Gerry Weiss, a staff writer for the Erie Times-News (Erie, Pa.), is the author of "In Your Shoes," an award-winning monthly series in which he does someone's job for a day and then writes about the experience. Weiss, who has written the series since October 2004, has taken on the jobs of sanitation worker, dairy farmer, gravedigger and veterinarian, among many others. To check out the series, go here. We asked him for the athlete whose shoes he would most like to fill for a day:

Offer a guy the option to be any athlete for a day, and the answer will likely fall somewhere between Tiger Woods (Hello, world's greatest golfer), Derek Jeter (Hello, scandal-free Hall of Fame career), and Tom Brady (Hello, Gisele).

But those choices are gimmes. Too easy, too obvious.

Give me one day in an athlete's shoes, and I'm dialing up Giants running back Brandon Jacobs. That's right: The Beast. B-Jake. Thunder and Lightning.

Here's why: I'm 5-foot-8, 157 pounds, and I don't run over anything. I'm about as physically imposing as Elmo. So when a lifelong football fan like me watches in awe as gladiators in size 18 cleats make like nimble freight trains, you wonder what it feels like.

Which is why Jacobs is so appealing to me. Twenty-six years old, a Super Bowl champ, and in the prime of his career. Carries 264 pounds of chiseled muscle on a 6-foot-4 frame. Runs the 40 in the mid 4.4's. So what if he can't seem to dodge those annoying knee injuries? For one day, when he's healthy, he's virtually impossible to stop.

Jacobs' strength around the goal line is astonishing, but it's his menacing combination of speed and power when he's roaming in the open field that makes me salivate. He's bigger than most NFL linebackers for crying out loud, let alone any puny defensive backs that try to tackle him.

If you need proof, surf on over to YouTube and check out some of B-Jake's Greatest Hits. There's the shot he delivered to poor Charles Woodson. And the blast that knocked Fred Smoot into another ZIP code.

I'd love to know that feeling just once. The adrenaline rush that comes with playing on Sundays in front of eighty thousand rabid fans, and knowing that one man alone can't take you down, no matter who he is or how hard he's coming at you.

Not even Brady can boast that.