Withrow hikes chances with clever release

The newspaper advertisement lives, Craigslist be damned.

Here’s the one that came across the desk the other day:

“NFL center Cory Withrow has never been more ready, willing and able to play pro football, and is actively seeking a signing deal to commence as early as this season.”

That’s right. Just short of a Will-Block-for-Food sandwich board.

Among the various pitches, come-ons, press releases and pleas that reach a newspaper’s sports department, this qualified as a first. Players in – and out – of the National Football League normally have agents for this sort of thing, and the typed missive is not their preferred means of com- munication – their hands are otherwise engaged twisting the arm of some hapless general manager.

“To be honest with you,” Withrow said, “I’d never heard of it either. But it’s not like the phone has been ringing off the hook.”

Not that Withrow hasn’t had to make his own phone calls before.

If you remember him as the starting center on Washington State’s 1997 Rose Bowl team, you may forget that he originally walked on without a scholarship after graduating from Mead High School. If you knew he’d put in nine years in the NFL and appeared in 102 games, you may not know he’s been waived or released seven times – four times by the Minnesota Vikings alone.

He has virtually written the NFL backup lineman’s survival manual. Now he has another chapter.

It all began with a severe hamstring pull he suffered in training camp with the San Diego Chargers, his team over the past two seasons. Withrow admitted surprise on two fronts.

“It was probably the worst I’d ever pulled a muscle,” he said. “I didn’t even know I had hamstrings. Guys like us don’t use them that much.”

That he wasn’t going to be able to use his prompted the Chargers to punt, figuring they couldn’t go into the season “with 11/2 centers,” as Withrow put it. So they reached a settlement on his contract, but while those negotiations were going on he was placed on an NFL list as “reserve-injured” – not to be confused with the injured reserve list, which would render him ineligible for the entire 2008 season.

And which, of course, it was.

“It was just weird how the thing came out,” he said. “Guys would call me and say, ‘I heard you’re on IR.’ And I’d say, ‘No, I got an injury settlement – I’m actually looking for a job.’ ”

That’s because the hammy healed quicker than expected. Problem is, whether confusion remains over his status or not a single NFL center has been injured this season, there doesn’t seem to be a vacancy. But just in case it’s the former …

“A good friend of ours is a publicist,” Withrow said, explaining the press release. “She knew about the situation and kept saying, ‘Let’s do something.’ I thought, ‘Nah, I’m all right – my agent’s working on it.’ But six weeks went by and then seven and finally our friend wrote something up and e-mailed it to me and my wife.”

In case you’re wondering, Chris Murray – Withrow’s agent – does not feel threatened.

“It’s not going to change the outcome,” Murray said. “That’s not how the business works. But it couldn’t hurt, so I agreed to let him send it.”

Still, no bites.

Some of this is a peculiarity of the NFL, where rosters churn midseason when injuries hit but rarely because of performance, or lack of it. There may be any number of teams dissatisfied with their centers or their backups – such a team exists in our backyard – but tinkering is apparently out of the question.

“Maybe it’s because you have the draft and training camp to figure things out,” Withrow said. “Coaches work real hard and the personnel people work super hard to get who they think the right guys are, and they’re not going to give up on it in the middle of a season.”

But Withrow isn’t willing to give up on it either. For one thing, he set a goal long ago to get in 10 seasons – “though if you get too caught up in things that far along, you miss out on the good stuff,” he said. “You take every day for what it is, because it’s way too much fun as a game to get worked up over it.”

For instance, the same year Withrow first signed with the Vikings the club drafted Harvard center Matt Birk. He’s been to six Pro Bowls. When Withrow moved to the Chargers, he settled in behind Nick Hardwick – who made his first Pro Bowl last year.

“I know if someone picks me up that I can get another center to the Pro Bowl,” he said. “In fact, I’m going to send this press release out to centers instead of teams.”

Failing that, there’s always the sandwich board.