Behind the Facemask: Ben Bruneau
August 3, 2011
CORAL GABLES, Fla.–They are stories of perseverance. Stories about growing up, becoming men and being a part of a family. One-by-one, we hear from them. These are the Miami Hurricanes…
Ben Bruneau | Wide Receiver | Senior | Opa-Locka, Fla.
At the U, I’ve learned so much from everyone. From the coaches from the previous staff to the staff now, you just learn that everyone wants to keep the tradition of how unique a program this really is. One coach I can really say does a good job of holding that is Coach Swasey, because he’s been here so long. You immediately know from when you walk in that this is the U. There’s nothing like it.
I’m a Hurricane because this is the school I grew up with. My sister went here back around 2000, and I used to be on campus with her every weekend. I knew her roommates, I knew everybody. I watched the 2002 national championship with my brother and I remember being heartbroken watching the Willis McGahee injury. This is the school I’ve known I wanted to go to from that time. When I was at UCLA, I knew this was the school I was coming back to. I have a passion that was instilled in me at a very young age for this school, and it’s something that will never die. When I go to Carol City to visit my sister or go down south to visit my godmother, folks will say, “Oh you’re that kid who plays for the U?” There’s such a sense of pride when I get to say, “Yeah, that’s me.”
The first time I saw Andre Johnson, I couldn’t believe that he was working out two steps away from me. I would never tell him this, but I have his jersey and he’s my favorite Cane receiver of all time. It’s really an inexplicable feeling. That’s something we didn’t have at UCLA. Having that sense of family and togetherness here, after you haven’t been here for nine or 10 years, to come back like they do, that’s what makes the U special, that’s what makes us who we are. It’s almost like a big brother/little brother relationship. We look up to these guys and we see where they’re at right now and you think that’s what you want. They give you the blueprint. Not to sound corny, but they’re trail blazers in a sense, because they show you if you do what you have to coming from this school, nobody will stop you but yourself.
When I look in the mirror, I see in myself a very resilient and very passionate person because of everything it took to get back here and everything I gave up. I was at UCLA, had a full scholarship and everything, and I came here to be a walk-on because my heart is in this place. This is the school I had to graduate from, the school I had to play for. Had I graduated from UCLA, there always would have been a voice in my head saying, “What if?” It would have been a big voice too, not just a little one. I couldn’t live with that, this was the school where I needed to be. I gave up all the hard work I put in at UCLA to start from scratch here. At the end of the day no matter how hard it’s been, I’ve never once thought it wasn’t worth it. It has been.
When I played football as a kid, I pretended to be Chris Chambers. I’m a hometown boy. I love the Dolphins, Marlins, Heat, and I don’t watch hockey, but if I do, I try to catch the Panthers’ highlights. He was a guy who came in as a rookie and lit up the scene. No one really expected him to do anything. He was the Dolphins’ best receiver for a while.
I started playing wide receiver in eighth grade. I scored my first touchdown on a slant route, I’ll never forget it. I broke between two safeties and went 60 yards. Nothing blows the top off an offense like having a dynamic receiver. Randy Moss just retired, and aside from the attitude issues, he is considered maybe the greatest offensive weapon that has ever played in the NFL. I remember the first time I saw Jerry Rice, and then seeing Randy Moss, Cris Carter, Reggie Wayne, I thought these guys were wild. It can be 4th and 23, but if you have a great receiver, you always have a chance. The receivers are really the lightning bolts of the offense. You can have a big guy you throw it to in the red zone, or you can have a small guy like DeSean Jackson run a slant and go 80 yards and score.
Sixth grade was when I knew I wanted to play at the next level. It was an extremely rough time for my family. My sister had just had her second child, my dad was gone, my mother and I were recovering from a bad accident, my sister was going to college here, and my brother had just caught a federal case. Seeing the distress and the hardship and pain and tears my family was going through, and on the back end, being able to release it in football and having coaches telling you, “If you do what you have to do this is something you can really take a long way.” At that moment, I said I’m going to try to use football to help my family as much as I can. I’ve always envisioned in my head getting “that” call and having all my family around me and, after everything we’ve been through, to finally say now I can help you all. I’m a family-oriented guy, so that’s what made me realize I needed to take the football thing as far as I can go, even with everybody saying I should only focus on school or focus on something else. Like a lot of other guys, it was family driven.
I wasn’t supposed to be playing football. The accident was bad. We spun and hit a pole and the only thing I remember after that is my mom getting out of the car. The seatbelt had snapped off of me and everything went black. My mom hasn’t been able to work since that day. There was a time they thought they would have to remove part of her lower spine, which would have left her paralyzed, but thank God they didn’t have to. They said playing sports was in question, but definitely not football. Fortunately they cleared me to play. They said my body had responded better than they could have hoped for, so if I was going to play football, I could do it. I think of that accident a lot, not in a negative sense, but as a driving force. I know with the athletic ability I have that I had the possibility to do it, and God willing I’m going to do everything I can to make it.
To have an opportunity at this school, you need to go above and beyond and that’s what drives me. I feel like I have the athletic ability to do a lot of things, I just need to put the work in to get the results. The competition is so heavy here that if you don’t do everything possible you’re going to get behind the eight-ball and that’s not something you want to do. That’s another difference I see between here and UCLA. Guys there aren’t out doing extra constantly like they do here. You’d see a couple guys, but not everybody. This is not a program you want to get lost in, because you will get left.
The Golden Era is going to be exciting. Not to us internally, but externally people will be shocked by what this man is about to do. Honestly, from the time we got here with the UTough to this summer, which has been by far the hardest conditioning mentally and physically I’ve ever been through, it’s all for the better. You can see it just by hearing this man talk that he has us in the right direction. It’s about to be something extremely special.
All the receivers are close. If people saw us in the locker room, they would think of us as stooges. Just as quickly as we get on each other, we’ll be just as quick to get on somebody else. All the receivers are cool and we’re close.
I want to leave here a champion. There’s no better mark than leaving that. I want to help this team achieve it so I can say I left here a champion, because of what this program means to me and what it will mean to me in the future. I know for a fact that I’ll come back for future generations. To say that you’re a champion, it’s a feeling that can’t be matched. I want to leave here a graduate as well. I know my mom would kill me if I didn’t graduate. I want to leave here a champion for everyone, for all the seniors, for everybody on the team, for everything we went through. All the critics on the outside, to what we are now, I just want to leave here a champion.
I have a lot of personal goals that many people would probably laugh at, but I feel they’re very attainable and very achievable. I’m a very resilient guy. If I set my sights on something I don’t let anybody or anything stop me, which is coincidentally how I got here. A lot of people tried to get me not to, but I’m here.
I have an immeasurable love for this school that only I can understand. Not my mother, none of my sisters, no one can really understand that. Part of what makes it so big for me is that I can’t fully understand why I have this love. It probably stems from growing up in Miami and growing up in the area I did and understanding it that way. Every school has their brotherhood, but I feel like this is a bloodline. This really is a bloodline. This school is in my heart, and nobody can really understand that except for me.
Cheese and mayo are two foods that I will never eat. If it has mayo on it, I’m throwing it away, and if it has cheese on it, I’m throwing it away. What people find crazy, I’ve never had a cheeseburger in my entire life.
My favorite book is the Count of Monte Cristo. I know vengeance is supposed to be bad, but just the story, that man spent 10 years in jail and came back. To me, that shows dedication (laughs). Anyone who can keep up with a plan after 10 years and execute the way he did it. He got every last one of them back. Count of Monte Cristo is definitely my favorite book.
A song no one would believe I have on my iPod is, “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay. I don’t know why I like that song, but I’m pretty sure if I ever showed any of the receivers, they would ride me hard for it.
My favorite midnight snack is anything sugary. I have a sweet tooth. I’m not the kind of guy to drive to Wendy’s in the middle of the night.
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