Gridiron.

Muskox · week 14 · 2005

The old man can still play

Hal Vandergrift, veteran beat

Julius Kowalczyk RB
Muskox

Julius Kowalczyk is 39. He has played 264 professional games. He is averaging 15.0 a week and shows no sign of stopping, which is not how this usually goes. He reads Normal, which makes the mileage harder to explain, not easier. It ends for all of them. Not this year.

Across seventeen seasons: 24,176 yards from scrimmage, 150 touchdowns, 287 games. There was a 2,474-yard year in there. This is not it. For three clubs.

Coalport, Alabama is where he is from. He is thirty-nine. Around the building he keeps his own counsel and his own hours. He was rugby until he was nineteen, and he tackles like it. In another life he worked the overnight shift at a grain elevator.

The club is 5-8. Fitz Whitaker is new. The contract runs out in the spring.

One more thing: he has a rule about not reading anything written about him, which he breaks.

This feature ran in the paper in week 14 of 2005. The rest of the season is there too.

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