After more than two hours of football practice in searing, mid-90s heat, exhausted players now struggle through gassers.

These sprints, back and forth across the practice field, are the little slices of sadism that traditionally end football practices at most colleges.

The conditioning drill is designed to take players, already at the limits of fatigue, and push them further, beyond exhaustion, to get them comfortable out there.

It is much more challenging, surely, for the lone player on the field gutting out the last few sprints with a prosthetic apparatus strapped to the tender stump of a right leg that was amputated below the knee – like a massive surgical shark bite.

But when Eastern Washington defensive end Brandon Thomas comes off the field at the end of these drills, the smile s

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