By Bud Poliquin
Syracuse Post-Standard

(Ed. note -- This was the second of a two-part feature in the Syracuse Post-Standard on former Colgate star tailback Nate Eachus, now with the Kansas City Chiefs.)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- If it's true that the guy at the top of the mountain didn't fall there, so is it also a fact that people don't simply slide out of bed one morning and roll into the NFL. Professional football is no collection of royals who sit on inherited thrones; rather, it's that place where the tough and the talented are anointed only after proving that they are tough and talented.

Simply, you are given nothing in the NFL. Nothing but a chance.

And that is why Nate Eachus, a decorated Colgate University Raider in 2011 and a long-shot Kansas City Chief in 2012, must be considered the posterboy for the league's sense of democracy.

“They're bigger and faster than what I played against in college,” Eachus allowed the other day. “But I went into this thinking that they were regular human beings like me. It didn't make any difference if they were from Alabama or Florida or USC. If you believe in yourself, if go out there and stick to the basics you learned growing up, if you do your job . . . well, it's easy to give up otherwise.”

Read the rest of this feature at Syracuse.com here, along with Part I here.