Nick Bricker is a former collegiate and professional Football Player. He was kind enough to let us interview him about his career and experience playing American Football in Europe.
Nick, you were also a 2 time All American, a three time First Team All NJAC as well as the NJAC Defensive Player of the Year your Senior year. What, if any, individual accomplishments do you wish you could’ve achieved?
“I’d say going into my Junior Year, I had, you know, a lot of hype from my successful Sophomore season. I was marked as Preseason First Team All American going into my junior year, and I ended up not placing in any All American categories that year. So, I definitely feel like I would’ve loved to lived up to that. Fortunately for me, I did have another year for myself to kind of catch up, and again, make All American my senior year. So in a way, I do think of that as a little bit of a redemption. So I guess on an individual basis, it would have been nice to be a three time All American, but it kind of proves it’s not an easy feat to accomplish.”
What was your proudest moment playing football?
“Good question. I guess just like after big wins. There’s a difference between being proud of individual performance and being proud of team performance. They can be separated from one another. In regards to the Courtland game, I had a great game. I think I had about 20 tackles or so. On an individual basis, that was nice. I will also say in that regard, that stats don’t prove how dominating you are on the field or how useless you are on the field. I think the shining moment moment in my collegiate career was when we beat Monclair my sophomore year. It was homecoming and I think we won 21-20. Scratch that, actually, our senior year, when we beat Morrisville. When they came and they were one of the highest powered offense, we were one of the highest powered defenses. I think we were both ranked nationally at the time. We went up against Lamar Johnson, I still remember the name because I played against him in Germany as well. They came in and I think we won 21-20. It was a bit of culmination of hard work and perseverance from our Senior class. We weren’t having the most successful year our senior year, but to go out and win like that was really something great to be apart of. When you walk off the field and everyone has played great game. It was just a battle. “
What do you credit towards your success on the gridiron?
“I don’t think there is one thing that I could put my finger on to my success. The people I’ve surrounded myself with have always encouraged me to pursue my passions and football was the number one passion growing up. It just seemed obvious to me to pursue it. And then just the countless great coaches, great players who I had the fortune to play aside and be coached by. Such as Steve Antonucci, my high school coach, one of the better high school coaches in New Jersey. Al Bigos was my defensive coordinator. Just kind of an early upbringing of success when I was at MiddleTown South, my only expectation was to succeed on the football field. It’s the tradition and everything that goes along with it. And of course my family. My dad was always my biggest supporter. He was my coach when I was a kid as well. And then at the collegiate level we had some pretty good coaches as well. So it’s just surrounding yourself with the right type of people and believing that you are going to succeed.”
After College you played professionally for the Albershausen Crusaders in the German Football League. How did the team find you and reach out to you?
“There is a site called Europlayer.com. It’s a social profile for yourself, and as a player you create a profile. It’s kind of like a facebook page, you list your accolades, you put a video up, what you’re looking for, and your height and your weight, everything that kind of goes into it. There are also team profiles as well. It’s more so that I found them. If you go onto Europlayers, they explain everything you need to do. If you want to do it and you’re a good enough player, you’ll be able to find a team somewhere that will take you, and you’ll be able to be part of something special out there. So I found them, and they then kind of let me know that they were interested in pursuing. They asked for some more tape, I did a few Skype calls, we discussed the logistics, and how the contract would look. I wouldn’t say it was easy to reach out, but you really have to put yourself out there, and I got rejected a few times there too. Really, you just have to have the drive to make sure you’re reaching out to the right people.”
Playing in Germany must’ve been an awesome experience. Besides the location, what was the biggest difference in style of play between the GFL and traditional American Football?
“It’s similar because they like to run the spread offense. A lot of the players they get are from college football, so there is a lot of parallel. We mostly played against American Qbs, so a lot of the time the offense ran through that Quarterback. The more difficult time we had on the defensive side were against more mobile QB’s. That’s one of the problems playing in Germany, or with the German players, that is. They don’t know the subtle nuances such as lane integrity and pursuit drills, and all those things that a lot of the same things that American players grew up with every day, understanding the nuances that are important in football. That’s why the spread and mobile quarterbacks were so successful. Those were the two things that the offense would give us and they definitely gave us fits.”
What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome playing football in Germany?
“The biggest hurdle for me would have been the talent level. I don’t mean that to be disrespectful to any of the players I played with over there or any coaches who coached me, for that matter. It’s not the same talent that you’re going to be going up against here. They are not seasoned, that’s really the main thing that I kind of noticed. We only practiced two or three times a week, with a game on the weekends. Most of these players worked full time and had families. All these different barriers came up which you wouldn’t expect in a normal football setting. But when you’re going out to Germany to play football, I guess there’s nothing really normal about it.”
How did the language barrier effect your experience?
“It didn’t affect me nearly as much as I thought it would. Which is, for anyone who wants to play professionally in Germany, nice to hear. They call Germany, or the two people I spoke to who had done some travelling and played professional football out in Europe, usually call Germany the next closest thing to America, because of the cultural similarities and above all the language barrier is pretty much nonexistence. It’s extremely impressive to be honest. Pretty much every single German out there at least has an elementary school level of understanding of English and for the vast majority it was much more of an understanding than that. It really didn’t put much stress on me to learn the difficult language of German. It was always fun trying and it made for some funny interactions and conversations and stuff like that. There are so many words in the English language and not every single one has a direct translation. You learn that pretty quickly when you get there. Overall it wasn’t to big of a barrier than I expected. If you’re going to go, and I don’t know if anyone is listening who is interested in playing European Football, but if you are going to go out there, Germany is known as one of the easiest cultural transitions.”
Now that you’re back in the USA, do you have any intention of returning to the GFL?
“As you know, I did hurt myself while I was out there. I busted up my knee a little bit. I’ve just be rehabbing and just focusing on what I need to do to get better. I was lucky enough to transition into reality pretty quickly; not to say that it’s not reality out there. I do have some intentions but I do not think I will end up pursuing them, because I’m happy where I am now. I kind of did all the football, got it all out of my system and feel pretty accomplished how my career turned out.”
Being in Germany, it’s safe to assume you had a steady supply of beer and bratwurst. What German beer was your favorite?
“That’s my favorite question. I hate to say it, and I know all of my German friends are going to hate me for it, but I drank a lot of Beck’s when I was out there. Mostly because I was kind of used to it, it wasn’t as strong, and I’m sure they would give me crap about it as well. I just went right down the street, to the local supermarket. I got a sixpack for about three euros. Aside from that and more traditional beers, anything we had at some type of festival was pretty good. I’m not much of a picky beer drinking.”
Riding off that question, what was your favorite traditional meal during your stay in Germany?
“Oh the schnitzel, the veal schnitzel. It was so good. I used to make my own little concoctions up. Often I’d cook the veal, put some lemon on it and an egg to the top and have some rice on the side. That was usually amazing. When I went to Berlin I had schnitzel that was better than I could’ve ever done. But the schnitzel was my favorite traditional food.”
What was the nightlife like in Germany?
“The nightlife was great. I guess I can put it as simply as that. The area that I was in was called Baden-Wüttermberg and they are more agricultural. A lot of land out there, so it wasn’t the best party scene I guess what you would consider it. Not the typical German raves and not really the typical German traditional like with the festivals and stuff like that, when everyone goes to the beer halls. If we wanted to go out, and go to an event or something like that, it would be a bit of a trip, which was no problem. It was always nice to go somewhere else. Those festivals are just a blast. We went out to one that was basically, how they explained it, as a mini beer fest, a mini Oktoberfest rather. That was in Stuttgart, the town over from us. That was a great time. They had a week long festival, and it’s basically a carnival, how we look at it, but with a lot of drinking involved, and a lot of folk songs, and a lot of dancing and a lot of lederhosen. That was the most fun traditional German experience that I had. When I went up to Berlin, and also in the same respect, Frankfurt and Munich as well, you have more traditional clubby, disco like things, which was fun as well.
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