It's been six years since I was cut from a team. But I'll never forget the uneasy feeling you get when co-workers are milling around, some nervously joking about their future, others settling comfortably into a state of sweet denial, convincing themselves they'll be okay.

The stock market has gone south, the economy is in the toilet, and people are losing their jobs. My company is laying people off, too. This is what it's like in the last two weeks of training camp, when you're on the bubble and you have absolutely no control over the decisions that are being made. Life is imitating sport.

Many of my co-workers seem to believe that professional athletes control their own fate -- that only the best players make NFL rosters and that pro sport is truly a "survival of the fittest" thing. But it's numbers -- not necessarily talent -- that rule our games.

For example: each NFL team has a 53-man roster. That's a total of 1,643 workers. But 114 D-1 universities each offer 85 scholarships. The potential talent pool is miles deep. You can't tell me that only a tiny percentage is good enough to get the job done in the pros.

After we heard about the coming storm, one of my co-workers said, "so, you thought life in the NFL was tough?" I will readily admit that the prospect of company-wide layoffs is daunting. But when rosters are trimmed in the corporate world, at least you get the option of a benefit-laden severance package. That's not exactly the case in the NFL. Every time I got cut, there was no severance. My butt was severed with a do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-your-golden-parachute kind of finality.

Just last week, I was talking to Cleveland Browns backup QB Spergon Wynn about what it was like to go into camp last year as one of four QBs. I asked Wynn, a sixth-round pick from Southwest Texas State, if he was ever worried about making the team.

"If you worry about too much stuff," he said, "you can't do anything well."

I'll remember those words over the next few weeks.

Alan Grant, a former NFL defensive back, writes football for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at alan.grant@espnmag.com.