Levi Brown, Paintball wizard

Ivan Maisel has an article on Levi Brown about his seemingly advanced age and transformation from defense lineman to NFL-coveted, All-American left tackle. Typical stuff except for this little golden nugget describing one of the many bonding exercises he and his fellow lineman tried in the offseason:

"Paintball was the greatest time I've had in a long time," Brown said. "I'm definitely going to do it again. People were saying it was supposed to hurt, that paintballs would break your skin. But from the range people were shooting, hiding behind trees, it wasn't like they were getting a direct hit on you. It felt like somebody was pushing you. It didn't really hurt. More like a pinch than it was sudden pain."

Now, as a seasoned Paintballer, I have to say the prospect of shooting at a 6-foot-5, 328 pound target trying desperately to hide behind a tree half his girth makes me giddy. How can you NOT see or hear a man the size of most northern black bears plowing through the Pennsylvania mountain laurel with the gracefulness of a skid loader. The only fear one would have is the anger one has to deal with when the oversized goliath walks up on your camouflaged position and gets pelted at point blank range (apparently Mr. Brown hasn’t dealt with this playing with his fellow linemen). I’m guessing it would be worth it, but then again, I can run fast.

We imagine linemen playing paintball would look a little something like this