As Brandon Hicks starts to bench press, he hears a gruff voice yell at him from across the weight room.
"Hicks, go get some ice cream for me," strength and training coach Mickey Marotti says.
The weird part? Hicks was more than capable of doing that.
Since he isn't eligible for a Pell Grant, a form of need-based financial aid, the backup linebacker worked at Cold Stone Creamery this summer for some extra cash.
While some of his teammates were plugging their names into EA Sports' NCAA Football 09, Hicks was helping the Gainesville population make the difficult decision between "Cookie Doughn't You Want Some" and "Chocolate Caramel Heaven."
And he really had to help his teammates make those decisions when they discovered where he was working.
"When they found out, they were trying to get (free ice cream) every time," Hicks said. "One time like 10 of them came in, and it was a rush of people right behind them. It was crazy. They were making all these weird orders."
Backup quarterback Cameron Newton took the cake, though, and almost literally as his order resembled more solid food than ice cream.
Newton asked Hicks to give him more marshmallows than cotton candy ice cream topped off with a drizzle of caramel.
"Oh my God, that's nasty," Hicks said
After that onslaught of football players came in, Hicks' secret was out. He was a football player. Before that, his coworkers and bosses "just thought I was a big dude," as the 6-foot-2 Hicks put it.
Then came the questions: What's practice like? How's Urban Meyer? How's Tim Tebow? Is Percy Harvin like this? Is Tebow like this?
Hicks just told them it wasn't what they all thought, and not everybody fits their stereotypical roles.
While Hicks dealt with the constant questions of "Why are you getting a job?" from coaches, teammates and even his family, he said working just three days a week for a few hours wasn't that stressful. He didn't even become too tempted by the sweets in front of him, and said he'd only have a "small little portion" sometimes.
And he was able to keep his secret safe from some. Senior wide receiver Louis Murphy never saw Hicks there, but he wishes he had.
"If I saw him there I would laugh my butt off," Murphy said.
