Ben Brickman put on his Syracuse football helmet and jersey for the first time one day last spring and jogged out to his first practice.
It should have been a triumphant moment, after months of dogged persistence to even get a tryout. But then practice started and Brickman had no idea what to do, or where to go, or who anybody was once they started rushing past.
“The best way to describe it is -- you know the guys who save people out of the ocean?” Brickman said recently. “If somebody pushed me out of a helicopter into a hurricane, that would be the best way to describe it.