‘No One Prepared Us’: An Ivy League Wrestler’s Unlikely Path to SEC Lineman and NFL Draft Prospect

A groggy Joey Slackman woke from a narcotic sleep on the morning of November 20. The Penn defensive lineman lay in a hospital bed in Philadelphia. He had just completed three hours of surgery to repair a torn bicep.

That day also happened to be the day Slackman’s name appeared on the Transfer Portal, college football’s centralized marketplace for players looking for a new school. Slackman, who graduated from Penn with a degree in political science, had decided to pursue his master’s degree, and coaches were now allowed to contact him.

“It was completely surreal,” said Paul Slackman, Joey’s father. “We got there maybe at 4:30 in the morning. I said bye. They prepared him. Coincidentally, that was the day he entered the portal. It completely escaped me. We didn’t really know much about this whole process.”

Joey arrived in the Ivy League four years ago as a no-star football recruit from Long Island who went to Penn to wrestle. He’s never been a leading man. But to the Slackmans’ surprise, Joey woke up after the operation as one of the hottest players on the transfer market.

“I remember when I came to, I was pretty delirious and nauseous from the surgery, but I remember finally settling down and looking at (my father),” Joey Slackman said. “He had his phone in his hand. He had just run off with a coach. He hung up and said, “You won’t believe what’s happening.” I felt like I was still in awe, or delirious.”

Two hours after waking up, being bandaged and placed in a wheelchair, Slackman was discharged. Still somewhat dizzy from the anesthesia, he began responding to the coaches during the five-hour drive home to Long Island.

“The whole way back his phone is blowing up and he’s getting texts and calls,” Paul Slackman said. “I got so many calls from coaches. This went on for hours. We probably had seven or eight phone conversations and text messages with 20-25 different people.

“It was really crazy those first 24 hours.”

For many transfer portal entries, the recruitment process is a second spin of the wheel; most of them were recruited by football programs right out of high school.

Slackman joined Penn as a heavyweight wrestler and was ranked 12th in the country in his weight class. Paul, a gymnastics coach who had won a Division III national title as a tight end for Ithaca (NY) College, had enrolled Joey in a wrestling tournament in the second grade. His son hated it.

“I remember him saying, ‘I never want to do this again,’” said Slackman’s mother, Dana.

However, Slackman loved football and enjoyed playing with his friends. He tried wrestling again in high school after his football coaches told him it would make him a better lineman.

With his mix of strength, determination and focus, Slackman thrived as a wrestler. He went to wrestling camps and gained national recognition. He emerged as the top 285-pounder in New York and received All-America honors twice at the national championships in Fargo, ND. His father deliberately tried to stay away from coaching him in middle school and high school, but made it a point to learn that it was Joey’s effort that mattered most.

“He trained religiously, regardless of his condition, the weather and the time constraints,” said Paul Slackman. “He just had breast surgery a few years ago. He was in a sling and wanted to stay in shape. We were on vacation near Sarasota. He had undergone the operation a week earlier. He decided to run with the sling on. He ran eight to ten miles along the main road down there. He had all those cars honking and waving at him. That really shows the determination he has.”

Joey credits that determination to the way his parents raised him and his younger sister, a fencer at the Air Force Academy.

“In our household, we were literally allowed to use the word ‘can’t,’” he said. “It was like swearing. Things like that shaped my mindset. Growing up, I was not a determined child. I was chubby. I was lazy. School came easy to me, so I didn’t put much effort into it, but wrestling helped me achieve that toughness. I think it is the toughest sport there is. You’re out there, wearing a crazy outfit, and you’re alone. It forces you to make a choice whether or not you want to grow up and find out.

Because his high school football team struggled, Slackman didn’t receive much recognition until his senior season, when he was named first-team all-state. By then he had figured out that wrestling was his ticket to high-level training. He chose Penn over recruiting interest from all the Ivy League wrestling programs.

Midway through his freshman year wrestling for the Quakers, he tore his ACL and meniscus. Three months later, the pandemic shut down college sports and sent everyone at Penn home. Slackman took a gap year and left school while recovering from his knee injury. He lived with his wrestling teammates in Philadelphia while working for a nonprofit called Beat the Streets, an organization connected to the wrestling community that helps underprivileged children in the area.

“When he was wrestling, on the side of the (Penn) football program, I remember him saying, ‘I really miss football,’” Dana recalls.
Slackman decided to try to join the Penn football program and play both sports. He was acquitted in February 2021, but ruptured his right breast not long after. That meant another operation and another six months on the sidelines.

“I don’t think (the Penn coaches) thought much about me at first,” he said. “I just came out of two major surgeries.”

Slackman quickly attracted attention as soon as he put the pads back on. In his first college game, he was credited with half a sack. His high school football coaches were right. All the wrestling training had made a huge difference in his development as a defensive lineman.

“It helped me a lot, especially in running and the fact that I could hold my ground, because I can understand leverage very well and, without thinking, prevent myself from moving, which is a lot of what I do . you have to do as a defensive tackle,” he said. “Learning how to hand fight is the most important thing in wrestling, and it’s the most important thing as a D-lineman. Additionally, many of the pass rush moves I like to make are similar to moves I would make in wrestling matches.

Slackman finished the year with 16 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and a forced fumble, leading him to decide to focus solely on football midway through the season. In 2022, he started all 10 games and made honorable mention All-Ivy League, ranking second on the team with 4.5 sacks and 49 tackles. But during the penultimate defensive play of the season, he tore his left pectoral muscle. The injury, which would require his third major surgery, only seemed to drive Slackman further.

“He’s one of the most focused and dedicated people I’ve ever been around, and he’s the toughest person I’ve ever been around,” said Cornell head coach Dan Swanstrom, formerly Penn’s offensive coordinator. ‘He’s just very different. He’s the toughest SOB I’ve ever seen.

“He weighed 305 pounds and had a body fat content of 16-17 percent. He is a physical freak of a human being. … We had to take him out so we could practice. He would destroy our entire offensive practice. That’s how disruptive he was.”

In 2023, Slackman became the most dominant player in the Ivy League. He had five tackles for loss in Penn’s first two games. He finished the season with 12 TFLs and a team-best 50 tackles, becoming the first Penn player to win Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year honors since 2015.

The Quakers were still in contention for the conference title when they faced No. 19 Harvard in the penultimate game of the season. With five minutes left in the fourth quarter, Slackman tore his right bicep. He took off his pads and tried to root on his teammates. Penn trailed 20-13 before tying the score. Before overtime, Slackman asked the team doctor if the injury could get worse if he returned to the game.

“The doctor said, ‘You can’t hurt it anymore,’” Slackman said. “It was our last chance to keep our Ivy League (title) hopes alive. I went to our coaches and said, ‘Let’s go!’”

The coaches brought Slackman back into the game.

“It’s more than that,” Swanstrom said. “We had a goal-line stand where it looked like there were three plays from inside the two. He was there for all three games with a torn bicep. Talk about bringing it all out into the open.”

Slackman said he wasn’t trying to be a hero. He had something else on his mind.

“I really thought this would be the end for me when it came to football,” he said.

Yes, it was extremely painful playing in the trenches with a torn bicep. Harvard won 25-23 in triple overtime.

“I think the adrenaline was still flowing,” he said.

Last fall, the feedback from NFL circles was that Slackman could be a late pick, but that came before he won the Ivy League defensive player of the year. Some NFL teams visited him; one came four times during the year. “Then we started realizing, ‘Wow, he could be drafted,’” Paul Slackman said.

But that was before the torn biceps against Harvard made full participation in the draft process unrealistic. So Slackman, who graduated from Penn with a degree in political science, submitted his paperwork to enter the transfer portal.

“No one prepared us for the transfer portal process,” Dana Slackman said. “It blew us away.”

It was not easy to list all the offers and options. Michigan, Texas A&M, Miami, USC and others stopped by. He estimates about 50 schools offered him. He eventually planned trips to Wisconsin, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Florida and Auburn.

“It was by far the craziest month of my life,” Slackman said.

Florida felt like an ideal match. The Gators felt the same way.

“He’s an alpha personality, very articulate and very intelligent,” Florida head coach Billy Napier said. “It’s important to him. He is highly motivated and driven. The biggest compliment I can give him is that when he took his official visit here, I literally had 12 to 15 players come up to me and say, ‘Coach, we’ve got to get this guy.’ He checked all the boxes.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; photos: Andy Lewis, Getty Images; Courtesy of the Slackman family)