now lives in Los Angeles. This is his first book.

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    Reviews for Slow Getting Up

    3.5/5

    50 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A really interesting inside look at how the NFL really works. These guys are basically getting paid to sacrifice their bodies when they get old. The crippled millionaires club.
    • 4/5
      Nat Jackson has done an excellent job of portraying both the glamorous side and the price you pay side of life in the NFL. His writing was smart and very honest about how things work behind the scenes in this business. He doesn't sugar coat the league's sometimes dark side (which we all know exists) but he doesn't pretend to be a victim either. He's fully responsible for the choices he made and I believe he would make most of the same ones again.
    • 5/5
      There are a few time Jackson's style get's a bit carried away, but for the most part, it works. The NFL as a surreal experience of pain and violence is just devastating. The injury reports in particular are chilling.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed reading this book of insider NFL knowledge. It is certainly uncensored and a bit profane, but I enjoy the authors voice. However, you get the feeling of loneliness (perhaps that is what the NFL engenders). I didn't feel that the author firmly establishes his relationships with anyone in the book, which enhances this feeling of loneliness - relationships seem to be very casual.

      Reading this book enhances my mixture of feelings about sports. I enjoy watching and following them, but ultimately they are hollow, and in the particular case of the NFL, the participants receive serious injury for the viewers entertainment. At one part of the book, he says that the game is more violent because of the equipment worn.

    • 4/5
      Autobiographical account of an NFL player's injury-plagued 7 year career. It is a quite an entertaining read. Jackson's memoir is candid, wryly humorous, and quite thoughtful. It's a vivid portrayal of what it's like to a be an NFL player, not a superstar, but a player on the fringes who is constantly looking over his shoulder for fear of losing his oh-so-tenuous job - and physical health. Jackson, out of the NFL by age 29 and never a starter, actually had a career that was much longer, better, and more lucrative than the average. He is a talented writer. Good to read during football season.
    • 2/5
      I have very mixed reactions to this book about the life of a football player on the margins. Let me start off with what I liked about it.
      Nate Jackson details his life as a marginal player in the NFL. Basically he hung on through the practice squad and playing on special teams, with a few stints on the field itself. If there is a theme to the book it’s twofold.

      One is the prevalence of pain and injury in the NFL and how that makes it even more difficult to hang on when you’re always on the bubble of being cut or released. Jackson seemed to be somewhat injury prone with bad shoulders and later a balky hamstring, not to mention a knee injury he suffered.

      The second theme is how the players love football, or at least in this case maybe it is a love-hate relationship with football as that is certainly how the account of this career comes off. I could never tell really whether Jackson hated football or loved it. But he must have loved it or at least needed it like a drug to go through all he did to hang on to his football career.

      And Jackson has seen it all, from the practice squad, to great players on the Denver Broncos, to NFL Europe, and a last, final hurrah in the United Football League, a very, very small league for struggling want to be players and those, like Jackson, hanging on by their bootstraps for one more chance at an NFL career. (I wonder if the same can be said about the coaches as Jim Fassel coached in the UFL).

      The book is told from the point of view of the player and what life in the NFL means, which is a lot of pain, little time with family or friends, and near total devotion to one’s craft and to keeping the body sound. And for some, the few minutes of glory of being on the field and making a big hit on special teams or a great catch is worth it.

      Jackson mostly stayed away from the Xs and Os of the game and personalities. The most we heard about personalities was his great respect for Bronco’s receiver Rod Smith, and how he liked Jake Plummer and Mike Shanahan (the later who gave him a chance at the behest of none other than Bill Walsh).

      This was a very interesting account of the daily life of a player on an off the field and what it means to dedicate yourself to the NFL, especially for a player on the margins.

      What I didn’t like about the book, and it grated on my nerves throughout, is the smart-alecky writing style. It’s as if every anecdote and chapter is wrapped in this veil of smarmy humor that comes across, to this reader, and childish and not funny, as I am sure it was intended. Not that a book like this couldn’t use some of this type of levity, but the entire book is written in that vein. That was a huge turnoff.

      I also really never could tell whether Jackson loved the NFL or hated the NFL or both. I suspect both given the struggle with injuries and that he mostly grouses about life in the NFL. But then as noted, he did hang on for as long as he could through the injuries, NFL Europe, and the UFL. Why put yourself through that if you didn’t love it on some level? And he never talks about whether he truly cared about winning or losing games.

      And I would have liked to read more gossipy scoops on the players he played with like Plummer and Cutler and Brandon Marshall or things going on in the NFL generally.

      Finally, even though told from the view of the “common player” it really is about Nate Jackson, not the NFL and really not the other players.

      And for these reasons, at the end of the day, I wouldn’t recommend it.
    • 1/5
      Dreadful meandering writing, trying to be too cute with jargon.
    • 4/5
      There is a good amount of well-written football books. There are also many football books penned by current and former players. Unfortunately, there has generally been little overlap between the two. NFL memoirs are often cash-outs after particularly improbable seasons or impending bankruptcy or financially-ruinous divorces. The player's voice is generally diluted by a co-author who invariably has a penchant for lame cliches and generic athlete platitudes. Thankfully, Slow Getting Up, Nate Jackson's reflections on his eight years on the fringes of the NFL, features quality prose and brings a fresh and insightful perspective to a rather stale format. It is one of the most entertaining football books released in the past few years and is a worthwhile read for football fans interested in learning more about the trials and tribulations facing professional football players.After beginning with a 2008 hamstring injury that ultimately spelled the end of Jackson's career (physical maladies and the arduous rehabilitation associated with them will be a common theme throughout the piece) Slow Getting Up chronicles Jackson's improbable journey from Division III star at Menlo College to making an NFL roster and sticking around and contributing in the league for several years. Each chapter generally covers a season and the book moves at a fast clip and reads like a series of fleshed-out blog posts. He devotes early passages to outlining the draft process and his attempts to stick with the San Francisco 49ers as an undrafted free agent. Jackson is eventually traded to the Broncos during training camp in 2003 and he initially manages to stick on the practice squad before spending a few years as a backup tight end and special teamer with Denver. The author's relatively long tenure allows him to mine a considerable amount of anecdotal gems from his playing career, such as playing for the Rhein Fire in NFL Europe, losing to the Steelers in the 2005 AFC Championship Game, enduring a surreal training camp with Eric Mangini's Cleveland Browns in 2009, and trying to catch on with the cash-strapped Las Vegas Locomotives of the UFL.Slow Getting Up is one of the few player memoirs to really focus on an athlete treading the tenuous line between the practice squad and special teams and a career outside of the NFL. Understandably, most publishers are not really enamored with putting out books by authors with only 2 more NFL touchdowns than their general audience. Because Jackson is not able to describe what it feels like to catch a game winning touchdown in the Super Bowl or catch 100 passes in a season, much of Slow Getting Up touches upon activities outside the games. Jackson details life on an average NFL road trip, playing on the scout team, the incredibly frustrating process of rehabilitating from injuries, and extravagant nights of clubbing. That being said, Jackson does go into some depth about the game when he discusses his larger roles on special teams, where he played on kickoff, kick off return, and punt units for the Broncos. Some of his gridiron observations are also insightful, such as how coaches like Gary Kubiak, who spent his entire career as John Elway's backup, is more concerned with concepts than those with more NFL game experience. I feel that football players are generally held to lower standards as writers (which makes sense given many of them are pretty poor in the literary department) but Jackson's prose is legitimately enjoyable to read compared to any writer. His writing is peppered with pop culture references and witty turns of phrase. Sometimes his humor can come off as sophomoric and overly scatological, but Slow Getting Up is mostly a pleasure to read. His tone is sarcastic, self-deprecating, and irreverent and it is refreshing to hear a former player be so candid. Jackson even admits to a brief fling with HGH while attempting to recover from an injury. It is hard to think of a better guide (among former NFL players) through Mangini's surreal militaristic training camp, where players watch film cutups of warmups in meetings and are constantly quizzed on team mantras, than the snarky and incredulous Jackson.Jackson also is able to vividly describe much of his NFL life. This is probably due to the fact that he has essentially been writing this work for several years. Jackson started a journal for the Broncos' website when he played for the Rhein Fire in 2004 and maintained his column for three years. Additionally, Jackson was able to consult with Wall Street Journal writer Stefan Fatsis while the latter attended Broncos' training camp to write A Few Seconds of Panic (a 2000s version of Paper Lion that is worth seeking out for football fans or anyone curious as to the depths of Todd Sauerbrun's craziness). There is a surprising amount of dialogue in Slow Getting Up and while I am guessing most/all of it is based on Jackson's recollections it still demonstrates the robustness of his memories. Jackson also is not bitter about much and does not really have a bone to pick with anyone and he is generally objective and fair-minded. There are no chapters lamenting the physical beatings he endured, rants against the teams that released him, or chastising agents or fans that wronged him. Some may find his portrayals of Adam Schefter (who used to beat a beat writer for the Broncos) and Eric Mangini a bit unfair but who is honestly going to defend those guys? Jackson's riffs on their insufferable personalities were some of the highlights of the book for me.In SumMost NFL memoirs devote at least some pages to describing players' general weekly routines during training camp and the regular season. What separates Slow Getting Up from the pack is Jackson's perspective and insight into such matters. I understand the comparisons to Ball Four, but Slow Getting Up really struck me as the football cousin of Mark Titus' Don't Put Me in Coach. Both books seem geared towards the Grantland-reading demographic who will catch the Radiohead references and appreciate the anecdotes about players and coaches from years past. I don't think it will be added to the literary pantheon of the best football books ever (not that Jackson ever intended that) but Slow Getting Up is a fast-paced, entertaining and enlightening look at life in the NFL that I thoroughly enjoyed.8/10