56
THE LAST day of summer, the last day before football
workouts start again, and Jake Fromm is cruising down
a back road, one hand on the wheel, singing along with
country music on the stereo, his roommate Charlie Woer ner
riding shotgun. They’re heading for the Georgia coun-
tryside, east of Athens, to spend their final morning of
freedom fishing on their buddy’s farm.
They pass grazing cows and haystacks and miles of
farmland, until they reach the property with the red dirt
road and the two giant silos out front. They follow the
narrow driveway up the hill,
through acres and acres of
sorghum, and there, beyond
the main house, it comes into
view: a modest pond, tucked
back near the woods.
This is Fromm’s happy
place, this 182-acre family
farm that sits about a 25-min-
ute drive east of the University
of Georgia. He started coming
here his freshman year, around the time he became the
Bulldogs’ starting quarterback, when a friend invited him
out hunting. Now, Fromm is close with the family and has
an open invitation to come use their plot of land whenever
he wants, whenever he needs to get away.
“It’s definitely an escape for me,” he says. “Football is
just go, go, go. Then you go out hunting and sit in a stand
for two, three, four hours. Just relax. I love it.”
On this Wednesday in mid-July, Fromm and Woerner
arrive at the pond around 7:30 a.m. The farm is silent, but
for the birds chirping, bugs buzzing and Fromm singing
to himself as they board their vessel, a run-down pontoon
boat that uses a broken cinder block attached to a chain
as an anchor. Woerner starts them on their usual lap
around the pond, and Fromm starts top-water fishing,
throwing his cast to the edge where water meets land,
before reeling it back across the surface of the pond. The
lure is supposed to mimic a living thing and draw the fish
to the surface to attack.
After just a few minutes of this, Fromm catches a large-
mouth bass. He’s had lots of practice, spent plenty of time
on this pond, reflecting. In his first two years at Georgia,
Fromm faced more pressure, more scrutiny than just about
anyone in college football. He went through not one but
two high-profile quarterback battles. He split practice
reps, faced countless headlines about his play and had to
continually fight for his starting job. Each time, Fromm
survived and emerged a better quarterback. Now, the two
who challenged him are gone, starting at other Top 25
schools, and the three of them will shape the coming col-
lege football season.
For one more morning Fromm is trying not to think
T
ENDURING
TRUTH
Fromm fended off
Fields (1) to retain
the starting job, his
second QB battle in
as many years.
