When you speak to NFL players, the gospel according to special teams is that punters are to be seen and not heard. To stand out and draw attention to yourself as a punter is to risk being cut once the wind blows in the opposite direction at an inopportune time, say when you are punting from your own end zone.
“Punters are interchangeable,” Steve Weatherford says. “It’s not like we have to learn the playbook.” As an undrafted free agent out of the University of Illinois, Weatherford was a 6-foot-3 muscular specimen who bounced around from the New Orleans Saints to the Kansas City Chiefs to the Jacksonville Jaguars to the New York Jets, like a punt inside the 5-yard line. If the ball hops out of bounds, you are great. If it bounds into the endzone, it’s time to start working out new punters.
When Weatherford joined the New York Giants, his whole outlook on the game changed. “For the first time,” he says, “I finally felt like I was home. Following in the footsteps of guys like Dave Jennings, Sean Landeta, and Jeff Feagles, Giants fans really had an appreciation for what punters do. Those guys played here a long time and were great at it. (Coach) Tom Coughlin and (General Manager) Jerry Reese made me feel like as long as I did my job, I would be here for a while. And the fans made me feel like a real Jersey guy and a real New Yorker.”
Once Weatherford found his home, and won a Super Bowl in the process, he began to reach out and become a bigger part of the community. “I had been doing charity stuff that the team had asked me to do,” Weatherford says. “But I found myself with free time on Tuesdays during the season. That’s usually my time with my kids, because they don’t get to see dad a lot between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. But then I thought, what better way to set an example to my kids then bringing them with me to visit kids in a hospital or to work on a food drive. When I’m done, I want my kids to remember me as an elite football player, but I also want them to remember me as someone who always took time out of their schedule to help others.”
Weatherford’s energy to help has few limits. After the season ended and teammates discarded some of their worn out gloves and cleats, Weatherford literally dove into dumpsters outside the Giants training facility to collect the cast off equipment and have it auctioned off for residents affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Weatherford is also teaming up with Steiner Sports to bring a group of kids from the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, CT, the site of a tragic school shooting this past December, to a New York Yankees game. “We want to give the kids an experience. They need something spiritual to help them get past the trauma thev have been through. For us, a baseball game may seem like a small thing, but to them, it’s not small at all.”
Weatherford is aware that every hospital trip, every school visit, every phone call, can lift the spirits of someone having a tough time. “Society places football players on an incredibly high pedestal. That platform has to be used for good. There are a ton of good guys in the NFL. So often you hear about the bad guys.”
After Hurricane Sandy, Weatherford was tireless in helping people affected. He took kids from Brick Township, NJ to WalMart, not only to buy themselves Christmas presents, but to allow the kids to buy gifts for their parents. “It was nice for the kids to have presents, but I wanted them to learn something. I wanted to help teach them the importance of thinking about other people.”
When Weatherford realized he hadn’t done anything to help the hurricane victims in Staten Island, he thought long and hard about what he could do to help. “I thought about the memorable times in a kids life—Thanksgiving, Christmas. And then it dawned on me. The prom. I bet some of these kids are still trying to make their homes livable and can’t afford to go to the prom.”
Of his own accord, Weatherford reached out to Men’s Wearhouse to lineup suits for the kids. Others provided dresses for the clothes. He got volunteers to handle hair and makeup, provide cars for the night. And then when the night comes, there will be the big reveal, his Giants teammates will be dates for the girls. And models from the Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe organizations will serve as dates for the guys.
“Can you imagine the looks on their faces when a kid who’s had the toughest year of his life is taking a model to the prom?” Weatherford asks. “I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces.”
