Seahawks honor Brian Banks tryout day after he appears on 'Tonight Show'
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| Banks appeared on 'The Tonight Show' Wednesday. (Hulu.com) |
When the Seahawks were penalized by the NFL for live contact and lost two days worth of offseason training activities, there was a concern about how they would handle a previously-scheduled tryout with Brian Banks, the recently exonerated former high school football star.
Great news on that front: the 'Hawks are going to honor that tryout and are working out Banks in Seattle on Thursday even though there are no OTAs for the rest of the team. Pete Carroll's tweeting about this and issued a statement that Banks deserves a "second chance at his dream," so I assume the NFL is cool with it.
"He's a young man that has an opportunity to get a second chance at his dream,” Carroll said. "I just think he deserves it and we're going to give him a really good look and a serious look, and if he does well and we like him we're going to try to get him to come to minicamp [next week]."
It'll have been a busy 24 hours for Banks, too. He spent Wednesday night appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and if you haven't watched the interview, you should. (And you can, right here.)#SOTD goes out to Brian Banks, who's getting his chance this morning! "I'm getting ready" by Michael Kiwanuka: winfo.re/Mgkduy
— Pete Carroll (@PeteCarroll) June 7, 2012
I say that mainly because Banks is outstandingly honest about what happened in his life; it's not the sort of thing that would be easy to talk about publicly, but he does a good job. The whole setup for the interview is a little odd, however, if only a) he comes on the same show with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and b) because it just sounds weird with Leno asking a lot of serious-sounding questions.
There's no telling if Banks will actually end up getting a gig with a football team, but if you had to pick one coach that would give him a shot, it's got to be Carroll. And given everything that's happened to Banks, it's hard not to root for him in his tryout on Thursday.
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