Books by day, helmets by night.
By Brian Elder-KVAL SportsHis mornings start out just like any other math teacher's. He grades homework, answers questions and helps his students work out equations. But when the weekend rolls around, while his fellow educators are relaxing at home, 31-year-old Brandon Parks is out racking up touchdowns -- and bruises -- as the quarterback for the Springfield Buzzards. "It's a dream come true to be able to play football," says Parks.
The Buzzards play in the Oregon Football League, an organization of semi-professional teams that play 11 on 11, full contact football.
The Buzzards play their home games at Lowell High School and don't receive any money to play ball -- far from the 70,000 seat stadiums and multi-million dollar contracts of theNFL, but they still relish the opportunity to line up and compete. "It's still football," Parks insists. "It's just fun being out there and playing with 36 guys on a roster, all with a common goal of having fun and trying to win some games." And for Parks, the chance to play is all the payment he needs. "It provides that opportunity for me to get out here and do what I love." "It's just a bunch of guys that love playing football. There's some guys with college experience with Division One, Division Two, all the way down to Junior College. Our team we have now, we have a guy who's 18 ranging all the way up to 39," says Parks. |
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