Makenzie Ellis was done playing basketball, then CSU brought back the fun
Makenzie Ellis, shown dribbling around defenders during a Jan. 11, 2020, game against San Jose State, came to Colorado State to become a graduate assistant on the women's basketball coaching staff but is playing for the Rams first and is now the team's second-leading scorer and rebounder. (Photo: Bethany Baker / Staff Photographer)
Makenzie Ellis wasn’t looking for a place to play basketball when she took that first call from Colorado State coach Ryun Williams.
She was trying to find a spot as a graduate assistant, to give coaching a try.
“I definitely was done playing,” Ellis said. “I had a rough four years. I kind of fell out of love with basketball. But I still had a little bit left, to where I was like, 'I still want to coach; I still want to give back and give people a better experience than I had.'”
Williams, though, remembered playing against Ellis when she was at Colorado in 2015-16 and 2016-17. He knew the 6-foot-2 guard who started 16 games last year at SMU could help his team a lot more on the court this season than she could off it.
“I just said, ‘Well, listen. You have a year of eligibility left. Let’s come have some fun here in Fort Collins, and we’ll both be happy,’ ” Williams said. “And then she wants to be a coach, so we offered her a GA position after she was done.”
Ellis, who turns 23 Monday, remembered those games against CSU, too, and said the Rams’ style of play was a perfect fit for her game.
So she agreed to the deal: Play one more season as a graduate transfer, then transition onto the coaching staff next year as a graduate assistant.
Ellis immediately became one of the best players on the court for a CSU team that has been hit hard by injuries over the past two seasons. Ellis has scored 19 or more points in four of the Rams’ past six games and grabbed seven or more rebounds in three of those contests. She’s the second leading scorer (10.2 points a game) and rebounder (5.5 a game) for the Rams (9-10, 3-5 Mountain West) heading into a home game at 2 p.m. Saturday against Utah State (6-13, 1-7).
MEN'S HOOPS: CSU men play for a cause that's bigger than basketball
Her biggest contributions, though, don’t always show up on the stat sheet.
“She’s kind of like a Swiss Army Knife for us,” Williams said. “She’s a taller guard with some toughness, so we’ve used her to play the point for us this year. She’s played the 5, she’s shot the 3, she’s got a great mid-range. She can guard any position on the floor.
“That’s what we were looking for, and we surely found it.”
She’s a savvy veteran who started all 33 games Colorado played her sophomore year, averaging 6.4 points and 4.2 rebounds a game before transferring during a coaching change to join her younger sister, Savannah, at SMU.
The sisters, two years apart in age, had always wanted to play basketball together and still never have. Makenzie tore an ACL, which kept her from playing as a senior in high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She couldn’t play that first season at SMU, either, redshirting while sitting out under NCAA transfer rules.
By the time she was able to play, Savannah no longer could, having suffered a career-ending ankle injury.
“It was kind of a rough time for both of us,” said Makenzie, who averaged 3.7 points and 4.5 rebounds a game in her one season with the Mustangs.
She believed it was time to stop playing the game and get on with her life.
THE GAME: CSU women lose on buzzer-beater at Fresno State
To apply for positions as a graduate assistant with a year of eligibility as a player remaining, she had to formally enter the NCAA transfer portal, she was told by the compliance staff at SMU. So she entered the portal after earning her bachelor’s degree in May.
Williams saw her name in the portal that same day – “I’ll bet you it was within maybe a half-hour of when she put it in there,” he said – and made that phone call.
A quick visit to campus the following weekend confirmed what Makenzie already knew.
CSU was where she needed to be.
“She’s a great, great player,” said teammate Myanne Hamm, a fifth-year senior in the same master’s degree program as Makenzie. “She offers us a lot offensively and defensively. What I love most about Kenzie is what she’s like off the court. She’s just a great teammate, really supportive and just very encouraging.”
She jokingly reminds teammates to be nice to her this year because she’ll be coaching them next year.
For now, though, Makenzie is having the most fun playing basketball she’s had in years and competing with a level of confidence she hasn’t felt since high school, when she helped her Booker T. Washington High School team win Oklahoma’s Class 6A championship as a sophomore and was a preseason nominee for the McDonald’s All-America team her senior year.
“All I knew is that I wanted to come in and give it everything I have since it’s my last go-round. I finally have someone that has confidence in me, which was the biggest thing. And that’s why it’s been so fun going out and playing hard.
“It’s been great here.”
Kelly Lyell covers CSU and other local sports and sports-related news for the Coloradoan. Follow him at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news and help support the work he and his fellow journalists do in our community by purchasing a subscription at coloradoan.com/subscribe.
5 Reasons Why You Need A Travel Agent - More Than Ever
The sign no traveler wants to see, but it happens all the time, for many reasons - in this case a ... [+] Lufthansa strike. Photo: Silas Stein/dpa (Photo by Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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Want to rent a villa in Tuscany and do it on your own? It’s simple. Just type “Villa Rentals Tuscany” into Google, then wade through the four and a half million responses - most of which look the same, whether they are good or bad, legit or bogus. Spend just 10 seconds each vetting sites, and you’ll be done in a year and a half - and still won’t have rented anything.
Good luck with that - or even with much simpler planning, like searches for “straightforward” airfares. The major search sites routinely leave out flights (lots of them) and even entire airlines. A lot of the flights they do show are ones you don’t want, starting with “basic economy” fares that hit you with tons of restrictions and fees, so the price you see isn’t the one you end up paying, along with connections way too short or way too long, ones that no responsible travel agent would let you book.
Travel agents are even more important to luxury travelers, who ironically often think they know a lot about travel and rely on their own misguided sense of expertise. But while a good agent is so vital that it is simply foolish to plan a high-end trip on your own without one, they can also help travelers of all budgets.
The reality is that while it was widely predicted that the internet was going to kill off travel agents when digital tools were placed at every traveler’s disposal, that just hasn’t happened, for several good reasons.
For many, a rental villa in Tuscany is a dream vacation. But finding one can be a nightmare.
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Shannon Compton Game writes on money saving travel tips and budget travel for Outside Magazine, not the publication I’d expect to praise travel agents over DIY. But last year she wrote a column about his subject and opened with, “I’m a big fan of travel agents, even though I could technically book all my trips through websites and apps.” She then listed the specific pros of using an agent: “They can find crazy deals”; “They will be your advocate”; “They’ll take care of the little things”; “They’re true experts” and “They don’t usually cost extra.”
True, true, true, true and true. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I have been writing on travel and related tips for over a quarter of a century. I’m an expert on the subject, and I get interviewed and publicly speak about it. Do I sometimes use a travel agent? Absolutely. When friends ask for travel advice, and they do, all the time, one of the first suggestions I always make is to get a good travel agent. My tech savviest friends use travel advisors, and so does every major corporation - because it is the smart thing to do.
“Yes, the travel landscape is changing,” said Chad Clark, principal of Chad Clark Travel Ventures in Phoenix, an expert I have known for years. “Information overload, thousands of new hotels on the scene, all sorts of new cruise ships, passport and visa issues, weather, transit strikes, political unrest, natural disasters, travel insurance, travel providers going out of business, it’s never ending. How does one navigate all of this? To avoid the travel landmines that lay in front of you, you need to get a great travel advisor! You’ll be glad you did. After all, do you cut your own hair?” Good question, but his metaphor is a little off because you pay someone to cut your hair, while a good travel advisor can often save you money.
I wrote a feature about this topic here at Forbes eight years ago, and I still get thank you comments from people who took my advice. A lot has changed in those eight years, and a lot has not, so if anything, there are more reasons than ever to use a travel agent (for the record, good travel agents prefer to be called travel advisors, or sometimes travel consultants, and those are both totally accurate, but since most people still think of the industry in terms of travel agents, I’m mixing and matching).
Clark explained it to me this way, “Travel agents are a thing of the past - they primarily booked tickets and beds. Travel advisors have taken on a much more complex role - part psychologist, life coach, executive producer, concierge, fixer, dream maker, and ‘Blink Blink’ genie, with the multitude of services that they provide.”
Whatever you call them, I could go on and on about all the reason to use one, but here are the 5 biggies.
Emergencies: This is the one most applicable to the average occasional travel. Stuff happens, and whether you believe in climate change or not (spoiler alert, it’s real), big weather events have become more commonplace, widespread and unpredictable, and sooner or later Mother Nature is going to bite you when flying. But there are plenty of non-weather events disrupting flights, cruises, trains and destinations, from civil unrest to volcanic eruptions to disease outbreaks to massive wildfires to labor strikes. And just about every year you read about an airline that went bust and shut down suddenly, stranding all its passengers. Just a week ago I traveled with owner of a large New York based travel agency who has been in the business for 40 years, and he told me they recently stopped selling their customers tickets on Norwegian because the airline has had too many cancellations and became, in their view, unreliable. But cheap flights still show up in internet searches, and you probably would not know anything about it without expert advice.
Anything that causes cancelled flights (or cruises, etc.) means hassles, but the people who get through this process the most smoothly and the ones who get rebooked first and get the few available seats out of Dodge are usually the ones who used a travel agent. It’s that simple. First off, you actually have someone to call, versus long lines at banks of airport phones masquerading as “help desks.” But good agencies are constantly monitoring their clients’ flights and they usually know about your problem before you do - and often have a resolution before you even call them. They also have direct access to airline GDS (global distribution system) and don’t have to wait on long phones holds to get ticketing changes made. It’s worth noting that according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, nearly two percent of all domestic flights were canceled in 2019, a significant increase from the previous year and the highest rate since 2014. Midway through the year, MSNBC reported that passengers were being bumped from flights - involuntarily - at a rate three times higher than a year earlier.
I’ve known Anne Scully for years, and as the President of high-powered Virginia-based agency McCabe World Travel, she is perennially ranked one of the world’s best travel agents, sits on advisory boards of major luxury hotel brands and cruise lines, and is an industry legend. She told me that, “Anyone who travels should have the clout of a top travel advisor in their pocket. To start, if the client’s flight is cancelled while they are waiting for take-off they could have us rebook and protect their journey before they depart the plane. No waiting behind 300 other passengers! We can have clients met at the plane door at a large number of airports worldwide and whisked through customs, either on to their tight connecting flight or simply faster to baggage claim - where they are given help with their luggage. Most clients don’t even know that service exists, but they only need to use it once to always request it on their itineraries.”
Amanda S. Klimak, President of Largay Travel in Connecticut, told me that, “One of the amazing benefits we offer is overseeing our client’s journey, while they enjoy the trip. This year alone I have assisted numerous travelers with cancelled flights and trains due to strikes in Europe, rebooking them before they even knew their flights were cancelled. One of my favorite lines to my travelers who are stranded at the airport is, ‘Get out of line, go to the lounge and relax, while we take care of everything.’” You can’t beat that.
You may not be familiar with the island paradise of Canouan, but your travel advisor is.
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Expertise: No one knows everything about travel, no matter how deeply they are involved in the industry. I am an expert on ski travel, and I know the ins and outs of every major luxury ski hotel in this country. So, I wouldn’t call a travel agent to help me choose a ski hotel. But I know nothing about the hotel scene in Manilla or Sri Lanka. Some travelers cheat their way around this by sticking to brands like Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton wherever the go, but in many tourism hotbeds like Fez, Morocco, all the best hotels are ones you have likely never heard of. This is where a travel advisor’s knowledge cannot be beat. And while even the best travel agent can’t know everything either, the good agencies parcel things up, so they have a safari expert, a cruise expert, a honeymoon expert, and so on, and they all work together.
Walter Brownell first escorted 10 guests to Europe in 1887, and 133 years later, Brownell Travel has 150 advisors. Sorry, but there’s no amount of research you can do or number of travel magazines you can read that can match that kind of institutional experience and collective expertise. That’s the knowledge base you want. Let’s go back to the 4.5 million villa hits - any good travel advisor will be able to tell you off the top of their head who you should be renting your villa in Tuscany from - and why. That just saved you eighteen months, and probably got you a better house.
Chad Clark believes travelers should, “Experience the extraordinary, not once in a lifetime, but every time!” and to showcase the knowledge base advisors bring to the table, he created a program he calls “Chad Clark Certified,” personally giving his stamp of approval to special hotels, restaurants, tours and experiences around the world. To date he’s certified nearly 700 different things his clients (or you) can reliably consider doing.
It is important to remember that these advantages are not just for luxury travelers. Good travel advisors do not just know what the best hotel is, they know what the best hotel is for you and your budget and can help you find the right fit. As we will see shortly, they can also save you a lot of money, no matter what style you travel in.
Private tours of the Vatican are one of the most popular insider VIP experiences travel advisors ... [+] deliver.
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VIP Connections: Whether you are trying to book space at a coveted 8-villa safari lodge in Africa or get a room in a top Paris hotel during Fashion Week, most hoteliers keep emergency inventory and guess who gets it? The travel advisors they have known for years who book a lot of guests and send them a lot of business. It works this way with lots of things in the travel industry, from hard to get dinner reservations to the resort’s best ski instructor to a city’s top art expert as a private museum guide. Anytime there is scarcity, there is no substitute for personal connections, and the best agents have built these over years or decades. Plus we are living in the age of “experiential travel,” and good advisors create one of kind experiences most people would never have imagined in the first place.
“I had a client touring Russia who not only played piano well, but also took lessons from one of the best teachers in New York,” said Anne McCabe. “As a surprise, I arranged for him to visit the apartment of the great Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov, and the curator invited him to play the composer’s piano, while his teacher listened over the phone his wife was holding. You cannot create those WOW moments if you do not get to know who your clients are, and what would make their holiday most special.” You also need to know the curator. Try booking that on TripAdvisor.
“This is a key point,” stressed Clark. “Travel advisors provide our clients with access: access to people, places, and experiences that could never be replicated, much less imagined. A great travel advisor has invested time and relationships in creating their ‘black book’ of contacts and relationships, so that when their clients travel, they are treated as a VIPs, not just a credit card number.” In my experience, everyone likes being treated like a VIP.
Seemingly simple things often annoy even the most seasoned travelers, but these irritants can be smoothed out by good advisors. One biggie is having your room ready to check in when arriving in Europe early in the morning after an exhausting overnight flight. I’ve seen lots of travelers, including myself, told to go walk around for hours and come back at two or three in the afternoon, even at the finest hotels. Do you think they tell that to Anne Scully and her peers?
Another one of the most frustrating recurring problems I hear in the industry - even at the top luxury hotels - is a notorious refusal to guarantee connecting rooms in advance for families booking multiple rooms (and paying a lot for them). But when your travel agent books hundreds of room nights with a hotel each year, the GM (or sales manager) will move heaven and earth to give that agent’s client - you - guaranteed connecting rooms. For the same price. Often with a room upgrade. And late check out. And a free food and beverage credit.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Free cabin upgrades on cruise ships are business as usual for good travel agents.
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Extras: When you get more than you expected for the same price, that’s a great deal, and with travel advisors this happens all the time. The cruise industry is a perfect example of very large inventories that fluctuate in supply and demand each week, with a large audience of repeat customers who cruise again and again for years. The cruise lines do not want to lose the loyalty of those customers - or the agents who steer hundreds of them each year to particular brands. Yet it basically costs the line no more to have you stay in a deluxe suite than a basic room if that suite is available, and with the size of today’s ships, it often is. But who gets these upgrades? Advisors. Professionals who specialize in cruises have enormous volume clout and are legendary for routinely getting clients one or two class stateroom upgrades, free shore excursions, onboard credits and all sorts of things - for the same exact price you pay going direct. I would never book a cruise without using a travel advisor - it’s just foolish.
But it’s not just cruises.
“In an age of automation, it may come as a surprise that many of our new clients skew on the more tech-savvy side, and come to SmartFlyer for the first time seeking guidance on their honeymoon,” Michael Holtz, founder of extremely successful global travel agency SmartFlyer told me. “The millennial generation specifically may have seen their parents use a travel advisor, but don’t feel like they need one - until they are deep in the spiral of research. By shifting gears to planning with an expert, they feel liberated from the immense pressure of choosing the ‘best’ resort - because we’re cutting through the noise of all the conflicting opinions they’re seeing online. Our team has actually been to the properties first-hand - not to mention has personal relationships with the General Managers. For example, we just had a couple fly to Canouan, a remote island in the Caribbean that they had no idea even existed before we recommended it. When they arrived at the Mandarin Oriental, the GM double upgraded them thanks to SmartFlyer’s close relationship with the property. At the end of the day, it’s all about personal relationships translating into exceptional experiences for our clients.”
One of the biggest shortcuts to freebies and extras is Virtuoso, a network of top tier travel agencies, most in the luxury realm. While agencies belonging to Virtuoso are independent and free to recommend and book anything they want - and often do because they have strong opinions - the network has specific relationships with over 1,800 travel partners (cruise, tours, airlines and 1,400 individual hotels in 100+ countries) with which it negotiates exclusive (and contractually obligated) benefits. Why are travel suppliers so eager to work with agencies and advisors that belong to Virtuoso (advisors can join by invitation-only based on their track records)? Because last year Virtuoso members booked $26.4 billion in travel for their clients.
So in addition to the extras for personal connections you can get via people like Michael Holtz knowing the GM, anyone who books through a Virtuoso agency gets automatic perks like complimentary daily breakfast, room upgrades, early check-in, late check-out, complimentary airport transfers, spa credits and so on (specifics vary by hotel). According to Virtuoso, just the hotel benefits are valued at an average of over $500 per stay. Complimentary cruise benefits can be even bigger.
The New York agent who told me about Norwegian Airlines belongs to a competitive consortium of more than 8,000 agents called Travel Leaders Group, which similarly negotiates collective benefits. Signature Travel Network is another high-end collective of agencies, and Travel Savers is the other major one. All of these associations have some excellent travel advisors within them.
But having covered the luxury travel space for years, it seems that virtually every top advisor and agency I come across, the ones my friends, family and colleagues recommend, belongs to Virtuoso, as do all of the agencies mentioned in this piece besides the one in Travel Leaders. I just visited an amazing new luxury hotel in Italy, and they were quick to boast about having been admitted as preferred Virtuoso property - to them it was a mark of quality like earning a Michelin-star.
“The thing I love about Virtuoso is not just the quality of the advisors, but the strength of the entire network and the supplier partners they use around the world,” said travel writer, award-winning broadcaster and author Michael Patrick Shiels. “I decided to do this segment on running with the bulls in Pamplona and I had never been to Spain, so a Virtuoso advisor connected me with Made For Spain and Portugal, a partner ground supplier that does all the behind the scenes magic. They know everyone and totally set up an amazing itinerary and I ran with the bulls. In Italy, Virtuoso has an amazing local company called IC (Italian Connection) Bellagio that is totally wired into all the kinds of local things travelers say they want these days, special experiences, the best restaurants, art tours of private villas. When you ask your Virtuosos agent to plan a trip to Tuscany, it’s not just them, they have all this expert support behind them, down to the micro level. I’ve been all around the world, and before the first time I worked with Virtuoso I didn’t think I needed a travel agent’s help - now I can’t imagine not using one for anything complicated or specialized.”
It's better in Business or First Class - especially when you get a bargain.
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Air: If you are trying to buy the cheapest round-trip economy ticket from New York to Dallas, even the best advisors probably can’t get it for less than you can buy it online, though you still have to deal with all the pitfalls of the online travel sites and you will lose the safety net advisors provide when things go wrong. But in a couple of other cases, buying your air through an agent can actually save you money, or miles, or both.
One case is when you are buying premium class tickets, Business, First or some of the even higher new classes. I have an extremely tech savvy friend in San Francisco who wanted to fly First class to Hawaii for his honeymoon, and even though he could afford it, he was shocked how much the airlines wanted. I suggested he call McCabe World Travel, and he was mystified how they could purchase the exact same tickets for about two thousand dollars less -each - than the best price he could find online, by calling the airline, or through the American Express Platinum Card travel desk. I don’t care how rich you are, if you can get the same tickets and pocket four thousand dollars that’s a good deal - plus you get all the peace of mind that comes with the advisor’s safety net. Not surprisingly, years later he still uses McCabe for all his travel. Consider this: the agency has three advisors in its air travel department who do nothing else, among its roughly 50 affiliated advisors.
When it comes to using miles, or miles and money, or just paying to fly in pricier premium classes, you might have trouble believing the miracles these specialists can work. As Largay’s Klimak told me, “I was working with a couple last year traveling to Australia and New Zealand for their dream cruise. They wanted to use frequent flyer miles, and I knew that they also had Dubai on their Wanderlist. I was able to change their flights from Business class on Qantas to First Class on Emirates - for half the mileage. We were also able to add a stopover with a wonderful desert and shopping experience in Dubai, checking two destinations off their list for a fraction of the cost.”
I use SmartFlyer for tricky tickets. Despite its name, it is a well-known, full-service luxury travel agency that does everything from safaris to cruises, but where they are better than just about everyone else is creative ticketing. I hear endless complaints from frequent fliers about the difficulty using miles, but I have found that is not the case - if you use a mileage and ticketing expert. I did a story on skiing in Japan, and SmartFlyer was able to get me to Tokyo in Business Class and back in First for $1,500 and 100,000 United miles. This was less than a third of the miles United directly quoted me for the same trip when I called the MileagePlus Elite desk, and I ended up getting more than three times the dollars per mile that most experts value frequent flier miles at.
On another trip recent trip to Bali, SmartFlyer found me flights on Cathay Pacific - one of the world’s best airlines - in Premium Economy to Hong Kong and then the five hour leg to Bali in Business class, for less than Cathy was selling the trip on its site just in Premium Economy the whole way. It just doesn’t seem possible, but it is, real tickets, same airline, better seats, less money. I don’t know how they do it, and frankly I don’t care, but if you know who to call this happens all the time (if you are not a client of SmartFlyer booking your vacation or business trip, they will charge you a fee to do the legwork and find you great deals on premium and mileage tickets, but in almost every case I’ve seen, it still saves you money).
“In terms of value, what we can do is unparalleled to anything clients will find elsewhere,” SmartFlyer’s Holtz told me. “Our negotiated air contracts, along with our in-depth knowledge of the carriers and actual aircraft, means we can advise travelers how to reach their destination at the best possible price and in the most comfortable configuration. Sometimes, this means hundreds of dollars in savings per ticket.” Or more.
Better Trips! At the end of the day this is the bottom line, the big win you get with a good travel advisor. They know more than you do, they are better connected, they have access to benefits you can’t get yourself, and they can match and often beat any prices you find. They plan a better trip and then provide a safety net. Having a top travel agent can make you an instant VIP, certainly will save you time and hassle, and quite possibly money.
Amanda Foshee is an advisor at Brownell Travel, and she summed it up nicely: “What everyone needs these days is more time and less stress, and that’s what we’re here for. Travel advisors take the overwhelming amount of information out there and distill it into the key points that apply to you - the best hotel/destination/tour for your interests, your budget, and your time frame. A client shared that going through all the information online to plan a trip would be a second full-time job for her, and I told her that’s why it’s my full-time job instead!”
Paul Klee: 'He's unbelievable!' Ben Garland carries Air Force pedigree into Super Bowl LIV — his third
DENVER — Without knowing how Ben Garland got here, without wondering how a kid from Grand Junction on Sunday will be involved with his third Super Bowl, the photo still summons goose bumps.
There’s Emmanuel Sanders, the Pro Bowl wide receiver, over Garland's left shoulder. There’s Raheem Mostert, the shooting-star running back, handing him the football. There’s George Kittle, the All-Pro tight end, exhorting him to “SPIKE IT!” And in the background, leaping skyward, $137 million quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
They frame the undrafted lineman from the Air Force Academy. They put him front and center.
“Surreal moment for me. Just surreal. I’ve never spiked a ball in 20 years of playing football,” Garland told The Gazette by phone.
When the San Francisco 49ers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV, here’s a hunch that photo, snapped after Mostert’s fourth touchdown in the NFC championship game, finds a prominent placement at 49ers headquarters. It fits just right alongside Dwight Clark’s catch, Joe Montana's raised fists, Jerry Rice's smile.
Ben Garland — Air Force’s Ben Garland, Colorado’s Ben Garland — alongside those guys.
How did he get here?
“No, it’s a good question. I had big dreams, but I wouldn’t believe all this,” Garland said. “As a little kid running around you dream about the Super Bowl. We never had a lot of money. So you’re not going to a Super Bowl — let alone be in one, let alone play in two, let alone play in three. It’s total disbelief. It’s totally a blur.”
The photograph taken at Levi’s Stadium stirred a Garland memory for me. It was 2012, and Garland’s grandparents had lost their home in the Waldo Canyon fire — and, with it, the silver sabers awarded to Garland upon his graduation.
Weeks later, the Broncos organization, with the help of ProLink Sports owner Judianne Atencio and Broncos public relations guru Patrick Smyth, floored Garland with a surprise for the ages.
The team surrounded Garland. They framed him. Derek Wolfe shoved him forward, front and center. Joe Mays, a linebacker, stretched out his tree-trunk arms and presented to Garland a silver saber, just like the ones lost in the fire.
"To do that for someone on the practice squad, that’s what is so incredible about it,” said his mom, Syndee Garland. "It showed how much they respected him."
It’s been a decade since Garland graduated from the academy and signed with the Broncos as an undrafted free agent.
“I’m supposed to be a pilot right now,” Garland said.
No, Ben Garland is right where he’s supposed to be — front and center, smack in the middle of yet another Super Bowl.
•••
Not long after the 49ers won the NFC title game and confirmed their Super Bowl ticket, Air Force coach Troy Calhoun stepped off a recruiting jet and gave his best Tom Brady into a phone: “Let’s goooo!”
You won’t often catch Calhoun rambling about football. But when it comes to Ben Garland, you can’t keep him quiet. This time the conversation concerned Garland’s performance as the starting center for the 49ers against the Packers.
“Watch the film! I’m telling you, watch the film! He’s unbelievable!” Calhoun said.
As The Gazette’s designated Ben Garland beat writer, I’ve been privy to the impossible story he’s written. How he’d sit in on random calculus classes just to learn the material, earning no course credit. How X-rays revealed a broken hand and a 6-to-8 week absence at Air Force, and Garland played the next 11 games. How he went from challenging Tim Tebow to wind sprints to protecting Peyton Manning.
What Garland did this season trumps all. He never played a snap on offense at Air Force. Last Sunday, at center, he anchored a 49ers running game that piled up 285 rushing yards in the NFC title game. The stars on the team told him to “spike it!”
“I wouldn’t say I’m shocked — he is Ben Garland, after all — but it’s difficult to comprehend what he’s done,” Calhoun said. “Starting on the defensive line, then moving to guard, and now being so skilled and powerful as a center. It’s truly one of the most incredible stories I’ve ever seen in terms of adapting to your environment, giving up yourself for the greater good.”
Calhoun, of course, assisted Mike Shanahan’s Broncos and Gary Kubiak’s Texans, running a zone-blocking scheme that serves as the base for Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers. Simple transition for Garland, right? One issue: Garland never played a snap on offense at Air Force.
“Just in middle school and high school I played on offense,” Garland said.
The position change, he said, was initiated by former Broncos strength coach Luke Richeson — in Garland’s fourth year in the NFL. Richeson believed the move would extend Garland’s career, which now, a decade later, is hitting its stride. It also came with radical weight gains and losses, from his peak of 350 pounds as a nose guard (almost 150 more than his playing weight at Air Force) to 305 pounds as a center.
“It gives you chills to watch him on the offensive line. I’m telling you, he’s superb as a center. And he’s done that on the fly!” Calhoun said. “It looks natural how he snaps and steps immediately. Those two things have to be almost in perfect unison, especially for a zone-blocking team. And in that championship game it looks like he’s done it his whole life. It’s unbelievable!”
Did Air Force ever consider moving Garland to the offensive line?
“Two words for that: No and hell no,” Calhoun said. “He was too much of a force at nose guard.”
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When the Broncos won Super Bowl XXXII in the late 1990s, Ben Garland was 9. He begged his mom to attend the parade that snaked through Denver, a 6-hour drive from the Western slope.
“He’ll never let me forget not going,” Mom said with a laugh.
Now he can host his own. His first trip was Super Bowl XLVIII (Broncos-Seahawks), with Garland as a member of the Broncos’ practice squad. His second was Super Bowl LI (Falcons-Patriots), with Garland on the Falcons’ defensive line, hitting Tom Brady once. Super LIV (49ers-Chiefs on Sunday in Miami) is his third, with Garland snapping the ball to Garoppolo.
His bond with San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan is deep enough Shanahan lured Garland from Atlanta: “Being a big Broncos fan growing up I knew everything there was to know about the Shanahan family. They were pretty much royalty to me. Then when I got the opportunity to play for them it was a dream come true,” Garland said.
Here’s why, in Garland’s words: “Kyle’s Friday run meetings are some of the best times I’ve ever had in football. He’ll explain why, ‘This play’s not that great, and it probably won’t gain any yards. But it’s going to set up the next play for an explosive (play).' And then we get a huge gain out of that one — and it came from the play that he told us wasn’t that great.'"
His mom will be there, just as Syndee was there for Super Bowls XLVIII and LI. This time the whole clan’s coming, 12 in all, including his sister (a UCCS professor) and two brothers (a firefighter in Grand Junction and a scientist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico). The uniqueness of Ben’s football story is not lost on his family, nor is the fact Ben’s first football team, in grade school, was ... the Chiefs.
“I mean, who would imagine this?” Syndee Garland said. “To be in one at all is wild for a (Grand) Junction kid. To be in three is beyond anything you could ever dream about.”
One more time, for the late-comers in the back: How?
“That’s pretty easy. Hard work takes no talent,” Garland said. “Every day I treat like my job’s on the line. Anybody can work hard on the first day of training camp. That part’s easy. But are you going into Year 6 like you attacked Year 1?”
At Super Bowl LIV, the proud Air Force man is right where he should be — front and center
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