Steven M. Sipple: A two-time CFL champion, Hardrick still appreciates rough early days at NU | Column

He never anticipated such a rude awakening. 

After all, Jermarcus “Yoshi” Hardrick arrived on Nebraska’s campus in January 2010 as a touted junior-college recruit. 

Judging by all those glowing newspaper articles about him, Hardrick figured he was well-prepared to play big-time collegiate football. He figured he was ready to begin his ascension to the NFL.

A lot of young players think that way, right?

Then, a veteran Husker center, Mike Caputo, kicked Hardrick out of the locker room.

“I was an early arrival on campus. I was the big recruit, and there were all these articles, but I came in and I wasn’t making my (conditioning) times — and Caputo told me to get out,” Hardrick recalls. 

“We had to run 300-yard shuttles and make it in a minute and 10 seconds. I probably made it in a minute and 15 seconds or a minute and 20, and I didn’t care. I was ready to play football.” 

Or so he thought. Caputo handed him his gym bag and told him to go dress in the coaches’ locker room or wherever he could find a place. The message: Come back when you’re really ready to compete. 

A native of Courtland, Mississippi (population 511), Hardrick never considered going home. 

“It took me a day or two to process it, and then I just wanted to go prove myself,” he says.  

In other words, Hardrick responded like a champion. 

Fast forward to Friday. Hardrick, all 6-foot-5 and 320 pounds of him, slides into a booth at a Lincoln coffee shop and proudly displays his 2019 Canadian Football League championship ring. It’s gorgeous, and symbolic.

Yes, the man’s a bona fide champion. 

Actually, Hardrick is a two-time champion. His Winnipeg Blue Bombers — he’s the starting right tackle, team captain and basically the face of the franchise — repeated as Grey Cup champions last season. He’ll soon receive his second championship ring. 

A 13-game starter for Nebraska in 2011, Hardrick is now a 31-year-old married father of three. He’s champing at the bit for the 2022 CFL season, which begins in early June. Training camp, however, is only three weeks away. He thinks about it every day. 

By the way, he didn’t start for Nebraska in 2010, and Hardrick completely understands why. In fact, he praises former Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini and former Husker offensive line coach Barney Cotton for the decision. They couldn’t fully trust him to execute his assignments during the course of a 60-minute game, Hardrick says. Oh, he was talented and strong enough to make a few highlight plays. But that’s not what Division I football is about, he says.

Hardrick kept learning. Kept pushing. Now, he sits before you as a seven-year CFL starter. A professional. 

He conducts himself like a pro — he showed up early for this interview — and speaks with the wisdom of a pro.  

His drive to succeed is striking, but so is his humility. 

“I can’t sleep at night right now,” he says. “I’m always thinking about the guy coming to take my spot.” 

After all, he says, he walked on eggshells for four or five years as he fought to stay on rosters. Coming out of Nebraska, he signed as an undrafted free agent with the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He played in three preseason games in 2012, but was released in the final cuts. He later signed a practice-squad agreement with the New Orleans Saints, but was not re-signed the following season.

He later had stints with the BC Lions of the CFL, the Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League and the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the CFL.

Then, in 2016, he landed in Winnipeg, and things began to click at an increasingly higher level.

In 2021, he was named a CFL West Division All-Star for a second time while also garnering a spot on the CFL All-Star Team, a first in his career.

Even so, he takes nothing for granted. 

“You have to make the team every year,” he says. “In my league, there are no guaranteed contracts. I have to earn my check every day.” 

Every day. He emphasizes that point. We can all learn from that, right? We all can learn from someone who was knocked on his heels in those early days on Nebraska’s campus in 2010. Remember, Caputo handed Hardrick his gym bag and told him to hit the bricks. 

Hardrick didn’t back down. Mind you, there was no transfer portal in the college game in 2010. Doesn’t matter, though. There’s no way Hardrick would’ve jumped into it at the first sign of adversity. He’s simply not cut out that way. 

These days, he works hard to maintain a comfortable life for his family. His children live in Lincoln half the year and in Canada for the other half. They’re “locker-room babies,” he says proudly. 

“Nobody will ever have to tell them how hard their dad worked,” he says.  

Hardrick never had a dad as he grew up in rural Mississippi. Rural? Well, his hometown didn’t have a red light until his senior year of high school. 

“I was a trailer-park boy,” he says. 

A trailer-park boy who loved football — truly loved it. 

“I used to sit in my room in a trailer. I didn’t even know what New York looked like, or any other big city,” he says. “I would look out of my room and start crying because I wanted to play football.” 

He still cries before games as he thinks back to those days. 

“We had a small TV in the back,” he says. “Football is what caught my attention every time it came on. I was a big kid. Football let me hit people. It let me do things that might’ve otherwise got me in trouble.

“In a small town, you don’t have a lot to do, and it was easy to find trouble. They put a football in my hand, and my life got easier.”

Notice that he says “easier” as opposed to “easy.” 

Becoming a champion is hardly ever easy.  

In that regard, Hardrick to this day appreciates Caputo’s strong show of leadership in 2010. 

It’s easy to understand why Hardrick appreciates it, especially with that shiny ring sitting in front of him.