In the months leading up to the NFL combine, several collegiate football players will spend time at the IMG Performance Institute preparing themselves for the rigors and pressure of the combine, which will help determine how high or low a player goes in the NFL Draft. Here’s one of the players:

Kyle Calloway

Kyle Calloway came to IMG Academies fresh off of a victory at the 2010 Orange Bowl, the first BCS bowl game title in Iowa Football history. Now training for the combine, Calloway understands the importance of keeping his work in front of him and staying level-headed. We spoke with Kyle about his long road to IMG Academies, the valuable advice he’s received here, and his status as an avid video gamer.

The well-traveled Kyle Calloway…

“My dad was in the military, so I’ve lived in primarily six different places. I was born in Fort Walton Beach, FL, then moved to Japan for two and a half years, moved to New Mexico for five years, then moved to Arizona for three and a half years. After that I moved to Hawaii where I did my 8th grade and freshman year, then to Illinois, where I did my sophomore, junior, and half of my senior year. From there I moved to Arizona for the rest of high school, then to Iowa from there. I’ve been mostly in the southwest, but also to some exotic places like Hawaii and Japan.”

Kyle Calloway the gamer…

“I’m kind of a closet-gamer. I play a lot of games on PC, even while lately everyone is going towards PS3 and XBox 360. I’m really a keyboard-and-mouse kind of guy. I don’t aspire to be a professional gamer, but I would like to get into that industry because I have a lot of friends out in Arizona who are in school to design games and software. I kind of just want to see what they’re doing, and if I wasn’t blessed with my athletic ability and size I’d probably be doing something like that. I really enjoy gaming because it’s a really competitive environment. It’s a lot different than when we were growing up playing Mario, now you have the internet phenomenon. I’ve been in some online tournaments for counterstrike and I really love competing in that way too. If we get successful enough, my friends and I want to try and make our own game. It would be a combination between a FPS (first-person shooter) and a MMO (massive multi-player online).”

First impressions of IMG Academies…

“When I first came to IMG, I was making a lot of comparisons to Iowa (facilities). Walking in the weight room one of the things that helped me choose to come here were all of the similarities to Iowa in terms of the equipment here. The vibrating plates, power plates, foam rollers, all the trainers I spoke with showed me that this was a top-notch place. When I went out to the field I saw that there were coaches for every position, I met with the game-on people for communication, I just saw how IMG had all these different pieces that went into it other than just training, which is all I would be doing at Iowa, and this is just beyond physical training and the people here are awesome.”

Learning from Super Bowl champion Tom Nutten…

“I’m working a lot with Tom Nutten (St. Louis Rams ‘98-’05) and that’s going really well because there are a lot of technique changes from the college level to the professional level. He’s helping me prepare for the next level in regards to my base, footwork, reading new defenses. We went in the other day and watched him play against Arizona, and he basically told us what was going through his head on every play, what he saw, which is awesome because it’s really helping my knowledge of the game.”