Noah Spence's mindfulness has renewed NFL draft dreams
Noah Spence stood atop the hill overlooking Eastern Kentucky’s football stadium just long enough to watch one drill, survey the crowd, think about going to the sideline, think again, remark to no one in particular that he doesn’t know these people.
It set up like a triumphant moment: a potential first-round draft pick hanging out at the spring game of a small program that generally doesn’t produce NFL talent. But the coach who took a chance on Spence is gone, as are many of his friends on the team, and as for everyone else …
“I’m over this game already,” Spence said, his pro-ready build jutting out of a Guns N’ Roses tank top and shorts. “You want to go to the mall?”
Walking to his rented yellow Chevy Camaro, Spence turned back to caution, “You will probably never meet a weirder guy,” though the hours that followed suggested that’s untrue. He also didn’t mean “weird” the way it might sound, given the well-documented unraveling at Ohio State that exiled Spence, 22, to resuscitate his draft stock in this Bluegrass city.
He’s a budding fashionista whose kitchen is “the lab” for him and seemingly inseparable pal Shane Fields to cut up jeans, paint boots or whatever they dream up. He keeps the shades drawn, and there’s nothing on the living room walls in the cramped two-story apartment with the broken front door, save for a small EKU football sign above one doorway. Two man-sized onesies hang amidst the explosion of clothes in his bedroom. He’s methodical in his approach to shopping after making the familiar drive 30 miles north to Lexington, twice calling Fields from the dressing room for a second opinion.
But Spence was referring to what his father, Greg, calls “the power of discernment with other people” – a trait Spence admits he lacked until he’d blown his chance with theBuckeyes, who saw the five-star recruit from Harrisburg, Pa., break out with eight sacks as a true sophomore in 2013 before the first suspension hit.
Entire article:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...stern-kentucky-ohio-state-nfl-draft/83204152/
