Newsweek Story on Mortell: The Absolute Dumbest Award in Sports Comes w/ a Kick

BleedGopher

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 11, 2008
Messages
60,588
Reaction score
15,671
Points
113
per Newsweek:

The Mortell Award is now in its third year (the University of Michigan’s Garrett Moores won in 2016), and while there is still no actual trophy, its popularity is soaring. “The field has never been deeper,” says Mortell, who has yet to catch on with an NFL franchise and currently works at TCF Bank in Minneapolis. “The committee is considering expanding the finalists list from three to four holders. It would be a disservice to the award not to do so.”

The trophy might have remained a funny one-off were it not for its founder’s special nature (he was a specialist, after all). Mortell is an Upper Midwesterner, which means he has a well-developed, self-deprecating sense of humor and an even stronger sense of decency (he could be mistaken for Canadian).

After Mortell’s 2014 sophomore season, when Minnesota took part in the 2015 Citrus Bowl, each player was given a $452 gift card to Best Buy. Mortell used his plastic to purchase gifts for a Twin Cities home for at-risk children, dubbing his act “A Very Specialist Christmas.” He says: “I just felt that I had a platform as a player for giving back. It was a no-brainer.”

Mortell took along a Santa’s helper on that spending spree, Casey O’Brien, then a high school sophomore suffering from osteosarcoma, a form of cancer that lodges in a bone. O’Brien, who had been the freshman quarterback at vaunted gridiron power Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, had been diagnosed just before Christmas the previous year. An MRI discovered the tumor in his upper left tibia.

O’Brien, the son of a Golden Gophers assistant coach, struck up a friendship with Mortell during one of the latter’s frequent trips to the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital. “A lot of players visit kids at the hospital,” he says, “but no one ever visited as much as Pete. You have to understand how popular Pete was on campus. He was just the punter, but they sold his number 37 jersey in the university bookstore.”

O’Brien endured a dozen rounds of chemotherapy, but suffered a relapse late in his sophomore year. The cancer had spread to his lungs. After 10 more rounds of chemo and surgery to remove three tumors from his lungs, O’Brien was cancer-free. It was October of his junior year. Four days after leaving the hospital, O’Brien played in Cretin-Derham’s sectional playoff game. But not as a quarterback. “I had told my dad that I couldn’t live without football,” O’Brien says. He’d told Mortell, too, who suggested he try being the holder. In fact, Mortell insisted. “He wouldn’t let up on me.”

http://www.newsweek.com/absolutely-dumbest-award-sports-comes-surprising-kick-717239

Go Gophers!!
 

Headline is a little harsh but the story is a good one. I miss Mortell, the specialists have stayed somewhat humorous but it is not the same as it was when Mortell was leading the charge. His fundraiser that he did for the children's hospital was just amazing.
 

I love how all the teams are promoting their holders via @MortellAward.
 




Thank goodness the culture is getting straightened out!! It was so toxic in the Kill/Claeys era.
 

Calls it the "dumbest" award in sports.....and then goes on to write an article praising the guy who founded it? Very odd. But good article nonetheless. Mortell was a good player and an even better person. Nice to see him get recognition for the things he did off the field. I've got my fingers crossed for him to get a shot in the NFL. Nobody more deserving.
 




Top Bottom