When Jake Gustafson broke his leg halfway through his senior year of high school, he would never be able to play football again.
“It was really devastating, mainly because I didn’t get to end the game on my own terms,” the now UF finance junior said. “I was never good enough to play college football, and I knew that, but I wanted to get the most out of high school.”
This year, Gustafson, 20, will get the chance to relive the friday-night-lights fantasies of his youth.
In February, tryouts will begin for UF’s first club tackle football team. The team will give students like Gustafson the chance to continue playing contact football but without the pressures of the UF’s Division I team, said Arron Tsipis, a 20-year-old UF marketing junior who co-founded the team with friend Alex Howell.
“We want to create an avenue where (football players) could fulfill their dream of
playing that sport and being at the University of Florida at the same time,” Howell said. Players will compete with the National Club Football Association in a series of games against 30 teams from across the U.S. this Fall, he said.
Gustafson, who went to high school in Sonora, California, said although he could have played football at a lesser-known university, he wanted to attend UF instead.
“I didn’t want to sacrifice going to a lesser school academically to just play Division III football, or something like that, because I wanted to prioritize academics in this stage of my life,” Gustafson said. “It’s kind of cool because now, if I play for this team, I could
get the best of both worlds.”
Howell, a 20-year-old UF construction management junior, said he helped create the team to give students like Gustafson a chance to reemerge and play the sport again.
The team will field about 45 male students, and 40 students have already signed up for tryouts, Tsipis said. Howell said along with giving students the chance to play the sport, they want to build a community.
“The guys won’t be playing for money, and they won’t be playing for the opportunity to be in the NFL,” Tsipis said. “Mostly it’s going to be for themselves and for the team.”
