(S23) - PT 4 - The Butterfly Effect

[Jay_Doctor]

There are two defining moments that stick out in my mind. The first is a lack of Division 1 scholarship offers. Mason was a quality athlete by most standards. He participated in sports year-round was best in football and tennis. One thing that probably set Mason back was playing tennis in the spring. The football coaches strongly encouraged (as a nice way to put it) everyone on the football team to go out for track in the spring. A few of the coaching staff were heavily involved in the track and field program as well, so it was a good way to get specific training to the football guys in the offseason. Mason ran track in middle school and it was alright, but it was pretty boring. Only the events were fun and even then, it was boring 90% of the time. You would wait 45 minutes for your event to be up. You would get stretched out, do tiny sprints and shoot the shit with others until it finally happened. When the time finally came, it was over in a heartbeat. Back to waiting 45 minutes to do something again. Tennis was much different. Practice was actually fun and the matches were as well. You could feel and watch yourself improving every week. Still, this did set Mason back some. A lot of scouts who checked out the football team put a lot of stock into their track meets. Whether that was right or wrong, it proved to be a challenge to get offers to D1 schools. Even though Mason showed good speed on the field in games, teams didn’t feel comfortable enough to take a chance on him. This could have been a point where Mason decided that college football wasn’t for him. But he didn’t. Instead, he went to UW-Whitewater, a football powerhouse in Division 3 and made a name for himself.

The other defining moment in Mason’s career was a knee injury. He tore a muscle in his knee his sophomore season. In a round-about way, the injury itself was the best thing that happened to him. Mason wasn’t eating well, and his water intake was terrible. In short, he wasn’t taking care of his body the way he needed to. With some help from his brother, he was able to turn lifestyle around. He also needed to work harder than ever to get back into football shape. Work ethic was never an issue, but it didn’t hurt to have an extra piece of motivation. He could have easily taken a different approach and wound up being an average college athlete that didn’t move on to the pro level. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but that was never the goal from the beginning. I’d like to think things have worked out well in the end. If he retired today, Blaylock could look back with no regrets.