Every year, hundreds of thousands of college athletes take to the field in their respective sports. However, only a small percentage of those student-athletes go on to the major leagues.
Some are not quite ready to hang up their helmets at the end of their collegiate careers, however. Such is the case for one former Clemson football player, Landon Walker — except he traded his football helmet for a racing helmet.
For Walker, football was a part of everyday life. His father, Gary Walker, was a member of the 1981 national championship team, Clemson’s first.
Following the family tradition, Walker played for the Tigers from 2008 to 2011, joining current head coach Dabo Swinney for his first four seasons at the helm of the program. He finished his Clemson career with the third most snaps in program history at 3,131 as an offensive tackle.
Football was all he had ever known, and Walker had aspirations of pursuing a professional career. Unfortunately, a physical with the Cincinnati Bengals brought his plans to a halt.
“I got hit in the face with some reality really fast,” Walker said in an interview with The Tiger. “The reality of the decision was that you either try to continue to play football with a knee that has failed an arthritis physical, or you try to do something different.”
Walker eventually began to explore his options as to what careers he could pursue to potentially remain an athlete. That is when he received a phone call from NASCAR super team Hendrick Motorsports, who inquired about him joining their pit crew.
“I was able to kind of come check that out and say, ‘What is this about?’ I really had kind of a very mild understanding of what it would be and kind of got into it with the right people at the right time.”
While it may not have been the same sport, Walker quickly realized that the training the pit crews go through is almost identical to the training he endured playing football.
“They were doing combines, which you do in football, and testing your running skills and your power skills. Really just an overall test to see how athletic you were.”
That was 11 years ago, and Walker has remained a member of Hendrick Motorsports’ pit crews ever since. So how has the football player turned pit crew member’s career shaped out?
This past Sunday, his driver, William Byron, fought for the NASCAR Cup Series championship and ultimately finished third in the season standings. With the stakes on pit road higher than ever, Walker tried to stay cool, calm and collected.
“You can feel the pressure if you want, but really, in my opinion, the pressure of doing your job every week, there is none,” he said. “You really have to go into each week the same as you did the week before, whether it’s a cup on the line, playoff race or whether it’s the first race of the year.”
While it was not his initial idea of being an athlete, Walker has enjoyed the journey that led him to where he is today. After facing his own setbacks, he understands as much as anyone that dreams of playing professional football can take a turn. In the interview, he offered advice to any student-athlete who may look at becoming a pit crew member as a second option, just as he did.
“My advice for a person that would do kind of what I did 11 years ago would be to just have patience and have faith in the plan for it to work out the way it’s supposed to work out,” he said.
“If it is NASCAR, you really have to just take your time with it, put everything you’ve got into it and just know that this is what I want to do and go at it like you did in football.”
