With the Italian Bowl headed for Toledo, Ohio this year (video link), the Toledo Blade has a column about pro football in Italy. This story is behind a paywall but former Dartmouth quarterback Jared Gerbino '20, who is in his second year playing overseas after leading his team to the Italian Super Bowl championship last year, is quoted in a Blade story that begins this way:
It is a city with a history as rich as its fine wines, the land of romance and dreamers, the home of da Vinci and Michelangelo and the Renaissance itself.
On Saturday, it was also the backdrop for football americano.
From the story:
In soccer’s towering shadow, players can feel like strangers in their own backyard.
How many Florentines are aware the city has an American football team?
“If you asked 100 people, two of them probably,” said Guelfi star Jared Gerbino, a former all-Ivy League quarterback at Dartmouth.
Hence, he is not a millionaire.
And . . .
In the Italian League, there are three American players who get lodging and a few thousand dollars per month. The rest are Italian everymen.
On Guelfi, there are waiters and bartenders, a pilot and an engineer, an architect and a magician. I even met a 47-year-old linebacker and hotel receptionist who goes by the nickname, “Death”, because he used to rock in a death metal band.
They do not play for money or fame or spend every waking moment fine tuning their bodies into football machines* (*unless, in the case of one unnamed player, cigarettes and Monster Energy drinks count as fuel. Mr. Gerbino has an amusing photo of his Italian friend and teammate enjoying both before a recent game.)
Find the full story HERE and check Gerbino out in this video:
Editor's Note: If that sounds interesting, you may enjoy John Grisham's 2012 novel about an American quarterback in Italy titled, Playing for Pizza.
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Always fun to see Dartmouth has been rubbing elbows with the big boys when it comes to football recruiting. From an interesting ESPN pre-draft story about rocket-armed quarterback Will Levis, widely expected to go in the first round this week (LINK):
Levis attended camps, but scholarship offers didn't arrive until just before the start of his senior season: Central Michigan, Cincinnati, Florida State, Iowa, North Carolina, Ole Miss, Dartmouth, Columbia, Harvard and, yes, Yale among others.
Levis' mother was an All-Ivy League soccer player at Yale. He would go on to graduate from Penn State in three years with a 3.97 GPA in finance and spend the last two seasons as a graduate transfer at Kentucky.
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Dartmouth football's series featuring graphics of incoming football recruits began Friday and wraps up three days of postings today. Hometowns, high schools, height and weight are added below the graphics.
Hiking with Mrs. BGA yesterday I couldn't help but notice the usually muddy back loop of my regular trail was as dry as I've seen it in a long time. While that's good for my trail runner hiking shoes and socks, it's tough on some of the creatures that need wetlands to survive. The fellow down below, whose picture I shot a couple of days ago, is in luck with heavy rain in the forecast today and tomorrow, and off-and-on sprinkles expected the rest of the week.
