Because so many of their pigskin peers do indeed lower that character bar and look the other way if a kid prefers to run, catch and throw rather than read or write.
"I was just in the abyss, so I guess slumming around in the lower leagues helps build your character, " said Jamieson, who was an amateur at Augusta State University before turning pro in 2006.
Chichikov, the character at the heart of Gogol's masterpiece, is a lower-echelon civil servant with a corrupt past who specializes in what Gogol calls "blandiloquence, " or elaborately empty compliments.