Sitting in a hotel bar following the 2007 Pro Bowl, it had finally hit Nick Hardwick.
Really, how could a high school wrestler from Indianapolis, who only played one year of high school football, become such a dominating blocker, a key ingredient to LaDainian Tomlinson’s assault on the NFL record books in 2006 and an idol to walk-ons everywhere?
It’s simple, he says: hard work, perfect timing and a little luck along the way.
Hardwick came to Purdue in 2000 never thinking he’d become a football player. He had been offered a wrestling scholarship to Rutgers, but after being “burned out” from the sport, he decided to stay close to home and go to school with his friends.
He didn’t know it at the time, but his decision to come to attend Purdue University would produce major dividends down the road.
Most remember the 2000 football season as one of the more exciting seasons in recent memory. With Heisman Trophy candidate Drew Brees at the helm, the Boilers marched through the Big Ten season, earned a Big Ten title and a trip to the Rose Bowl.
It also hooked a young freshman at the time, who would eventually become a Pro Bowler.
The excitement and buzz surrounding the program at the time enticed Hardwick to try out for the team that offseason. He hadn’t played organized football since his freshman year of high school, but the opportunity to be a part of something special was too much to pass on.
About 100 others joined him for tryouts. The staff cut all but five and only two survived through the spring season - one of them was Hardwick.
“I was taking a lickin’ at first, but it was fun,” he said. “Just get back in there and beat your head against those guys.
“You definitely have to earn respect. More or less, I earned respect through working hard and always hustling and always trying to do my best even though at first I wasn’t doing a very good job.”
As a sophomore, Hardwick spent his time getting beat up by 300-pound offensive lineman. Being a light 230 pounds, by football standards, the staff decided to move him to the offensive line, a position in which the team was thin and a place where he could use his wrestling skills and bulk up for his junior season.
After learning the basic techniques of the defensive tackle position, the move to other side of the ball was unsettling for Hardwick. But being a walk-on, he was just “happy to be there,” so he did what he was told.
“I worked so hard to learn all the techniques and learn the position and then they just threw me over there (on the offensive line),” Hardwick said. “(Former) coach (Jim) Cheney said, ‘you got nothing to worry about, we are going to throw you into the fire and you are going to do just great.’ And it did work out; it was like a natural fit over there.”
“I always tell guys ‘timing in life is everything,’ and of course Nick came along at the right time,” coach Joe Tiller said. “But he worked his way into that position.”
The walk-on impressed the staff so much he earned a scholarship for the 2002 season. As if that wasn’t enough, Hardwick appeared in 10 games, starting seven of them, and got the nod to start in the 2002 Sun Bowl in place of the injured Gene Mruczkowski and never relinquished the starting position. Hardwick spent the 2003 season as the starting center for the Capital One Bowl bound Boilermakers, all while increasing his draft stock along the way.
“It’s a lot about attitude, it’s about effort and you got to be lucky,” co-offensive coordinator Bill Legg said, who coached Hardwick for one season when he first arrived at Purdue in 2003. “I am talking about luck as staying healthy and sometimes it’s the luck of being in the right place at the right time.”
Hardwick was lucky enough the Purdue coaching staff gave him a chance to play on an offensive line that anchored one of the more prolific offenses in the country. Being the leader of the line also made him look that much more appealing scouts on the next level.
And with the third pick in the third round of the 2004 NFL Draft, the San Diego Chargers gave Hardwick the chance to continue his quest to outwork everyone, only this time, it would be in the NFL.
“That was the reason I got ahead and that was the reason I felt why I started and made the team and had the chance to play pro ball,” he said. “I’m not going to be perfect when I get to the pros, but I’m going to outwork everyone when I get there.”
And it’s that kind of mentality that’s gotten him to where he is today. You can’t tell Nick Hardwick no. He won’t let you. The coaching staff wanted to hold him out of a few games due to a potentially debilitating neck injury during Hardwick’s senior season. He refused to sit. He’d come too far to lose what he had earned.
But that’s the kind of player every coach wants.
“If you are willing to pay the price and make the necessary sacrifice, you can accomplish anything,” Legg said. “He’s very committed to being as successful as his abilities will allow him to be and he loves to play. Those kinds of people are fun to be around. You’d like for every single guy to be that way.
“Knock on wood, as long as I live and my faculties are still in working order, I’ll never forget Nick Hardwick.”
And Hardwick doesn’t want to forget where he came from and the road he took to get where he is. It’s not easy being a walk-on; you’ve got to earn respect every single day. But when you do get it, the rewards can go much farther than just a scholarship. Now he’s got a chance to give back to young student-athletes just like he had once been.
Hardwick is endowing a scholarship specifically for walk-ons.
He knows what it’s like being a guy working for everyone’s respect. He knows how difficult the grind can be, especially for a walk-on. But there’s no greater example of where someone can get with hard work, perfect timing and a little luck along the way.
“You get some walk-ons who are there so they can associate. A lot of the times you get really passionate people who outwork everybody else,” Hardwick said. “They may not be the most talented, but they are going to put their time in and they are just happy to be there. There are no disgruntled workers when you’re a walk-on. You’re there because you want to be.”
Hardwick was fortunate enough to have a family that was willing to support him through his college experience. That’s something he’s never forgotten. To this day, he considers that family a special group of friends. That family is the reason he’s giving back.
He’s so grateful to them that he’s passing on a blessing he received to someone else who might be like him someday.
His experience at Purdue was made possible by someone else. Now, he’s that somebody, hoping to give another student-athlete the chance to succeed in the classroom and on the field.
An NFL lifestyle has provided him with the means of doing this on a continual basis, but the influence that family had on him was so strong that he felt he wanted, and needed, to do the same for someone else.
“I was given an endowed scholarship and I thought it was pretty cool,” Hardwick said. “They’re real special to me; the whole family is.”
Sitting in a hotel bar following the 2007 Pro Bowl, Nick Hardwick was surrounded by Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning and fellow pro-bowlers Alan Faneca, Steve Hutchinson and Jon Lynch.
“Out there in Hawaii, it was unbelievable just getting to hang out with guys and share some beers at the bar and hang out at the pool and practice with some of the guys you’ve been watching on film the last few years,” Hardwick said. “It was unbelievable.”
He had to pinch himself. He had made a goal to make it to the Pro Bowl by his third year, but to actually be there was something he admitted he couldn’t believe.
And in that hotel, on the night following his very first Pro Bowl, surrounded by future Hall-of-Famers, it had hit him: He’d gone from virtual anonymity as a Purdue freshman to a household name by the time he was 25 years old. He’d been a casual fan in 2000, rooting on Brees and the Boilermakers to the Rose Bowl. In January 2004, he started the Capital One Bowl and in May, started hiking the ball to the very quarterback that led his beloved Boilermakers to the Pasadena three years earlier. And in 2007, he was a Pro-Bowler, blocking for the game’s best running back.
And he’s got a message to walk-ons everywhere: He’s proof that hard work, perfect timing and a little luck along the way is sometimes all that you need.
“(Purdue was) a little thin on the offensive line and they needed some help. Luckily, thankfully, they gave me a shot,” he said. “It’s not often walk-ons step right in, so I’m thankful for that.”
“Somehow, the timing just worked out for me.”
