He’s an undersized, big-hearted kid with a constant motor and a
passion for football.
He’s an undersized, big-hearted kid with a constant motor and a passion for football.
Destined to work at his father’s company, he instead opts to pursue his dream of playing big-time college football.
There’s ups. There’s downs.
There’s junior college. Walk-on status. Thoughts of quitting. And doubters – yes, there’s plenty of doubters.
But in the end, the goal is achieved. The dream fulfilled. The script perfected.
If you’ve watched the movie about Rudy Ruettiger, you’ve seen some of this before. If you’ve followed the career of local product Jeff Garcia, you’ve seen some of this before.
And if you’re a local football fan, well … here you are, seeing it all over again.
San Jose State’s best defensive player, 22-year-old Sean McNamara, might not ever attain NFL acclaim like Garcia. He almost certainly will never attain Hollywood acclaim like Ruettiger.
But this Gilroy native has the same dreams. He’s got the same heart. And as one of the smallest college defensive ends in the country, he’s got the same endearing underdog story to tell.
“I don’t know what it is about football, but I get goose bumps right now just talking about it,” said McNamara, who grew up on a ranch east of Gilroy. “It’s a special thing … I’ve been playing for half my life.
“But to most people, I was always just that skinny white boy from Gilroy. No one thought I could play D1 football. No one ever expected me to go this far.”
Of course, for a time, McNamara wouldn’t have expected it, either.
At Gilroy High School, he was a dominant force. As a senior defensive end in 1999, he recorded 17 sacks and twice as many tackles as anybody on the team.
By graduation, though, he had grown tired from a dozen years of schoolwork. A few more just didn’t seem all that appealing.
The plan was to join his parents and older brother at McNamara Construction, the family’s successful and well-established business.
“I still loved football,” McNamara said, “but I was just sick of school.”
It didn’t take long for football to reel him back in, though. That summer, McNamara was moved by his experience as a team captain at the Charlie Wedemeyer All-Star Classic.
“It was awesome,” he said. “I was like, ‘Why would I want to stop doing this?'”
Further inspiration came at the event’s dinner ceremony, where he was given a pep talk by Garcia, whose father, Bobby, is a family friend of the McNamaras.
“He was telling him how people always thought he had no arm and that he was too small,” recalled Sean’s father, Scotty McNamara. “He was talking about how hardly anybody thought he could do it, but he did – and how Sean could do the same thing. That was huge.”
After that, McNamara took the Garcia path – first to Gavilan, then to San Jose State. It wasn’t always the smoothest roadway, though.
Everything had been so positive at junior college. After blowing out his knee at Gilroy High and then going into the construction business, Scott McNamara, Sean’s older brother by two years, had agreed to join his sibling on the football field.
The brothers were the first McNamaras to attend college, and everything had been “incredibly fun,” Sean said.
Then halfway through his second year – a time when four-year-college scouts start to pour into junior college games – McNamara contracted mononucleosis and missed the rest of the season.
“It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever gone through football-wise,” McNamara said. “But I learned you just have to play with the cards your dealt.”
So he stuck with it, sent his game tapes to San Jose State and almost immediately received an invitation to walk-on.
“You could tell from the guy’s eyes that he had a chip on his shoulder,” Spartans’ head coach Fitz Hill said.
Nevertheless, the defensive end who occasionally weighed in at 185 pounds at Gavilan felt a little out of place at summer workouts.
“No, a lot of out place,” McNamara said. “Everybody was so strong, and they all looked like they were two times my size.
“I was like, ‘How am I going to do this?'”
Not able to gain much weight, McNamara’s self-doubting led him to redshirt, a decision that went against the advice of a coaching staff straddled by a serious lack of depth.
At 200 pounds, though, McNamara thought he was unprepared to take on the mammoth offensive tackles he would face in Division I.
He also wanted the chance to see some of his brother’s games at Sacramento State, which had given the 6-foot-6, 270-pound Scott McNamara a full scholarship.
“I don’t regret it, but sitting out was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” he said. “You’re out there giving it your all in practice every day, knowing you won’t get to play in the actual games.”
The following offseason would bring even more frustration.
After sitting out in hopes of getting bigger, he had gained only five pounds by the start of fall practice. And after a spring of praise from the coaches, he had not gained any ground on the depth chart.
Not only that, but he had a position coach “who ran a boot camp,” McNamara said.
These days, he calls Earl Buckingham one of his all-time favorite coaches. But when he didn’t think he was getting a fair shot a year ago, he viewed Buckingham as anything but.
“To be honest with you, I hated everything about him,” McNamara said of his defensive line coach. “I was giving it all I had and I just didn’t think I was going to get a chance at playing time.
“When your without a scholarship, you start to think, ‘Do I really want to pay for this?'”
Not anymore, McNamara decided. Against the team’s preseason rules, he came back home to Gilroy in the middle of one August night.
“He was done,” Scotty McNamara said.
But one evening the stressed-out McNamara stayed up late and talked to his best friend, his brother Scott.
“He just asked me, ‘Why not give it one more shot?'”
And another night he stayed up late and talked to his father, a former high school football player who had once chosen the construction field over the playing field.
“I could’ve played college football and I didn’t … it’s really the only regret I have in life,” Scotty McNamara said. “So I told him there would always be a place for him at the company … for now he should go out and live his dream while he still can.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
Nervous, sick and playing his first Division I game on 30 minutes of sleep, McNamara came off the bench in front of a sellout crowd at Spartan Stadium and forced a Grambling fumble in one of his first plays.
After that, nerves were reserved only for the offensive coordinators of the Western Athletic Conference.
A 206-pound starter for the final six games, he won a scholarship and ended up leading the team with five sacks.
Recently he’s even gained a few pounds, adding some muscle and inching up to 220. To NFL eyes, though, that’s still considered tiny when it comes to the defensive line.
“Hey, there’s always hope,” McNamara said. “Without that, you don’t have anything, you know?”
But according to Hill, McNamara’s got a lot more than that.
“People are going to look at him because they’re going to see his heart,” the fourth-year coach said. “When you make plays and play with that kind of passion, they try to find you a place on the field to play.
“And if a scout called, I’d tell him if I had to pick one to go in the foxhole with me, Sean would be one of the first ones I’d pick.”
For two years, Hill served in the Middle East as a soldier in the first Gulf War. It’s a complement beyond words.
Even so, McNamara said he realizes it’s still going to be an uphill battle to make it to professional football.
Set to graduate in December, the sociology major said he at least knows he’ll always have a college degree to fall back on. And he knows he’ll always have a secure job to come back home to.
“But I won’t lie,” McNamara said. “I’d much rather play ball than swing a hammer.”
That realization came last September when he performed well in front of over 90,000 fans at The Swamp, the University of Florida’s notoriously rowdy stadium.
“He came home,” said his mother, Robin McNamara, “and you could just tell it had been one of those life-changing experiences.”
“I’d never seen that many people together in my life,” Sean McNamara recalled. “After that game, that’s when I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
So a year from now, McNamara guaranteed he will be playing the sport for someone. It might be in the National Football League. It might be in the Arena Football League.
It might be in a league you’ve never heard of.
“But I’ll be playing football somewhere … that’s the bottom line,” McNamara said. “Wherever it might be – if someone gives me a shot – I’ll show up early and I’ll leave late.
“I’m going to do whatever it takes to succeed.”
Hill, one of only five African-American head coaches in the NFL, said he “could really identify with that spirit.”
“I’ve always had to prove I could do something,” he said. “And like me, all (Sean) ever wanted was to be given that opportunity. That’s what San Jose State is for… to give local talent an opportunity.
“That’s what we did and look at the end result – it’s almost like a fairy tale.”
But the truth is, no one really knows how or when this underdog story is going to end.
Garcia? He went on to fame and fortune as an NFL star.
Rudy? He was carried off the field and into movie theaters around the country.
But that skinny, white boy from Gilroy? Well, you’ll just have to stay tuned for that one.
As it turns out, his is a script that’s far from complete.
