Before they were Ravens

Summers were anything but vacations for Haloti Ngata.

Before he became a burly 6-foot-4, 345-pound defensive tackle for the Ravens who would emerge as one of the top run-stuffers in the NFL, Ngata was a teenager at the mercy of his father, Solomone, who owned a construction business.

So while his classmates could sleep the morning away and wake up just in time for lunch, Ngata usually had already put in five to six hours of work, laying down concrete, mixing cement and hauling away large slabs of concrete.

"It was hard labor," Ngata recalled of the summers he worked with his father from the time when he was a seventh-grader until he was a senior at Highland High in Salt Lake City. "It was really hard work, but it taught me a lot of things. My dad showed me that without an education, this is the kind of hard work that you're going to be doing. And it taught me about discipline and hard work. It was great that I was able to do that."

Ngata's experience echoes that of many Ravens players, who toiled away in anonymity as youths before enjoying the fruits of their labor now. From working on a farm to unloading baggage from airplanes to pressure-cleaning houses, many players endured tough jobs for various reasons.

Punter Sam Koch began detasseling corn in Seward, Neb., at the age of 13. Considered a rite of passage for many teens who grow up in the heartland of the country, detasseling involves removing the top part - or tassel - of corn to produce physical uniformity and higher yields.

"At the time, I was 6 foot tall, and some of those stalks were 7, 7 1/2 feet tall. And you can't break the stalk off. So you had to jump up there and do it," Koch said. "And the rows are this wide [places his hands about 2 feet apart], so you're constantly having the leaves scratching you in the face, and it's always hot and muggy. It was one of my least favorite jobs."

For his effort, Koch estimated that he earned $400 for four weeks of work. "In the end, it wasn't worth it," he said.

Like Koch, linebacker Tavares Gooden also began working at 13, pressure-cleaning roofs for a company owned by a friend's father. The company bought declining homes and remodeled them for prospective buyers.

Although he loved living in the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., area, Gooden said, he and his colleagues began to view the sun as a nemesis.

"There's no trees or shade because you're on the roof," he said. "You've got to hold that hose tight and bring it up to the roof. And then it's about making sure you hit every spot because it's hard to repaint something that hasn't been stripped down. And you can't really cool yourself with the water because you'll rip your skin off. But it was fun."

Growing up in Memphis, Tenn., rookie offensive tackle Michael Oher sold newspapers and worked at a junkyard, but his most memorable experience involved cleaning out homes of owners who had been evicted or forced to sell the dwellings.

"One house we had to clean out, this lady had 25 cats living in the house, and she never cleaned up after them. That was disgusting," said Oher, estimating that he was about 12 at the time. "We just went in and rolled. We did have gloves, but everything else was just rough. It was a rough job."

For many players, the jobs instilled in them a strong work ethic, discipline and time management. For wide receiver Mark Clayton, working for a telephone company near Arlington, Texas, a fast-food establishment and a doughnut shop introduced him to the idea of saving money.

"I didn't save anything. I spent it all as soon as I got it," he said. "It kind of shaped the concept of having money and making decisions with your money. Instead of getting new shoes, I would think, 'Maybe I'll just chill with the shoes that I've got this time because I want to save for something else.' Eventually, I would have gone through a time in my life - and everyone eventually does - where I learn about money and spending outside of your means and realizing that I can't do that. I think I learned that lesson earlier rather than later."

Defensive tackle Dwan Edwards worked at a grocery store in his hometown of Columbus, Mont., and the experience lasted just a few months.

"I worked there for a summer, and I would always tell my mom how much I hated it," Edwards said. "And she would tell me, 'Well, if you hate it so much, you better take your butt to college.' That's something that motivated me my whole life."

Strong safety Dawan Landry joined several of his Georgia Tech teammates in loading food and beverage supplies and unloading baggage from airplanes. The long hours and relentless heat on the tarmac of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport helped refine his focus on football.

"It was fun and a good learning experience, but I really appreciate what I do now," Landry said. "Not to say that it's a bad job or anything like that, but you'd much rather do something that you're having fun doing."

Fun wasn't the adjective Ngata would have used to describe his work with his father. Ngata said his dad would wake him at 4 a.m. some days to get into the truck and drive to an assignment. After returning to the house at 6 p.m., Ngata would have just enough energy to eat dinner and crawl into bed before repeating that routine the next day.

But Ngata said the monotony of the workday was outweighed by the amount of quality time he got to spend with his father, who died in a December 2002 truck accident.

"It was definitely a great time to bond with my dad," he said. "It got us closer. When I look back on it, it was definitely worth it."