WHERE ARE THEY NOW? SCOTT DAVIS
GLENWOOD HIGH SCHOOL: 1985-1988
June 10, 2009
The pride of Glenwood, Iowa, Scott Davis, currently resides in Wall, New Jersey, just two miles from the Atlantic Ocean. How does one get from small-town Iowa to New Jersey? Well in Scott's case, a lot of football mixed with a couple epic heartbreak’s, a little courage and dash of love did the trick.
After his two All-State seasons on the Glenwood High football field in 1987 and 1988, Davis was in a position not many kids from Southwest Iowa find themselves in. He needed to choose which college he wanted to attend for free, and play football at. For him, it was an easy choice.
“Growing up in Southwest Iowa it’s 90 percent Cornhusker-land, you know, everything in Nebraska, Nebraska, Nebraska,” Davis said. “And for whatever reason I guess that I liked Iowa better after I visited the camps. Kirk Ferentz was the offensive line coach than, and was just so personable, so friendly, so open and honest. I just felt I had an instant relationship with him.”
Perhaps if Nebraska would have paid a little closer attention they could have had a future NFL-prospect of their own playing offensive line for them.
“When I went to Nebraska’s camp, I would say the coach’s had to move my jacket away from my nametag to know who I was,” Davis said. “At Iowa, they all knew my name without a name badge.”
Davis would go on to start all four seasons at Iowa, and the teams he played for were some of the most memorable under Coach Hayden Fry. During the 1991 season, Davis’s junior year, his Hawkeyes played quarterback Ty Detmer and BYU in the Holiday Bowl to a 13-13 tie. They finished that season 10-1-1 and ranked 10th in the nation. The season before that, Davis’s Hawkeyes played in the Rose Bowl against a heavily favored Washington Huskies team. Davis shared memories of that game as if it were yesterday.
“I remember that Washington Huskies team was hands down the fastest team we played that season,” Davis said. “They were so much faster than us. I also remember Coach Fry and the guys getting on us at halftime, we were down by a considerable margin, and than we came out and made it respectable.”
Davis was an All-Big 10 selection his senior year at Iowa and would be drafted with the 150th pick of the 1993 NFL Draft by the New York Giants. The transition to the NFL wasn’t the easiest, and his career had many road blocks to hinder his potential.
“I went from being a four year starter at Iowa, to going to the NFL and being big enough, strong enough and fast enough to play, but not having the technique or experience that the older guys had,” Davis said. “And the only way you get it, is if someone gets hurt, or you’re flat out better than them”
Davis got that chance during his second season with the Giants. The starting right guard was hurt, and he was able to play in every game that season. And going into the 1995 season, Davis was once again slated to start. But in the third pre-season game against the New Orleans Saints, one of those road blocks was placed in front of him, and he blew out two ligaments with seventeen seconds remaining in the first half.
That would end his 1995 season, but he worked hard to rehab his knee and would receive the Giant's Ed Block Courage Award for overcoming the serious injury.
In 1996 he lost his starting job to a rookie, ironically enough, from Nebraska. Everyone in front of him stayed healthy that season and he didn’t get a chance to play.
After that his contract with the giants was up and he ended up following coach Dan Reeves (who had just been fired by the Giants) to Atlanta, where he once again became a starting offensive lineman.
And than another road block, in the last pre-season game he strained his peck.
“I kept playing with it because I was a starter, and I knew that if I got injured, there’s always a chance you’re not going to get back in the lineup.” Davis said. “So I kept playing with it and ended up tearing it completely in our second game against Carolina.”
Davis was torn between just letting the wound heal, and surgery, which at the time wasn’t too advanced for that type injury. He opted against surgery.
“I was back from that injury in four to five weeks, but gosh, I went from being strong in the chest and being able to bench 400 to 500 pounds, to barely being able to do 10 push-ups,” Davis said. “It just wasn’t the same, and I was released at the end of the season.”
It didn’t take Davis too long to write the next important chapter of his life. Shortly after his release from the Falcons he met his wife Kelley at his best friend, and college roommate, Mike Ferroni’s wedding. Ferroni was a police officer in New Jersey at the time, which is where Kelley was from, and where Davis would stay.
“When I met my wife we lived in Northern New Jersey, than I had my baby and we found ourselves in the summertime going to the beach every weekend, so we decided to move down to Wall, New Jersey, where we live today.”
As far as making a living is concerned, Davis worked in pharmaceutical and medical sales for about 10 years in New York and New Jersey. He recently switched to selling building materials for a company called Alside. It seems to be a good fit for the Iowa-native.
“I’m outside and I’m doing different things throughout the day and I’m not bound to an office,” Davis said. “I just like being outside and talking to people, and getting to know people, it’s great.”
Davis recently had his second child, Justin, who is one, his first child, Jake, is now five. The father of two already has plans to pump black and gold into his children's veins.
“I’ve been waiting for them to get older before I bring them to Iowa City for a game,” Kelley said. “Because than they’ll really appreciate it.”
TJ Rushing, High School Playbook
P.S.
Davis was able to be a successful student-athlete and received a degree in 1993 with leisure studies.
Davis still remains close with his college roommates and fellow Hawkeye offensive linemen Mike Ferroni and Mike Devlin. Ferroni is currently a New Jersey police officer. And Mike Devlin was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the same draft as Davis; he’s currently the tight ends Coach for the New York Jets.
Davis on pro-football scouts: “That’s the unfortunate thing about pro-football, they kind of look at you like a piece of meat. They look at how big you are, how tall you are and how fast you are, kore so even than how you play, it’s amazing.”
Davis on than Notre Dame assistant Barry Alvarez’s recruiting visit to him in high school: “He said to me, ‘You play linebacker and offensive-line?’ and I said, ‘well yes,’ and he said to me, ‘well your not fast enough to play linebacker and your not big enough to play offensive line, you seem like a pretty good athlete, but I don’t know where we’re going to play you.’ So that pretty much eliminated Notre Dame off my list right away. He was probably the least nice of all the coach’s I got to know.”
Davis on NFL Coach Dan Reeves, who he played for during all five of his NFL seasons: “He had an open door policy, if you wanted to go in and talk to him about anything, you could always go in and talk to him. He’s definitely a coach that I admire as a person just as much as I admired him as a coach.”
Davis on his mom, who raised him as a single mother: “Obviously my mom was the most influential person in my life. She really encouraged me to stay out of trouble and to be involved in everything, whether it was sports, or heck, I even remember doing theater in grade school. But, yeah, she really pushed me the academics and the athletics."
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