Suiting Up Again, Old-World Style

The 15 seniors on the Columbia football team are not your average gridiron goons. The class of 2007 includes six bankers, two pre-medical students, a probable Canadian Football League first-round draft pick, and an ESPN The Magazine academic all-American. Come May, these players will spread out across the globe in various pursuits. But for two of them, that travel will likely coincide with one more year in uniform.

"I'm hoping to play in Europe," said senior defensive end Darren Schmidt, the Lions' academic all-American. "I've never been to Europe and I'll play in any country-there are teams all over. Germany has the best football apparently. Austria and Finland, too, but I'm looking to play anywhere in Europe."

Senior co-captain Adam Brekke aims to join him overseas.

"Germany and Austria are probably my top two choices," the second-team all-Ivy linebacker said. "I'd probably go to whichever team is better. I know it will be cool whichever one I go to."

The defensemen's aspirations are far from pipe dreams. Both former starters have been contacted by teams who have seen their profiles on www.europlayers.com, a combination scouting and recruiting Web site for nearly 200 teams that compete in 50 cities throughout Europe, from Turkey to Finland and nearly every country in between.

"It's complicated. There are different leagues within this Eurobowl," Brekke said. "There are different pools of teams that play each other."

The teams, which fall into one of three leagues (first, second, and third), have profile pages as well, and each team lists the positions it is currently looking to fill. Take the first league Winterthur Warriors, hailing from Winterthur, Switzerland. The 2006 Swiss champs are offering a negotiable salary for quarterbacks and offensive linemen available to suit up from April through July 2007.

Alongside flattering photos of the men in light blue, Brekke and Schmidt's Europlayers profiles contain their vitals (age, height, weight, bench press) and football résumés, which list awards, statistics, and notable performances. They will soon add highlight films to their profiles and can list the benefits they expect to receive from their new employer, such as accommodations, insurance, gym membership, etc.

"It's kind of like monster.com for people who would like to play football in Europe," Schmidt said. "You just e-mail people."

Brekke has e-mailed nearly every coach or manager in every team in the various leagues represented on Europlayers, and he already has several teams calling his number.

"Players, coaches, and agents view our profiles that we put on Europlayers, and I've been getting a lot of e-mails saying, 'I need a linebacker this year, can you come and play, our season starts now,'" Brekke said. Since the European season begins in March and goes through the fall, Brekke has declined the offers, as he will have to wait until after graduation to ship out.

The classmates know of only one Ivy League affiliate currently in the European system-the Lions' former video coordinator, Marko Glavic, who plays for an Austrian team. Although neither has actually seen the European teams play, both expect the quality of football to be significantly below what they have experienced at Columbia.

"I'm convinced that it can't be that great-football is just not that big over there," Schmidt said. "Ivy League football is good football. I can't imagine that they have anybody over there that is playing a higher caliber of football, at our age, than Ivy League football."

"From the looks of it, it's a step below the CFL," Brekke added.

Since the leagues are not designed as incubators, European teams restrict the number of Americans on each roster to keep franchises from stacking players like Brekke and Schmidt who would bulldoze teams made up of, say, Denmark's finest. Even with some teams capping their rosters at three U.S. players, these Americans are receiving some tempting incentives from several European clubs eager to get their hands on the Ivy League standouts.

"If their team is in a town that has a university, they're offering me free college credits there to take classes and learn their language, and a team car to go around and see Europe in," Brekke said. "They're really trying to persuade us to play for them."

"The Americans should be their best players," Schmidt added.

Along with senior Tad Crawford, whose performance at the CFL combine earlier this month all but guaranteed him as a first-round pick in the CFL draft, three members of the class of 2007 may find themselves back on the gridiron next year, which is a significant jump from years past. The reason is simple-the success of the 2006 season, in which the team finished .500 for the first time in a decade.

"It was so much more fun and we had so much more enthusiasm around the team our senior year, so we kind of feel better about being athletes," Brekke said.

Both players attributed some of their desire to continue the sport to the passion of defensive coordinator Lou Ferrari, who made football fun again.

"He is definitely one of the top three most influential people in my life," Brekke said. "He really made us appreciate the sport."

"He is the most unbelievable motivator I've ever been around," Schmidt added.

Next year at this time, Brekke and Schmidt may need to harness that motivation from the other side of the Atlantic as they spend a year making names for themselves, and for Ivy League football, in the countries of their choice.