Ex-NFL players hoping to rock curling world
Pro-Bowlers set their sights high with 2022 Beijing Olympics few years away
Defensive lineman Jared Allen retired from the NFL in 2015 and wasn’t ready to give up on the competition he’d come to enjoy as a five-time all-pro.
His solution: The Olympics. The problem: He didn’t compete in any Olympic sports.
Less than a year later, Allen and three other former NFL stars — none with any prior experience — are attempting to qualify for the U.S. national curling championship against players who have been throwing stones for most of their lives. It would be the first step toward competing in the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
“Every team in the NFL — whether you’re hot garbage or the defending Super Bowl champions — every coach come August says the same thing: ‘We’re trying to win the Super Bowl,’ ” Allen said. “We come from that mentality, where we set lofty goals.
“Our short term goals are continually to get better: fundamentals, strategy, sweeping. We know if we master these little things, it will take us a long way.”
A 12-year veteran who spent most of his career with the Kansas City Chiefs and Minnesota Vikings, Allen was lamenting the end of his playing days when a friend dared him to try an Olympic sport. Allen toyed with the idea of badminton, but rejected it as too taxing.
“We thought about curling: It was chill and the winners have to buy the losers beer,” he said. “We thought it was a win-win.”
He rounded up former St. Louis Rams quarterback Marc Bulger and Tennessee Titans linebacker Keith Bulluck and tackle Michael Roos to form a team; all were Pro Bowl selections during their career and living in the Nashville area.
Adopting the name All-Pro Curling Team, they started from scratch in March and kept their plans under wraps until they felt like they had made enough progress.
“We wanted the reaction when we got on the ice to be, ‘Oh, how long have you guys been doing this?’” Allen said in a telephone interview after practising on a converted hockey rink in Nashville. “We were serious. We didn’t want it to seem like it was just some media hype or just trying to stay relevant.”
The first test was in November, when Allen and Bulger — with two “regular” curlers — competed in the Curl Mesabi Classic in Northern Minnesota. Their first opponent: The gold medal-winning team from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games led by four-time Olympian John Shuster.
They lost 11-3, giving up five points in the sixth end.
“Honestly, they were a little better than I had expected,” said Matt Hamilton, the second on that team. “All in all, Jared was technically pretty sound. But at the end of the day, I’ve seen thousands of curling shots and situations and that is ultimately going to win us more games.”
Although curling matches are often conceded when they are out of reach, the Olympians kept playing through the eighth (of 10) ends to help the football players gain the experience they will need if they are going to be more competitive.
The All-Pros are back at it at the USA Men’s Challenge Round in Blaine, Minn., this weekend, where they are competing for one of four remaining spots in next month’s national championship (top teams like Shuster’s have already qualified).
They got off to a rough start in their first match, falling 10-1 to Steve Birklid’s Seattle-based rink on Thursday night. But by hopping into the sport early in the Olympic cycle, they have almost three more years before the team for the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing is chosen.
Hamilton confessed that he was put off at first about newcomers thinking they could go to the Olympics after four years in a sport he has worked at his entire life to master. But he also realized that the publicity will be good for curling, which has struggled to break out of its niche as a curiosity every four years.
“If I really think I’m that good, I should be like ‘Bring it on!’” Hamilton said in an email to The Associated Press from a competition in Japan. “How much they respected the game, though, is what made me realize they aren’t making a mockery. We just have some extremely athletic individuals who respect sport, but have a need to compete in their blood. Can’t disrespect that!”
All four football players agreed the reception they’ve received from lifetime curlers has been decidedly different than the one that might welcome a curler who tried to break into the hyper-competitive NFL.
“Oh, he’d get smashed,” Allen said. “We’d go out of our way to test his mettle, for sure.”
Instead, the ex-NFLers found the tight-knit but friendly community of curlers was eager to accept them. In their match against the Olympians, there was trash-talking — or banter, depending on whom you ask — and Hamilton even gave them some of his old gear.
“I looked at their broom heads and I was disgusted. I was wondering why these former pro football players couldn’t afford new broom heads,” he said. “So I went into my curling bag and gave them some gently used ones before the game. That really surprised Jared, claiming nothing like that would ever fly in football.”