Football remains goal for Griebel

"I tell you, I get chills just thinking about him," said Pat Nugent, head coach at Canyon del Oro.

Griebel figures he'd be able to spark a similar reaction from professional coaches, if only they would take the time to watch him play.

"I'm waiting for a door to open," said Griebel, 23, who heads into the fall out of football for the first time since sixth grade.

After graduating from New Mexico State, where he went from an unheralded walk-on to one of the school's best defensive players ever, Griebel is hoping to sign on with any football outfit that will take him.

"Someone has to take a chance," he said. "I need a little bit of help."

Overcoming long odds is nothing new to Griebel, who says he was forced to play on the "lightweight" team in Pop Warner as a seventh-grader because he weighed only 90 pounds.

Griebel was a whopping 150 pounds when, as a junior at CDO in 1999, Nugent moved him from safety to linebacker.

And after two outstanding high school seasons, including helping the Dorados rebound from going 0-10 in 1999 to 6-4 in 2000, he received no college scholarship offers.

New Mexico State was "the only school that was even willing to say that I could walk on," said Griebel, who needed only one year to convince the coaching staff he was deserving of a scholarship.

By the time he completed his college career last fall, Griebel was among the top 10 tacklers in school history. His 149 tackles as a senior in 2005 were the most ever by an Aggie defensive back.

"I don't want to say he had a chip on his shoulder, but it always seemed like he felt he had something to prove," Nugent says of Griebel, who spent time with Nugent's current CDO club during the summer when "he got in the weight room with the kids and showed them how it's done."

Griebel also completed his degree in mechanical engineering, which he intends to use after what he hopes is a long and productive football career.

For now, though, Griebel is biding his time, living in Denver and working for a temp agency that provides workers for catering and food-service operations. Last week Griebel was working at the Pepsi Center while a circus was in town.

"I thought I'd have a job playing football," Griebel said.

His best chance, he thinks, is with an Arena Football League team. The AFL — which is played indoors on a smaller field — begins its season in January, but teams are starting to fill out their rosters this month.

"A lot of the people in that league are my size," said the 5-11, 188-pound safety. "I feel that the NFL overlooked me because they have a prototypical size."

Griebel is represented by Game Plan Management, a Chicago-based sports agency that pursued him after college. The firm represents many players in the AFL, which director of client services Suzanne Boue feels is a great springboard to the National Football League for players such as Griebel.

"We really feel he can be an outstanding special teams player in the NFL, but he needs to get his feet wet first," Boue said. "He is a little bit smaller than the average safety out there, but he's got the skills. Unfortunately, so much that happens with the NFL is based on paper."

The NFL season begins this weekend, and Griebel said he likely will watch the games, though with a tinge of jealousy.

"I know I'm good enough to play at any level," he said. "Someone has to give me, like, one day in their camp. I just need one tryout with someone. It's just difficult to find those opportunities."

His profile

Name: Matt Griebel

Age: 23

Height, weight: 5-11, 188 pounds

High school: Canyon del Oro '01

College: New Mexico State '06

Career highlights: Completed his career at New Mexico State with 336 tackles, ranking him in the top 10 in school history; broke the school's record for tackles by a defensive back with 149 as a senior in 2005; was team MVP at Canyon del Oro as a junior and senior in 1999 and 2000; and was named to the second team of the Arizona Daily Star's All-Southern Arizona football team in 2000.