This from a front page article in today's New York Times - read the text below to get the background, then enjoy the YouTube video.
Havard Rugland does not have the pedigree one might expect for someone who has become an Internet sensation for kicking an American football. He knows next to nothing about the sport. Just ask him to name the quarterback of the New England Patriots or the Denver Broncos.
“I have no idea,” said Rugland, a 28-year-old from Norway.
When asked how many yards an offense is penalized for a false start, Rugland paused. “I’d just be guessing,” he finally admitted.
“Look, I don’t know much about football,” Rugland said by telephone from his home in Aalgaard, a small town near the southwestern coast of Norway. “But I’m fascinated by it. There’s great athletes and speed and big hits. I thought it was interesting. So I wondered, What can I do?”
Using tools not typically associated with athletic prowess — YouTube, Facebook, Skype and Gmail — Rugland parlayed a homemade video that went viral into a tryout as a placekicker with the Jets last week. He might be the first professional prospect to replace college football experience with social media savvy.
In the four-minute video, posted in mid-September under the title “Kickalicious,” the left-footed Rugland pulls off some of the most amusing tricks with a football since Lucy began duping Charlie Brown. And sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, it was viewed for the millionth time.
In one clip Rugland kicks the ball from a dock to someone in a canoe floating about 25 yards away. Twice.
In another, he kicks the ball into the arms of someone standing through a car’s sunroof. That might not seem so spectacular, except the car is cruising along a country road. The most eye-popping trick is saved for last. Rugland punts one ball high into the air and then quickly kicks a second ball off a tee. The balls collide in midair.
“That last kick, it took about eight tries,” said Rugland, who added that coming up with creative ideas for kicks and punts was often tougher than executing them.
“The basketball kick, I wanted it to go straight in, but it kept hitting the rim. That actually took awhile. That could have been like 40 tries.”
Rugland is so accurate on so many difficult kicks that his video almost seems too good to be true. It brings to mind doctored videos featuring other athletes, like one of the Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant leaping over a speeding Aston Martin (Bryant never would have risked his knees).
But Rugland insists his video is real. (The New York Times could not independently verify this, though Rugland said that NRK, Norway’s public broadcasting network, reviewed the raw videos and concluded they were legitimate.)
“I actually used Windows Movie Maker to edit the film,” Rugland said. “The program isn’t very good, so it actually crashed a few times.
So it’s kind of funny hearing people accusing me of things like, ‘Oh, this is fake and it’s easy to see.’ I don’t know how I would be able to try and do that.”
Regardless of the video’s legitimacy, Rugland ended up at the Jets’ doorstep, quite an accomplishment for anyone, let alone a Norwegian who had never played football at any level.
His journey to New York provides a blueprint of sorts for anyone looking to turn a homemade video into a global hit.
It all started when Rugland’s club soccer team disbanded a year and a half ago. He began looking for another hobby to go along with his interest in video cameras. He got the bug for football after watching a live feed of the Super Bowl in the middle of the night.
Rugland said he always had a booming leg in soccer and wondered if his talent would transfer to this new, obscure sport.
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The rest of the article is available here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/sports/football/norwegian-earns-internet-stardom-and-an-nfl-tryout-to-boot.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp
Havard Rugland does not have the pedigree one might expect for someone who has become an Internet sensation for kicking an American football. He knows next to nothing about the sport. Just ask him to name the quarterback of the New England Patriots or the Denver Broncos.
“I have no idea,” said Rugland, a 28-year-old from Norway.
When asked how many yards an offense is penalized for a false start, Rugland paused. “I’d just be guessing,” he finally admitted.
“Look, I don’t know much about football,” Rugland said by telephone from his home in Aalgaard, a small town near the southwestern coast of Norway. “But I’m fascinated by it. There’s great athletes and speed and big hits. I thought it was interesting. So I wondered, What can I do?”
Using tools not typically associated with athletic prowess — YouTube, Facebook, Skype and Gmail — Rugland parlayed a homemade video that went viral into a tryout as a placekicker with the Jets last week. He might be the first professional prospect to replace college football experience with social media savvy.
In the four-minute video, posted in mid-September under the title “Kickalicious,” the left-footed Rugland pulls off some of the most amusing tricks with a football since Lucy began duping Charlie Brown. And sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, it was viewed for the millionth time.
In one clip Rugland kicks the ball from a dock to someone in a canoe floating about 25 yards away. Twice.
In another, he kicks the ball into the arms of someone standing through a car’s sunroof. That might not seem so spectacular, except the car is cruising along a country road. The most eye-popping trick is saved for last. Rugland punts one ball high into the air and then quickly kicks a second ball off a tee. The balls collide in midair.
“That last kick, it took about eight tries,” said Rugland, who added that coming up with creative ideas for kicks and punts was often tougher than executing them.
“The basketball kick, I wanted it to go straight in, but it kept hitting the rim. That actually took awhile. That could have been like 40 tries.”
Rugland is so accurate on so many difficult kicks that his video almost seems too good to be true. It brings to mind doctored videos featuring other athletes, like one of the Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant leaping over a speeding Aston Martin (Bryant never would have risked his knees).
But Rugland insists his video is real. (The New York Times could not independently verify this, though Rugland said that NRK, Norway’s public broadcasting network, reviewed the raw videos and concluded they were legitimate.)
“I actually used Windows Movie Maker to edit the film,” Rugland said. “The program isn’t very good, so it actually crashed a few times.
So it’s kind of funny hearing people accusing me of things like, ‘Oh, this is fake and it’s easy to see.’ I don’t know how I would be able to try and do that.”
Regardless of the video’s legitimacy, Rugland ended up at the Jets’ doorstep, quite an accomplishment for anyone, let alone a Norwegian who had never played football at any level.
His journey to New York provides a blueprint of sorts for anyone looking to turn a homemade video into a global hit.
It all started when Rugland’s club soccer team disbanded a year and a half ago. He began looking for another hobby to go along with his interest in video cameras. He got the bug for football after watching a live feed of the Super Bowl in the middle of the night.
Rugland said he always had a booming leg in soccer and wondered if his talent would transfer to this new, obscure sport.
=====
The rest of the article is available here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/sports/football/norwegian-earns-internet-stardom-and-an-nfl-tryout-to-boot.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp