Nice Story on Sam Gado's future
Posted: March 19th, 2006, 11:39 am
From the big paper down there in SC:
The face of ... Samkon Gadohttp://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/sp ... 134794.htm
Think going from Division I-AA backup to NFL starter is a big leap? You should see the one Samkon Gado plans to make next
By STEVE WISEMAN
swiseman@thestate.com
Turning his back would be easy now.
The good life is all around Samkon Gado.
His Green Bay Packers contract allows him a $330,000 salary. He has a college degree in health programs that, along with his MCAT score, has him ready for medical school once football is done.
But the sights and sounds of souls living in squalor embedded themselves in young Samkon Gado’s mind two decades ago, and he cannot forget them.
In his native Nigeria, generators supply rural homes with electricity a few hours a night. Water rationing is commonplace. Malaria, hepatitis A, meningitis and typhoid run rampant. Life expectancy is 46 years.
Samkon Gado’s first name translates as “truth.”
And the truth is he will never forget his homeland, where he lived for nine years before moving to Columbia 15 years ago. He will never forget the mission he feels a higher power has for him, the grand plan that took him from Columbia’s tiny Ben Lippen High and a backup role at Liberty University and plopped him in the Packers’ huddle with iconic quarterback Brett Favre last fall.
On one hand, he’s made it. On the other, he’s only begun the journey home.
“I have the desire to go back,” Gado said. “I feel like I have an obligation. I am familiar with the situation there, and to turn a blind eye to it would really be egregious on my part.”
EVERY REASON TO QUIT
Gado did not play his first NFL game with Green Bay until Oct. 29, yet he rushed for six touchdowns in eight games. No rookie in the franchise’s 86-year-old history has run for more touchdowns.
Gado possesses a burning desire to succeed. More specifically, he possesses a burning desire to be prepared for success, so when an opportunity arrives, he is ready.
That desire is what brought him to a grass field next to South Carolina’s Weems Baskin Track last Tuesday. That morning he had been in Green Bay, where he had attended a function for Packers fans over the weekend. The next afternoon he would head back to Wisconsin, this time behind the wheel of his Nissan Maxima, to begin the team’s offseason conditioning program.
Less than two hours after his plane from Green Bay landed in Columbia, Gado was working out with Randy Geib, his personal trainer and a friend since Gado’s his Ben Lippen days. Another session was planned for the next morning before Gado’s drive north.
Taking it easy isn’t an option for a player who has had every reason to quit football. He didn’t turn his back on the game in 2001 when Division I-A football programs passed him over.
He kept working to get stronger and faster at Liberty even though classmate Dre Barnes grabbed the starting running back job in their freshman year and never let go.
He stayed in shape and waited for a chance last April even though his name was not during the NFL draft.
Some might wonder why he never gave up. Gado answers them straight from his heart.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
You won’t find Liberty at the top of any list when it comes to football or academics. Gado dreamed of staying home and playing for USC. But Liberty, founded by Jerry Falwell, offered a Christian atmosphere and a scholarship. Gado wanted the former and needed the latter.
“I needed the scholarship for college,” Gado said. “So (USC) wasn’t really an option.”
He started two games for Liberty in four years. In spot duty he gained 730 yards over his first three seasons and had 901 as a senior. Despite his relative lack of playing time, he stuck with the team, because his athletic scholarship was his ticket to a college degree. And he needed a college degree to fulfill his dreams of returning to Nigeria as a medical missionary.
Gado got his degree. He graduated with a 3.66 grade point average as a member of Liberty’s honors program.
Gado’s mother, Grace, who teaches at Columbia’s Department of Juvenile Justice, said her son never lost sight of his long-range plans.
“Actually it helped when things were tough,” Grace Gado said. “If God wants him to go to the mission, no matter how bleak, he would make a way out. How is he going to do that? We don’t know. We just watch and see. Things will work out.”
Part-time players from Division I-AA schools rarely are drafted by the NFL, and Gado was no exception. New England wanted to sign him to a free-agent deal, but Gado waited for a call from Kansas City, which was coached by Dick Vermeil, a good friend of then-Liberty head coach Ken Karcher.
The Chiefs agreed to sign Gado as an undrafted free agent, then give him a look in the offseason. From there, Karcher said, “Sam did the rest.”
Gado’s conditioning program had added about 25 pounds of muscle to his 5-foot-11 frame since weighed in as a 200-pound senior at Ben Lippen. And he was running the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds.
During minicamp workouts last April, when players wear no pads and don’t tackle, Gado broke three long runs from scrimmage.
“Can you do that in a game?” Vermeil asked him.
The answer wouldn’t come in Kansas City.
THE LEAP TO LAMBEAU
During a Chiefs training camp practice in River Falls, Wis., Gado suffered injured his neck when he landed awkwardly after being tackled. Tests showed no serious damage, but the injury prevented him from getting enough work to make the roster. The Chiefs cut him Aug. 29, but added him to their five-man practice squad seven days later.
On Oct. 4, during the Chiefs’ bye week, Gado was about to fly home to Columbia. Thirty minutes before leaving for the airport, Gado found out the team had cut him again. He phoned Geib, a 41-year-old former wide receiver at the University of Mississippi.
“They cut me,” Gado told Geib. “They said they want me back, but who knows?”
Geib said what he knew Gado wanted to hear.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at 10,” Geib said.
They met in Columbia for a morning workout. Meanwhile, Robert Walker, Gado’s North Carolina-based agent, placed a call to the Packers, whose depth chart at running back was thin due to injuries. The Packers agreed to let Gado work out for them.
Another opportunity beckoned.
“We had a week to focus on a 40,” Geib said. “We started doing all plyometrics, doing explosive jumps.”
Gado arrived in Green Bay weighing 230 pounds. He ripped off a 4.43-second 40-yard dash.
“They signed him that day,” Geib said. “It was amazing. The timing was perfect. And that was that.”
Even though he was assigned to Green Bay’s practice squad, Gado showed the team he was serious about sticking around.
“He was in the building early, watching tape and learning the plays,’’ Green Bay running backs coach Edgar Bennett said. “He was preparing as if he was starting despite not knowing if he would ever play.’’
Gado’s chance eventually came. Green Bay running back Najeh Davenport was out for the season with a broken ankle. Starting tailback Ahman Green already had been lost for the year with a torn quadricep.
On Oct. 29, the Packers elevated Gado to the 53-man active roster. His locker was one down from Favre’s.
One day after practice, Gado decided to find out what allowed Favre to play the game with the joy of a teenager.
“He sat there and answered every single one of my questions,” Gado said. “He said to just don’t forget it’s a game. It’s not that other stuff that’s all around it. You control whether or not you enjoy it.”
Gado carried the ball one time for eight yards in his NFL debut against Cincinnati. The next week, with third-string running back Tony Fisher out with a rib injury, Gado ran for 62 yards and scored his first NFL touchdown against Pittsburgh.
Then came a 103-yard rushing day at Atlanta. A month later, with his mother sitting in the Lambeau Field stands on a frigid Sunday night, Gado ran over Detroit for 171 yards.
During a Monday Night Football telecast from Baltimore on Dec. 19, Gado gained 45 yards in the first quarter before straining a knee ligament. His season was done.
But his career had legs.
“He can be as good as he wants to be,’’ Bennett said. “He’s going to get better and better because he wants it.’’
Still, Gado does not let temporary success change his perspective.
“It’s been an amazing ride,” he said. “A lot has happened that you really don’t expect to happen. It’s been good. Right now, the best approach for me is ‘the honeymoon is over.’”
GOING BACK HOME
Gado left his temporary apartment in Green Bay and returned to Columbia, his family’s home since Jeremiah Gado, Samkon’s father, came to Columbia International University to study divinity in 1990. A year after that, a church donation allowed 9-year-old Samkon, his four sisters and his mother to join Jeremiah in Columbia.
Jeremiah Gado spent most of 2005 on a mission trip in Africa, so he didn’t see his son’a run to stardom. He has another trip planned for this summer, but it should end in August in time for the NFL season.
Jeremiah need not worry whether his son has allowed success go to his head. Samkon lived at home in Columbia during the offseason and kept driving the same Maxima he’s had for three years. He is socking away his NFL money so that when his career ends he can go to medical school and become a medical missionary in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, which is 50 percent Muslim and 40 percent Christian.
“Not many people are aware of Jesus Christ and what He’s done for all of us,” Samkon Gado said. “I know the work He’s done in my life, and I want to share it. But before people would listen to me, you would have to meet their physical need first. Medicine would be a great way for me to meet their needs.”
Gado’s life’s work and thoughts of his homeland never leave his consciousness.
“It helped me keep a perspective,” he said. “Doing well in the NFL is a great thing. But that’s not all there is to life. One of the things I learned in college was that football is really not your identity. My identity is in my faith and my relationship with Jesus Christ.”
