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Magic man Story of Bills' Dorenbos anything but an illusionPosted: Sunday August 03, 2003 3:41 PM
PITTSFORD, N.Y. -- With 80-man rosters the norm, there's always tons of stories to be told at an NFL training camp. Most of them tend to sound the same after a while. Either a veteran player is trying to fit in with a new team, or he's protecting his hard-earned status with his old one. Young players are either highly publicized and under pressure to produce, or they're merely bodies on a roster, fighting for the long-shot chance to fulfill their hopes and dreams. But once in a while, a Jon Dorenbos comes along, with a story so unique, so compelling that it stands out. That's when you remember that everyone's road to the NFL is not so typical. Not so easily categorized. Dorenbos (pronounced DORN-bahs) is a rookie long-snapper for the Buffalo Bills. A collegiate free agent from the University of Texas-El Paso, he has so far made a solid impression at the Bills' St. John Fisher College camp site in suburban Rochester. Unlike most undrafted players, he has a legitimate chance to make the team. But that's not why folks in Bills' camp can't stop talking about the friendly and engaging 23-year-old, who grew up in Garden Grove, Calif. Truth be told, it's Dorenbos' life beyond football that inspires all the attention. Dorenbos is an accomplished professional magician, one who has earned up to $1,000 an hour performing in both Las Vegas and Hollywood. His sleight of hand skills are breathtaking, and have already earned him a place of respect and admiration in the Buffalo locker room. He has performed at team parties and functions in the past three months, dazzling his teammates with an array of mind-boggling tricks and illusions. But it's when you consider how Dorenbos came by his gift for magic that his story truly becomes unforgettable. He became enamored with the hobby at the age of 12, as a way of coping with a shattering family tragedy. In August 1992, Alan Dorenbos beat his wife, Kathleen, to death after an argument in the garage of the family's Seattle-area home. Jon was the youngest of the couple's three children. When Alan Dorenbos was convicted of second-degree murder and received a 13 1/2-year prison sentence, Jon in essence lost both his mother and his father. Combined with the care and support of his mother's family, professional therapy and the escape that both magic and sports provided him, Dorenbos survived and prospered. Today he's in the rare position to manage lucrative careers in both fields. "He's amazing, and his family background is amazing," Bills head coach Gregg Williams said last week. "What he has overcome already in life is really heart-wrenching. I know this: This team loves him. He's the type of guy who really adds to the chemistry of a football team. People can't get enough of him and what he can do with his magic." Everyone in the Bills organization already has his or her favorite Dorenbos trick. Like when he asks someone to pick a card from a deck, marks it, and then later somehow produces that very card, rolled up, from the inside of a camera film canister that he pulled from his sock. He has transformed a crumpled piece of paper into a bowling ball that drops from beneath his shirt -- Williams himself described seeing that trick, but I still can't imagine it -- and swallows a mouthful of needles, before extracting them from his mouth perfectly threaded. On Memorial Day weekend, Bills backup quarterback Alex Van Pelt invited Dorenbos to his house for a team party. Working the room, Dorenbos left his host and his fellow guests enthralled with his magic act. "That was a blast," Dorenbos said. "I'm a pick-pocket and I stole Alex's aunts' watch twice, and I took the wedding ring of [defensive tackle] Lauvale Sape's wife off her finger without her even knowing it. At another function one time I took Jim Kelly's wife's watch, so that was fun."
Dorenbos has worked both corporate events and private parties in Las Vegas and Hollywood, and he has been getting paid for his magic since he was 16. He practices up to seven hours a day on his act, which must make for a very crowded day come football season. "I like the close-up, intimate surrounding stuff," he said. "I do some fire stuff, some coin stuff, some cards, some very hand-on stuff. People love the pickpocket stuff. I've been getting into that the last couple of years." Dorenbos has made a deck of cards shoot from his mouth, terrified 325-pound Bills offensive tackle Jonas Jennings by producing a mouse from what seemed like Dorenbos' empty fist, and winds up one of his acts with the grand finale of setting his own body on fire. So what's the big trick to snapping a football, right? Not exactly. "I told him we can get David Copperfield if we want a magic act," said Williams, with a smile. "He needs to make sure the damn ball gets back there every time like it's supposed to. We're not keeping him just for his ability to do tricks and entertain the guys." That said, Williams clearly wants Dorenbos, who also played linebacker and fullback at UTEP, to make his football team. How could you not root for the guy, unless you're trying to keep the squad's end-of-training camp talent show an open competition for years to come? Considered one of the best long snappers to come out of college in recent years, Dorenbos' biggest challenge will be proving he's big enough at 6-foot-0, 250 pounds to handle an opponents' bull-rush in punt formation. "I'm willing to carry a long-snapping specialist, yes," said Williams, whose Bills used veteran tight end Dave Moore (who's 6-2, 250 pounds) for most of their long-snapping last season. "But he has to show me he can handle the full-out blitz that he'll get in punt protection. If he can handle that, we'll carry him." If he devotes half the energy to football that he has to magic, and overcoming his family's devastation, I can't imagine there's any blitz anywhere ferocious enough to knock Dorenbos off his feet for long. He wants is to make room in his life for both the NFL and magic, and so far that desire is anything but an illusion. "I love doing magic," he said. "But I want to play in the NFL, too. I feel like magic will always be there for me, but football is something that I have to try and do right now, when the opportunity presents itself. It's right there in front of me." Just this once, I'm guessing that Dorenbos won't let any part of his dream disappear.
Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.
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