Brock Martin Playing for Pride and Family
WACO, Texas – The Oklahoma State players had just finished singing the alma mater inside McLane Stadium celebrating a hard fought Big 12 opening win 36-25 over Baylor. Yes, a rematch of last season’s Big 12 Championship Game but in the pregame show on the Cowboy Radio Network a sound bite with defensive end Brock Martin resonated. It was how he wasn’t playing on Saturday for any revenge, but as he always does, he was playing football for his family, his girlfriend and the mother of his son Maverick. That is the biggest motivation for Martin. His family and the love of the game and the teammates he plays with.
“It’s very important to me,” Martin said after the game in the bowels of McLane Stadium. “They are a big deal, obviously.”
The Twitter message above features Martin and his son Maverick and Sione Asi and his daughter before a home game this season.
It was natural that Martin, who had six tackles and a sack in the win, would go over to his family and he reached out and wanted to bring young Maverick just over a year old down to get a big hug from his 6-3, 245-pound old man.
“The Baylor guys, security, kind of irritated the $#*! out of me, they wouldn’t let me pull Maverick down from the stands,” Martin said. “I don’t know what that was about. I don’t know if that was policy or not, so I was a little upset about that. (I) still am. It means a lot for me to have them here. They are my support system and they’re what wakes me up in the morning and gets me going. It means a lot.”
Martin’s mom is as tough as he is. Many of us within the Cowboys program prayed and watched with concern and admiration as Penny Martin beat cancer and never let it keep her from supporting her son. His dad Robert is no doubt a tough and determined man as Brock didn’t fall far from his family tree. His girlfriend Gracie and Maverick are the easy object of his attention outside McLane Stadium. That is where Brock could be found in the time he had between meeting with the media and boarding the bus to go to the Waco airport to fly home.
Martin loves sharing his victories with his family. He will give them credit. I can tell you from being around this defense for a long time that there is a confidence among the program and everybody in it when Martin is on the field. His efforts combined with his presence make a huge difference. He was among the many to give punter Tom Hutton and the special teams credit for the safety that was an early momentum play in the game. It was Martin that set the edge on that first and 10 play for Baylor from their own one and half where Martin forced freshman Bears back Ricky Reese back deeper in the gold end zone where safety Kendal Daniels and a few others corralled him for the two points.
The defense helped seal the game shutting Baylor out in the fourth quarter. In the postgame media session, someone mentioned the word guts.
“I’m going to give Coach (Rob) Glass credit for that,” Martin said. "That’s big in our defensive room … to have guts and be able to dig deep on defense. You can’t dig deep if you’re not in shape. You can’t reach down and take everything out of you that you have to take out of you, so without Coach Glass and being in shape we wouldn’t be able to perform like we do in the fourth quarter.”
Guts, that comes as part of the package in the Martin family and it has been passed down. My guess is you’ll see that out of Maverick as he grows up. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in that family.