Ex-Husker Sewell helping team's bid for AFL title
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BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
The journey hasn’t been without its surprising detours, but you’re not about to find Josh Sewell complaining.
After all, when Saturday comes around, he’ll be playing football and making a paycheck doing it. And who knows? He might even catch a pass or two.
For the 295-pound former Husker center, the list runs short of things better than that.
“My teammates were joking last week about how I have the highest (yards-per-catch) average on the team,” said Sewell, a Lincoln Southeast grad and Husker in 2002-03. “When you play offensive line the whole year, you don’t really get to touch the ball. But it’s kind of like a drug. Once you do get it, you want it all the time.”
So goes it in the Arena Football League, where a big man like Sewell can be an offensive lineman on one play and a big-play tight end the next. He’s caught only a few passes this year playing for the Grand Rapids Rampage, but when he does they usually bring big yards. He even scored a touchdown, the first of his football career.
Since being drafted in 2004 in the sixth round by the Denver Broncos, football has taken Sewell everywhere from Europe to San Jose, Calif.
It’s San Jose where he’ll be on Saturday, trying to help the Rampage win an American Conference Championship. The 2:30 game will be televised by ESPN, the winner advancing to Arena Bowl XXII.
“It’s a pretty cool thing,” said Sewell, in his first year on the arena-ball circuit. “When I first started, I didn’t have any ideas really on what arena ball would be like. But it’s been fun. The bad thing about it is that the TV doesn’t do it justice. You miss a lot of things on TV.”
The field is just 50 yards, the end zone just 8. There are three guys on the O-line and eight players from each team on the field during a play. Walls serve as boundaries, and running the football can sometimes prove a rarity until a team nears the goal line. Fights? Yeah, some of those. The games are generally high scoring, though not all that different than some of the scores of Husker games last fall.
Distant from the glamour of the NFL, it’s still an appealing enough brand of football to have drawn an average of more than 12,000 fans a game last year.
“It’s kind of crazy,” Sewell said.
After spending part of two seasons with the Broncos scrapping for a roster spot, Sewell walked away from the game for a brief time. He didn’t play in 2006, resurfacing in 2007 with the Frankfurt Galaxy of NFL Europa.
“A great experience,” Sewell said. “My wife and I got to spend three or four months in Europe on someone else’s dime. … It also really made me appreciate what I have back here. You don’t realize how good you have it sometimes until you’ve been away from it.”
After the 26-year-old’s stint in Europe, he was chosen in the first round of the new All American Football League’s draft by Team Alabama.
All ready to go to training camp, the league folded before a game was played and Sewell was left looking for work.
“It’s kind of been a roller coaster ride,” he said. “I’ve been here and there, everywhere. But I think the whole time has been a blessing. God’s taken care of me and my family.”
Looking for his next move, former Lincoln indoor coach Jose Jefferson talked to him about perhaps playing some arena ball. Jefferson called a coach in Grand Rapids, and the groundwork was laid for Sewell’s next football challenge.
All the while, he’s kept a steady watch on his alma mater, as excited as anyone when Bo Pelini was announced as head coach. Pelini was at NU as a defensive coordinator during Sewell’s senior season.
“People who haven’t played sports might not understand it, but he just has the personality and charisma that if he told you to run through a brick wall, even though you wouldn’t think it could be done, you’d still do it because of who he is,” Sewell said.
“I hope people are realistic. It might not smell like roses right away. It might take a lot of work. But they got the right people in there.”
As for Sewell’s football career, he’s had a couple of workouts with NFL teams in the past couple of months.
He’s still young, still optimistic and ready to see what other places football might take him.
“We’ll just see what happens,” he said. “I’d like to continue to play football. I know God has a plan for me.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.
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