MANHATTAN, Kan. — Aggieville is about to get Gronk'd. Hide the women and children.
OK, maybe just the women.
"I'm at the other end of the hotel," Gordie Gronkowski told FOXSports.com. "I'm serious. I am at the other end of the hotel."
Family reunions are peachy keen, as long as you're not the one trying to sleep next door to the boys. Wait. Did we say sleep?
"There's definitely holes, probably about 2 feet by 3 feet, that have been filled in their bedroom," Gordie recalled. "There's many holes that we've patched in the house, there's no doubt about it. A lot of broken stuff. "
The NFL's first family of fun — Rob Gronkowski is a tight end for the Patriots, Dan is a tight end with the Browns, and Chris is a fullback with the Colts — is descending upon the Little Apple this weekend to catch Kansas State's spring football game. It's a special occasion: On Saturday, baby brother Glenn (or "Goose," as Gordie calls him), the youngest of five boys, likely will make his Wildcats debut at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
"We're best friends," said Glenn, a 6-foot-2 freshman fullback. "If we fight at all, we're over it in one second. But that rarely happens anymore.
"I mean, growing up, we basically hated each other. Just punches in the face, everything, elbow drops everywhere, throwing people through tables. We probably broke everything in the house at least once. But we're all best friends now. I think it toughened us up to get ready for football and everything."
Genetics took care of the rest. Their great grandfather, Ignatius, was a member of the 1924 U.S. Olympic cycling team. Gordie, their dad, was a lineman at Syracuse and now owns a successful exercise equipment dealership.
Gordie Jr., the eldest sibling, played baseball at Jacksonville University and got drafted by the Los Angeles Angels. Dan played tight end at Maryland and was drafted by the Lions. Chris played football at Maryland and Arizona. Rob rewrote the NFL record book this past fall in New England, setting single-season records for a tight end in touchdown catches (17), receptions (90) and receiving yards (1,327).
And yet Glenn, a chiseled 226-pounder, just might have more upside than any of them. Which is kind of a scary thought.
"Glenn is probably the best athlete out of them all in that he's the quickest one," Gordie said. "He's the strongest one at his age. His hand-eye coordination is the best of them all. He's a very smart kid, too. Overall, he's the best athlete, for sure, and he learned from his brothers growing up, his mental toughness. He has no fear."
No body fat, either. At first glance, the youngest Gronkowski looks a little slender — he's trying to get his weight up to 240 by the time preseason camp rolls around — to be your conventional, battering-ram-style fullback. Mind you, looks aren't everything.
"The kid's a beast," wideout Kyle Klein said. "You're right, you don't necessarily think fullback. Then again, he's strong, athletic and can move. Again, just a really natural football player. It's not always about how you look on paper. That's honestly one of K-State's trademarks, that we pick up guys that aren't necessarily your ‘on paper' best. We pick up guys that have a lot of the intangibles."
Because of Gronkowski's limited camp exposure and split loyalties to baseball — the Amherst, N.Y., native apparently played a mean center field — only K-State and Buffalo extended football offers, although his dad said Syracuse also was in the picture at one point. It also didn't hurt that the Wildcats' co-offensive coordinator, Dana Dimel, worked with Chris and Rob during their college days at Arizona.
"The competition here, the success they've had in past years with (Bill) Snyder, just the tradition and everything drew me here," Glenn said. "It's just family-orientated."
And in the Gronkowski clan, family ties run deep. Whether it was testing the patience of their mother, Diane, ruining family furniture, mimicking professional wrestling moves or playing hockey in the basement — Glenn wound up getting his chin split open one Christmas Eve — the boys were often inseparable. Inseparable and a little insidious.
Heck, they still are. While Rob was grabbing headlines by taking his shirt off and partying on-stage with the band LMFAO hours after New England's Super Bowl loss to the Giants, his brothers tagged along to soak up the party scene. When Rob got raked over the coals last October for appearing in photos with adult film star BiBi Jones — he was topless, she wasn't — Glenn's response was to post a parody of his big brother's infamous pecs, er, pics, on Twitter.
"That's just stuff we like to do," the youngest Gronkowski offered with a grin. "We were just having fun."
Rob is going to miss this weekend's fun because of a prior engagement, but you figure he'll be there in spirit. At K-State's weekly news conference, Glenn greeted reporters while wearing a wristband that promoted his older brothers' Web site, GronkNation.com. If you click on the GronkNation store, you can purchase a T-shirt that features a picture of Rob with the slogan "Yo soy fiesta" emblazoned across the front.
Translation, in broken Spanish: "I am party."
"I probably won't see them ‘til early Saturday night," Glenn said of his famous siblings. "(I'll) just get some sleep on Friday. But I'm sure they'll be having some fun."
Which begs the question: Is Aggieville big enough to handle four Gronkowski brothers at the same time?
Another grin.
"Guess we'll find out," Glenn said.
Again, it should be a heck of a reunion. Just don't expect it to be a quiet one.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
