There’s the old saying, “It’s never too late.” How late can someone start or restart a college football career?
Tom Cillo is about to find out. The 58-year-old freshman at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, intends to play defensive line. It’s been over four decades since he graduated from Williamsport High School. Cillo is giving football another shot after quitting the team after his freshman year, when he got mixed up in partying with drugs and alcohol.
However, his life didn’t end up all bad. He eventually straightened himself out and spent three decades working for the City of Williamsport’s streets department. However, this is a challenge for him.
Why Would Someone Want to Play College Football in Retirement?
Cillo retired from his city job and found himself restless. He appeared on Wake Up Barstool and explained what motivated him to return to the gridiron.
“I just wanted a reboot,” Cillo said. “Life had become a little but bit mundane and you just can’t sit in a recliner, put your feet up, and wait for a text message from change. It don’t happen that way.”
Tom Cillo on how he got into college football at the young age of 58 pic.twitter.com/sBqyzmBmmQ
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Cillo contacted long-time friend and acquaintance Mark Sitler and asked for help. Sitler was the college’s 2020 Alumnus of the Year. He found a way to make things happen.
“Well, Mark is a trustee now for Lycoming College, and he’s good friends with the head coach, Mike Clark,” Cillo explained. “So, Sitler reached out to him and said, ‘Hey, I got this guy that’s interested in playing college football. Always been a dream of his.’ So, I had some conversations with coach and he understood pretty quickly that I was very serious about this. So, when we decided to move forward with it.”
However, Cillo isn’t just doing this as a hobby. According to an article by Laura Ulrich of NorthcentralPa.com, he has always been a fairly serious athlete. He has taken part in half marathons, triathlons, bodybuilding, competitive powerlifting, strong man competitions, and trail runs. However, this isn’t exercising; this is football, and he’s facing up against men who are younger than his own children!
“I’ve always had a passion for lifting weights, but I really picked my conditioning work up — just lots of running, lots of sprint work, lots of footwork to try to prepare me for this,” Cillo told Ulrich. “And even with that, this is hard. I’m gonna be straight up honest.”
However, Cillo isn’t just focused on football at Lycoming. He’s majoring in criminal justice and says about the whole experience, “It’s not just about football,” he said. “There’s things that I still want to prove to myself in life … there are still things I want to accomplish.”
