“You got one guy going boom, one guy going whack, and one guy not getting in the endzone.”
– John Madden
Football fever has taken over Southern Ohio as the Cincinnati Bengals made an appearance in the LVI Superbowl. Everywhere people donned Bengals apparel and took great pride in Cincinnati's finest. It was all very uplifting. They lost the big game by three points, but the apparent love of football was off the charts.
In my memory, football holds a very unique place. It made me confront both fear and endurance. And, it taught me there is always someone stronger and meaner than me who can use their force to put me down. Each game … and practice … you line up against another person within a team setting. You vs. that “other person” – you soon find out how difficult your game within a game will become. Despite size difference or skill differences, you literally fight that foe all game, continually hitting him as hard as your can. Your team will win or lose; however, you, as a single member of that team, will either deliver or endure a beating … maybe both. That's part of football many fans don't consider.
The game has changed over the years but retains its wide appeal. Violence and injury are part of the game – parts many fans crave watching but have little true knowledge about enduring. It is really a “game” that celebrates controlled brutality, and I believe it could not survive without it. For that reason, many, many people are fans but fewer play the game.
I love football, and I played in junior high and high school at Valley. I can attest that loving the game as a participant and loving the game as a fan are two vastly different things.
I moved to Lucasville in the 6th grade from Clay, where we didn't have a football program. I loved to play both basketball and baseball, but I had no experience playing the game. Sure, I had a football to toss and kick around, mainly with Mike Wallace when he visited his grandma on Scioto Trail. But, I never played organized ball. My main football experience came from watching the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Cleveland Browns play on our little black-and-white television.
My Uncle Gus had been a standout end at Portsmouth High School who actually went to Auburn to play football. Unfortunately, he didn't play all four years because of an illness. I loved my uncle. He was a wonderful man who passed much too early. Thinking back, he may have influenced my decision to play at Valley.
When my family moved to Lucasville when I entered the sixth grade, the boys on the playground played lots of football at recess and lunch. I could catch a ball well, and I played too. Being a new kid, I took a pretty good jostling during games. It was common to test other boys toughness then. I learned to play this touch ball with vigor and some of the same abandon.
In the 6th grade, my physical education teacher, Mr. Booth, coached the fifth and sixth grade football team. He was a great coach: the Valley team had an undefeated record that year, and I think they were seldom, if ever, even scored upon. Of course, I was encouraged to play (even to the point of enduring some flack), but I decided not to go out that year. I did play basketball and football and did well in those endeavors. I was becoming a pretty good athlete: those teams did extremely well, too.
My 7th grade year arrived, and I decided to play football. Mr. Humston, my coach that year, was from the old school. He was a big man, rough and tumble, and he had played football when it was brutally physical and a real test of endurance. Things were done in a boot-camp atmosphere. But, don't get me wrong, there would be no one going home to tell his mother about the methods and conditions. Football was tough and playing the game was meant to make you tougher.
I will never forget dressing out for my first contact practice. Equipment – helmets, shoulder pads, pants, hip pads, etc. – was brought out of storage and heaped in piles. Upperclassmen and first-string players went first to pick out their equipment. That meant first-timers like me were picking through the time-worn remains to find anything resembling a full set of football equipment.
Sizes? With no one to help fit equipment, everything was just trial and error. I didn't know how to put the pads on, much less how to lace everything up. I was a jangling mess of mismatched stuff hitting the field – the equipment felt like an old suit of armor, and I saw no way of doing much of anything in this disorganized, loose mess of so-called “protection.” In fact, I found it hard enough to just keep this stuff from sliding off.
Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot the cleats. Did they fit … “kind of” and “approximately” are descriptions that apply. The shoes were used, black high-tops made of stiff leather with rigid soles and hard plastic cleats that screwed into actual metal studs. You had to check constantly to be sure all cleats were installed and no bare metal studs were exposed. The plastic cleats seemed to be close to an inch long and hurt like hell when someone stepped on you.
Note: One of the most memorable football experiences of my life occurred later that year in a practice when someone stepped on the forearm of Ed Turner with bare metal studs and popped a vein out of his arm, squirting blood high into the air with every heartbeat. To say it was frightening is an understatement. Ed's brother Mark was freaking out, believing Ed was going to bleed to death before they got him to the emergency room. Someone put pressure on the red fountain as the team nearly went into shock. Ed was loaded into a car and rushed to the hospital for stitches. Needless to say, we were reminded to check our shoes for the next few days.
Everyone knew back then that football was not a game for sissies. No boy wanted to be a sissy, so many young men went out for football to prove their “manhood.” I think coaches also pushed buttons to test toughness, a practice they called “building character.” The older generation had it tough and the coaches were passing on their crucible through the sport. It was as if football was designed with a “kick ass or get your ass kicked” mentality. I wasn't sure that scoring points had much to do with the ultimate goals of participation. And practice was often like running a gauntlet.
Just to prove my point, I can remember that we weren't allowed water during practice (something that continued for a couple more years in my football experience) and we had long, brutal sessions of contact once spring workouts were over. How things have changed. I can remember drills requiring players to hit defenseless, first year guys who weren't competent or trained in avoidance.
The new guys were pretty much just cannon-fodder for the first-string. They were placed in foreign positions and relegated to human blocking and tackling dummies. Yes, they were expected to fight back; however, their lack of skill usually presented few difficulties for their first-string opposition. These players were expenditure and often short-lived. Many were injured or just became tired of getting their “ass beat” every night and quit.
If you could survive practice, you may get to play an actual game on a real football field. Our practice field was just a rough lot, not a groomed field. I think people back then payed little concern for practice facilities. The Spartan atmosphere of the Junior High locker room amounted to benches, metal lockers, and a John or two. There was actually a small shower in the boys' restroom, but few guys used it – not the most sanitary facility. Add wet, sweaty pads and adolescent boys to the mix and you can imagine the all-out attack on the senses.
Practice was mainly calisthenics, football drills, and scrimmage. The drills were brutal, full-contact exercises meant to “toughen you up” and teach you to “hit.” Not much science went into their formation and execution. I think Darwin called this process the “survival of the fittest” – football was truly the competition of natural selection in design. The biggest and strongest often dominated … games and practice.
How I regret being taught to tackle: we were taught to lead a tackle with our head and to jettison it squarely into the midsection of a running back. No one considered the risk of concussion then. The perfect tackle was a jarring slam into a runner meant to make the pads explode. Protecting a defenseless player was not considered. Any player on the field was fair game.
Of course, if we were rushing the quarterback, we were taught to go high – after the head. There were no penalties for such hits. Immobilizing a quarterback was part of the old-school strategy. Headhunting and horse-collar tackles were legal, and cheap shots were only regrettable when they were caught by an official. I don't remember any such thing as a crack-back block.
God help me, I even unknowingly taught pee-wee players to play this way. Today I cringe at such memories. I was doing what I thought was right because I was coached that way myself. Clear through high school, we were expected to hit hard enough to knock an opponent out of the game. Then, that goal was not considered “dirty” but essential to being a hard-nosed player. (I remember one coach offering a steak dinner to anyone who “knocked an opponent out of the game.”)
Two of the crazier drills of the time were extirely contact dumb – purposeless and often bloody.
Bull-in-the-ring had the team form a circle while the coach called out two teammates to come to the center of the ring of players. Both players started in a 3-point stance and then, on the whistle, each did pretty much anything to accomplish the goal of plowing his opponent out of the ring – many matches began with blocking but ended in slugging and on-the-ground rooting, neither of which hones football skills. Bull-in-the-ring was commonly used as punishment for bad play. Mismatches were frequent – big and strong vs. smaller and weaker.
We also had cross-body block practice that amounted to teammates forming two lines ten yards or so from each other. A player in one line was expected to run full speed ahead while a player from the other line ran at him, left his feet, and threw his body in the way of the other's advance – thus the “cross body” name. No swerving or slow running was tolerated – the drill was meant to demolish the runner. Sometimes, it did.
Thank God, things have changed. Now contact is minimal during practice. I just saw recommendations for high school football from Maine that read: “Full contact be allowed in no more than two to three practices per week and that consideration be given to limiting full contact on consecutive days as well as limiting full-contact time during practices to no more than 30 minutes per day and 60 to 90 minutes per week.”
Believe me when I say that having practices were much harder than playing games. As a novice, I learned quickly that the primary goal was to hit your opponent however you could with the most force you could muster. The sport – throwing, catching, kicking, etc. – was pretty much an outgrowth of physical abuse and doing whatever necessary to hurt the opponent. So, in practice, we did a lot of beating up each other. To refuse to do so, or to shy away from contact made you a “pussy” in the eyes of the football beholder.
As an inexperienced, unskilled seventh-grader, I walked off the field after my first night of practice and thought “What the hell did I get myself into?” As we got dressed to go home, the coach entered the locker room and told the team to “listen up.” He said …
“Now, some of you know that football is not for you. If you discovered you don't like the hitting and don't want to play, then quit the team tomorrow. Don't waste our time. No one will mind. This is a tough game, not meant for everyone. If you can't take it, just quit.”
Then, he walked out. I finished dressing, checked out my bruises and scrapes, and couldn't help but stop thinking about what the coach had said.
My mom was there in the parking lot to pick me up. After I got into the car, she began to drive away. Then, she looked over at me -- almost as if she knew -- and asked, “How did practice go?”
“Fine,” I said with little or no emotion.
“Good. I was worried you wouldn't like it,” Mom replied. “It looks like it's a lot different than basketball or baseball.”
“It's good, Mom,” I managed. I probably even smiled and further reassured her. I can't remember.
But, I lied.
I hated the fucking game.
Nothing about what I had just experienced made sense to me. I considered how little of what I had just gone through related to touchdowns and colorful uniforms and cute cheerleaders and the joy of competition and all the other great things I had associated with the game.Three cheers, my ass.
We rode home, and I went to school the next day and the day after. I stuck it out and played football that year … pretty much just being one of those dummies in practice because of my lack of experience and skill. A lot of bruises and pain later, the season ended. Glory hallelujah, the season ended!
I didn't like football that year, but I survived it. I soon found out that being one of bigger, stronger, more football-knowledgable guys made football a hell of a lot more fun. Also being placed in a position where I could use my natural talents made all the difference. Indeed, there was part of the game that celebrated ball skills.
I could catch a football – the next year Mr. Booth was eighth-grade coach, and he put me at end and in the defensive backfield. I started, caught a lot a balls, and even – as a bigger guy – learned to deliver some punishment of my own. We only lost one game that year, by one touchdown, to a larger school. I played football every year in high school and made the Southern Ohio Conference All-Stars my senior year. I also set school records for receiving touchdowns in a single game and most receiving touchdowns for a season.
I love football. I think the game teaches something other team sports don't. I cherish memories of my teammates and important games we played. But, I also look back at the beginning of my seventh-grade year and consider – Just what the hell was I thinking? In fact, even in my senior year I considered a good game was one in which I didn't suffer a headache too early in the contest from hits to the ground and high forearm shivers.
I believe the game is not for everybody, and someone should never be talked into playing it or go out for it because of the glitz and glamour – the rah-rah bullshit that really has nothing to do with playing football. It is still dangerous and tough. And, although not as brutal and primitive as it once once, it can leave permanent scars and worse. My old knee can attest to that … damaged badly on two different occasions.
I sometimes wonder how professionals – with NFL careers that average just over three years – feel about the game itself and their dedication to participation. I don't know, but I'm sure the old-school players would have different interpretations of what constitutes “sport” and what constitutes “controlled brutality.” I know few, if any, would admit it, but I bet many would have stories of “what the hell was I thinking” themselves … moments, hours, days when they considered their lack of resources to successfully fight for on-field survival.
I think, it's a whole lot more fun to play football when you are the person delivering the blows, not the one taking the punishment. What does that say about human beings and what does that say about the game? It should be crystal clear to anyone with football aspirations and football fanatics alike … there are a lot of skirmishes and battles within the war of the sport. They will take their toll. But, they also teach valuable lessons.
Did I say I love football? I think I did. But now, maybe you know why that love holds some regret within its admiration. I'm sure some people in football programs in the early 60s understand. I shudder to think that some were consumed because they simply didn't walk away. Did they prove themselves on the field?
God bless the game of football. Fuck the continuance of inexhaustible and senseless machismo. I do not see the glory in celebrating the survival of the fittest, and the game can be approached that way: I know. We sometimes celebrated blows we delivered, blood we let, and taunting behaviors we committed. I remember playing Boys Industrial School our senior year, and we fought fire with fire on cheap shots and dirty plays. Hell, we went to Hazard, Kentucky that year where a shooting – yes, a crime – occurred at halftime and we escaped town with a narrow victory as fans rocked our bus.
I'm certainly not proud of those regrettable actions. But, when testosterone, ego, and id surge through the male body all at once, you can smell football in the air. I imagine young boys and men will always want to play the game. But, if they try, find themselves questioning why, and quit – they are not pussies. In fact, they may be the strongest of all.
“Brady has compared playing football with “getting into a car crash every Sunday – a scheduled car crash.” I’ve heard players use this image before, and doctors who have treated football injuries.”
– Mark Leibovich, Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times
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