David Boston :: essays research papers

What's going on in Room 614? There's an overgrown wide receiver in there. "Dude, you're on steroids!" fans yell at him at training camp. A lot of NFL players and coaches think he's on something, but the term they use is yoked up. "Gotta be," says an NFC defensive back. The receiver keeps testing clean (seven times last season), but his peers are still suspicious. They can't prove it, but they think he's on something they don't have a test for yet, maybe human growth hormone (HGH), and one reason is the size of his head. "Look, even his face is growing," the player goes on. "He's bloated. His cheekbones have changed." Guys around the league just don't see how his weight could jump from 209 to 257 in three years. Or how he can have 21-inch biceps, a 34-inch waist and 5.5% body fat. Or how he can run the 40 in 4.3 seconds. Or how the sorry Cardinals could let such a physical specimen walk. Or how 30 other teams could let the Chargers scoop him up as a free agent for only 47 mil. No, there's got to be something going on in that room. Something to keep Arizona from franchising him, something to scare off the rest of the league. "We didn't even have him on our board," says a Redskins exec, whose team needed a receiver this winter and opted to pay Laveranues Coles a $13 million signing bonus. Laveranues Coles? He's half this guy's size and doesn't run any faster. But few trust him. They hear all the stories. How he eats only in his personal trainer's room, Room 614 at the Hilton Carson Civic Plaza in Carson, Calif. How Hall of Famer Joe Greene, an assistant coach on his old team, wonders if he'll live to 30. How he's paying his personal trainer $200K a year. How, even though he's rooming with LaDainian Tomlinson, he's holed up most of the time in Room 614. Holed up and getting heavier every day. "Have you seen that guy? Our D-line coach calls him Robocop," says Chargers defensive end Marcellus Wiley. "If any of us defensive linemen go down, he's going two-way. I mean, 260 pounds, 5% body fat, a 4.3 40? That's 30 sacks. Every day in the cafeteria, I walk past the fried foods and say, 'I am David Boston' That way, I won't eat them.