Craig Hormann, the former quarterback for the Columbia University Lions, played his last game for the Lions on November 17 last year, but he is not ready to hang up his helmet just yet.

He wants to play in the NFL.

Hormann has not been invited to the NFL Combine, the invitation-only trials on February 22 reserved for top college football athletes, but he will attend several “pro-days” in March. At these trials, where pro scouts come to universities across the country looking for diamonds in the rough, the 22-year-old quarterback will be put through his paces: the 40-yard dash, the vertical jump, a 225 lbs bench press and footwork drills. If he does not pass these basic physical tests, he will have little chance of receiving an invitation to an official training camp and his dreams of playing in the NFL will be over.

To succeed, he needs to change his body from one that excelled at a college level to one that can compete in the high-octane arena of the pro league. He is training hard, five days a week, pushing his body to the limit. Hormann stands at 6 feet 4 inches and is strong. He can lift 80 lbs bar bells with each arm and can take a beating on the field, getting sacked 21 times last year during a 1-9 season. In 2006, he surprised his doctors and quickly recovered from a serious knee injury. But strength is not the only factor. Hormann needs speed. So he is working with Coach Matt Herhal, Director of Football Sports Performance at Columbia University, to teach his body how to be more explosive.

“It’s like I have to break my bad habits down and then learn everything all over again,” Hormann said.

In the 40-yard dash, the key barrier to break is five seconds. Hormann hasn’t broken it yet, but Herhal thinks that he can get his protégé down to 4.9. In the “shuttle,” where the athlete has to run five yards to the left, 10 yards to the right and back again - he has run a 4.66, but needs to whittle it down to 4.5 seconds. It is going to take hard work, but without the right technique, Hormann is not going to get faster.

“Some runners lean too far forward, so they almost fall over themselves when they start to run,” Herhal said. “Others stand too far back on their heels, so they have to generate that much more power to get up to speed.”

In the Dodge Fitness Center on the Columbia University campus, Herhal set up three orange cones in a straight line, five yards apart. The coach crouched down to show that Hormann needed to stay low, so that when he changed direction, the top half of his body and therefore all his momentum, did not keep going in the direction he came from. The drill is all about bending the knees and keeping the center of gravity low.

“Studies have shown that you need to do something about 50,000 times before your body does it without you needing to think about it,” Herhal said between sets.

They started slowly and after Herhal pointed out some mistakes in Hormann’s posture, they began to ramp up the tempo to see if he could maintain the correct posture at full speed. Herhal nodded, satisfied with the progress and they took a short break. Hormann’s chest heaved as he shifted from one foot to the other.

After some 20-yard speed drills, they worked on simulating what happens on the field. Herhal placed six cones in a square, simulating the area called the “pocket” in which the quarterback dances around looking for one of his receivers.

“I am not going to be the kind of quarterback who runs around a lot,” Hormann said later in a phone interview. “I am more of a pocket passer, making the right read and the right throw.”

Hormann bounced on the balls of his feet, holding the football in his coiled right arm, looking at the folded seats of the gymnasium as if he were looking down an imaginary football field. Herhal pointed left and right, back and front, moving Hormann around as if he were a puppeteer tugging at him on a string.

After the workout, Herhal discussed the obstacles Hormann faces with his training.

“If you come from the Big Ten those guys have four or five trainers, strength coaches, team psychologists, nutritionists, watching the players diets,” Herhal said. “Here, Craig has just me."

Hormann may be at a disadvantage in this respect. Although he has worked with a foot coach in Indianapolis for two years, it does not compare to the kinds of training that many of the players he will be competing against have access to. So that leaves Hormann with Herhal and one other coach who will start training with him more intensely as the “pro-days” approach in March. Hormann will have to watch what he eats by himself, remain motivated to ramp up the training and keep working on his body so that he can show the scouts that he has the speed and natural athleticism to play in the NFL.

“It’d be pretty cool to play for the Colts,” Hormann said.

Jed Pence, a position specific skills football coach who has worked with Hormann over two summers in his home town of Indianapolis and who has close ties to several NFL teams, believes that while Hormann might not get drafted, he does have a good chance of being signed as a free agent with the Colts.

“A lot of people in the league know about Craig,” Pence said in a phone interview from Indianapolis where he is prepping athletes for the up-coming combine. “He sits very well with the personality profile of the Colts.”

Joe DeFranco, a nationally recognized trainer who runs a commercial NFL conditioning program, also thinks that Hormann has a chance of getting a try out with a team, but explained that because he comes from a “small school” like Columbia University, doing well in the speed and skill trials is vital.

"You have to realize it's a big business at this point," DeFranco said. "They want to evaluate you on everything they can, so everything does count. What doing well shows is that you're a good athlete and you have great potential.”

DeFranco said that he's currently training a couple of small-school guys who could impress the country come draft day because they've been working hard on their combine trial techniques, like Hormann has been.

DeFranco said that NFLDraftScout.com, a Web site used by scouts and coaches, places Hormann at 43rd on a list of quarterbacks entering the draft.

"If you're in the top 50 and you have a decent workout, you can usually get into camp," he said. "You only need one NFL coach to think you're better than the big school guys."