WSJ: Jets' Living With Mom and Dad

Axel3419 · Dec 13, 2013

This article may not deserve a whole thread, but I thought it was pretty interesting and humorous.

Punter Ryan Quigley is rooming with fourth-string Chris Pantale in his parents' house.

Rent is expensive.

Edit: Oops I forgot a word in the title. I meant "Jets Players Living With Mom and Dad" - feel free to edit it, mods. Or delete this thread, haha.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303932504579254282070176934

The hand-drawn, rainbow-colored sign on the bedroom door reads "Alana." Inside, paintings of pink flowers dot the cream walls. A pair of blue angel wings, covered in glitter, hangs over the twin bed.

This used to be Alana Pantale's room, but she's at college now. So her family is loaning the space to New York Jets punter Ryan Quigley.

Quigley is friends with Chris Pantale, Alana's older brother and the Jets' fourth-string tight end. The 23-year-olds were roommates at Boston College. When the pair made the team this year, Pantale moved home with his parents and invited Quigley to crash, rent-free, in his sister's quarters.

"I couldn't have asked for a better situation," said Quigley, sitting atop his bed's moon-and-stars-patterned comforter.

For every multimillionaire, mansion-dwelling NFL star like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, dozens like Quigley and Pantale struggle to make a team's 53-man roster. The league's minimum salary is $405,000, and the average career of an NFL athlete is only 3.2 years, according to the players' union.

Quigley knows one twisted knee or bad game could be it. Yet the appeal of the Pantale family's offer isn't just financial. Besides saving on rent, Quigley gets the benefits of home-cooked meals, a furnished place and the company of a loyal buddy and his kin.

The drawback: Both eligible bachelors must abide by Mrs. Pantale's rules. "Chicks?" Patricia Pantale said. "Not in here."

Patricia and her husband, Bill, don't ask for rent, but Quigley tries to repay them in other ways. He bought their 8-foot Christmas tree, gets the check at restaurants and occasionally picks up their other daughter, 16-year-old Olivia, from volleyball practice.

His offer to do household chores was politely declined. "I try to help with the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, but Mr. Pantale says I do it wrong," Quigley said.

Quigley and Chris Pantale joined Boston College's football team in 2008, bonded over table tennis in the freshmen dorms and lived together the next three years. The punter left BC after the 2011 season, a year before Pantale.

The undrafted Quigley signed with the Chicago Bears, who cut him after one game. The South Carolina native spent the rest of the year in Charlotte, N.C., where he trained, worked as a substitute teacher and waited for a job offer from another team that never came. He watched NFL punters on TV. "You sit there thinking, 'Is that ever going to be me?'" he said.

He got another chance this spring. The Jets signed him—and the undrafted Pantale too. The two talked about sharing an apartment, but the team cut Quigley in August. Pantale made the practice squad and moved back to his childhood home in suburban Wayne, N.J., a 25-minute drive from the Jets' practice facility in Florham Park, N.J. After the season's second game, the Jets called the unemployed Quigley. Their punter was struggling and they wanted Quigley to replace him. With no time to find an apartment, he took the Pantales' offer.

Quigley could afford his own place. Should he remain on the team for the rest of the season, he will make about $357,000—the league's minimum salary prorated for 15 of 17 weeks.

But living on his own just wouldn't be the same. On a recent Thursday, Quigley rolled out of bed at 6:30 a.m., brushed his teeth in the bathroom he shares with Pantale and Pantale's sister and hopped into his tan Toyota RAV4 to head to the practice facility. Pantale had left an hour earlier for weightlifting—which meant they couldn't carpool. "It would obviously be nice," Quigley said. "You'd save gas money."

At work, Quigley lifted weights, attended meetings and focused on his secondary job of holding placekicks. When he got home, he and Pantale watched TV and played table tennis.

Pantale's mother, who works as a secretary, had taken her daughter to volleyball practice. So Bill Pantale, a high-school guidance counselor, prepared dinner, serving penne a la vodka with chicken.

At the table, Quigley broke the silence first. "It's going to snow this weekend," he said.

"Is it going to be windy?" Bill Pantale asked.

"I'll take snow over wind," Quigley said.

After eating two servings and clearing the table, Quigley said he needed to complete his homework assignment: Picking up Christmas decorations for the locker room as part of a Jets special-teams tradition. Quigley and Chris Pantale hopped into the tight end's Nissan Altima and headed to Home Depot.

None of the other Home Depot customers appeared to recognize the 6-foot-3, 188-pound Quigley or the 6-foot-5, 254-pound Pantale as they studied their options.

"Big Bird would be funny," Quigley said. But Pantale said Big Bird wouldn't work unless Quigley also bought the Cookie Monster. "He would look lonely by himself."

Quigley settled on an inflatable Santa Claus, prizing its 11-and-a-half-foot height. "I mean, you walk in (to the locker room) and you're going to be like, 'Damn!' " he said.

The night's second task was a little more complicated. They had to pick up Pantale's sister and three other girls from volleyball practice.

After heading back home to switch to Patricia Pantale's roomier SUV, the two players drove to the three-court gym, where the girls were still playing. "What time does this end?" Pantale asked one of his sister's teammates as she ran by.

"Nine," she said.

"Nine?" Pantale said.

"We thought it was eight," Quigley said.

The two Jets had an hour to kill. Pantale glanced at Quigley. "You want to hit the ball back and forth, you and me?" the tight end asked.

"I guess," Quigley said.

The two hit and kicked volleyballs to each other, while retrieving errant spikes from Olivia's practice. Pantale then rounded up his sister, two of his cousins and one of his sister's teammates to give them rides home. Two of the girls clambered over the vehicle's second row of seats to get into the third row. "Please don't get hurt," Quigley said.

Pantale drove to the first destination, where Olivia's teammate Erin lived. After she said her goodbyes and got out of the car, Pantale started driving away.

"Back up! Back up!" Quigley said, craning his neck to make sure Erin had entered the house.

Pantale, both hands on the wheel, sighed. "Should we make sure she's comfortable?" he said.

Next stop was Pantale's cousins' house. Quigley quizzed the remaining three girls about why teenagers take so many self-portraits on camera phones. "Y'all take selfies?" he asked, in his slight Carolina drawl.

When Quigley finally got home at 9:30 p.m., a half-hour before bedtime, he plopped onto his bed and pulled out his laptop to log onto Netflix, using a college classmate's password. A subscription to the online-video service costs $8 a month.

"This guy is just skating through life," Pantale said.

Quigley glared at Pantale. "You're right," the punter said. "I can probably afford a Netflix account."

Around him, Alana's photos and art projects adorned the walls. He hasn't considered redecorating. "I'm just temporarily in this room," said Quigley.

Quigley plans to find his own place with Pantale if the two are still on the Jets next year. Quigley ranks 13th in the league in average punt yards this season. Pantale, who was promoted to the main roster last month, has yet to appear in an NFL game.

The Pantale household got a little more crowded when Alana, a senior at the University of Delaware, returned for Thanksgiving. She had to crash on the living-room sofa because of the professional punter in her room.

Alana didn't mind. "He's cute," she said. But, alas, she said, "Chris won't let me talk to any of his friends."
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Brook! · Dec 13, 2013

I enjoyed reading it. Thanks for posting it.

NY Jets68 · Dec 13, 2013

Watching NFL players beat the snot out of each other every week, sometimes you forget how young most of them are.

BrowningNagle · Dec 13, 2013

Great. now we have a sexually frustrated punter on the team. Those guys psyche's are fragile enough.

Axel3419 · Dec 13, 2013

The link also includes a video going with the article which is pretty funny.

74 · Dec 13, 2013

... this guy gets paid 400k and gets to lift weights at work? that's awesome! what a great life!

stinkyB · Dec 13, 2013

BrowningNagle said: ↑

Great. now we have a sexually frustrated punter on the team. Those guys psyche's are fragile enough.
Click to expand...

hahahahaha :rofl:

His offer to do household chores was politely declined. "I try to help with the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, but Mr. Pantale says I do it wrong," Quigley said.
Click to expand...

Sounds like whenever I visit my parents for dinner ...... finally I quit offering, and just clean the table :smile:

Cman69 · Dec 13, 2013

Dayum.. They couldn't afford a double-wide somewhere? Woody needs to pay better. Sheesh.. .

WSJ: Jets' Living With Mom and Dad

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WSJ: Jets' Living With Mom and Dad

Axel3419 Well-Known Member

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