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This kid is going places
This kid is going places
By Chuck Banning
Published on 1/2/2009 in Home »Sports News »UConn Football
Toronto - Rob Lunn considers this a home game.

Confused? Let him explain.

”Basically, Rochester is southern Canada,” Lunn said of his hometown in upstate New York. “That's not a lie … it's all LaBatt and snow.”

Actually, the recent UConn graduate did travel north of the border with his teammates on Tuesday to begin final preparations for his final collegiate game. That comes on Saturday when the Huskies play Buffalo in the International at the Rogers Centre (noon, ESPN2).

And it's the last time Lunn will be this close to home for some time.

Lunn, a 6-foot-3, 285 defensive tackle, has called Storrs, Conn., home for the past four-plus years. After Saturday, however, he will begin a new chapter in his life … with one major diversion first.

He will spend three months in Boston to begin a job writing a blog for the New England Sports Network, then leave for Austria in late March to spend four months in Klagenfurt, a city of about 80,000 (”and six Americans,” Lunn joked), where he will live in a castle in the foothills of the Italian Alps and play professional football.

”I know no German and I know no Italian, so I'm just gonna be stuck,” Lunn said “Some of the NFL stuff kind of dried up once I got injured (earlier this season), so I felt this provided a good opportunity for me to sort of say goodbye to the game on my own terms - travel abroad on someone else's dime and see the world a little bit before I come back and settle down.”

He will chronicle his experiences in a NESN blog called lunninlederhosen.com, then return to Boston and begin the next phase of his life doing independent work for NESN and freelancing for some other media outlets.

”I'll be doing a lot of live blogging, covering anything that's relevant to fans in New England sports,” Lunn said. “Hopefully, eventually I'll work that into some live stuff, some live sideline commentary … that sort of thing. I bring a unique knowledge of the game, but also have the ability to write and communicate with the reader.”

The amazing thing, however, is how this all came about.

Lunn needed only one course last semester to graduate, so he took a class called “Race and Justice.” One of the projects, he said, was to start a blog and maintain it throughout the semester.

He named it “Thoughts from a Fat White Guy” at lunn65.blogspot.com.

”I always wanted to write,” he said. “I kept a journal for about four years, basically chronicling the childish things and relationships about playing here. The first couple of posts, I really didn't have anything to write about, so I took some of my journal entries from this past (training) camp and I put them up.

”I e-mailed them to friends and family and said, 'Hey guys, I've started a blog. It's kind of funny and I hope you want to read what I had to write about,' and they were like … keep on writing. I don't know where along the way it got passed on to someone - I think it might have been Chip (Malafronte) at the New Haven Register - but it just kind of took off from there, and here we are 15 weeks later with over 100,000 hits on the site, and I've been interviewed by everybody from USA Today to ESPN.com.

”I've got a certain writing style that they tend to gravitate to and I got a job out of it.”

Of course, there were some guidelines. He sat down with coach Randy Edsall and decided what goes on in team meetings and anything that goes on in the locker room - unless it's in good humor - is off limits.

”I bleed, cry and laugh with these guys, so what happens in the family stays in the family,” he said.

The laughter, mostly, is the basis of his posts. He's taken good-natured jabs at teammates, opponents, and even Edsall (”I've made fun of his haircuts”).

”I really gave the guys from West Virginia and Rutgers a hard time, even Syracuse,” Lunn said. “But we were on a PAT block and No. 65 from South Florida says, 'Hey Lunn, love your blog.' I'm like, 'We're right in the middle of a game now.' Then after the game some of the guys say I read your stuff and I think it's great. I haven't really heard anyone get upset at what I have to say.”

Even Edsall has enjoyed it.

”I think it's great,” Edsall said. “I think what happened is he used his creativity and his ingenuity to really take it to a higher level and I give the kid a lot a credit. And the thing about it is he's a kid that's not going to the NFL, so through that he was able to get a job lined up, which to me is fantastic.

”And that's what this is all about. This is what the college experience is all about. … I thought he's handled it very well and look what it's done for him.”

And around 3 p.m. on Saturday, Lunn will begin that new chapter in his life.

”I'm most proud of the fact that it's opened a lot of people's eyes,” he said. “And that college football players aren't just a bunch of meatheads running around on Saturdays, that we are students and that we are about academics.

”Ninety-nine percent of us are going to go pro in something other than our sport, so hopefully I've proven I can articulate a sentence and function coherently in the real world.”

He sure has. Just ask Edsall.

”Now I've got to worry about him writing stuff about me that's not nice,” Edsall said. “He's off our payroll now. I've got to be careful with him.”

C.BANNING@THEDAY.COM

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Lunn: UConn senior defensive tackle makes name for self with blog“Thoughts from a Fat White Guy”