Stefan Fatsis of the Wall Street Journal got to spend a summer with the Denver Broncos, training and working as a full-fledged NFL kicker. He got the entire placekicker experience: meetings, weight-lifting sessions, and a linebacker finding his presence "thoroughly disgusting."

His book about the experience comes out on July 3rd, and an excerpt appears in the Wall Street Journal today. Here's a snippet, after Fatsis badly missed a field goal that would have earned each Bronco 30 extra minutes of free time:

I feel as if I have let my teammates down -- at 30 minutes per player, my misses cost them a total of 45 hours of freedom -- and have let myself down. That I had never before kicked a football over an offensive line and a full defense is more excuse than pertinent detail. I wanted to validate my presence. Instead, I failed publicly and spectacularly.

Amid a pulsing dance beat, I do a perp walk through the locker room. The reviews are not good. Linebacker Keith Burns: "I was thoroughly disgusted." Center Tom Nalen: "Thanks for f---ing us." Tight end Chad Mustard: "S--- the bed! Call housecleaning! We need new sheets!" Quarterback Jake Plummer: "Don't ... come near me. Get out of here."

But when the abuse subsides, players seize on my failure as a happy confirmation of their reality. My going down in an intergalactic fireball illuminates their struggles to play football -- the impossible expectation of perfection, the daily threat of being cut, the constant risk of crippling injury. I was lucky to have had just a half hour of meetings riding on my performance and not my job. "Welcome to our world," Nick Ferguson says.

Of course, the book's about more than how Fatsis performs as a kicker. It's about being an NFL player, one struggling for a roster spot, and wondering if it's all worth it. You get a better sense of what the book's about by watching the interview with Fatsis that's embedded on the same page.

It sounds like a good way to pass the time between now and when the NFL season starts.

Related: NFL Media