The Football Memoir of a Sub-mediocre "Hundred Pounder"

What the game taught me about virtue and life.

I had no business playing football. My slender, ectomorphic frame couldn’t wait to offload any weight gained. I metabolized food almost as fast as I took it in. But, I did play football and looked like a coat rack with a helmet and shoulder pads. My freshman year, I earned the nickname the “hundred pounder,” because my coach rounded up on my official 95 pound weight. (I heard through the grapevine he didn’t want any double digit weights published in the football program.)

I was decent at form-tackling the dummy, but when it came to the real game and everyone was twice my size, the physics didn’t work in my favor. I became the dummy. I did innovate in the process, however. Watch the film. It never lies. And I’m sure it’s lying in a vault somewhere in my high school. There, you will see me holding onto the ball carrier with every sinew of my ripped muscles tearing, fingers clawing into flesh, while sliding further and further down, down, down the running back’s legs, dragged for seven or eight yards before he tripped over my carcass and I rose again victorious. First down? Not over my dead body.

I had no business playing football, except that I played for the fourth smallest football-playing school in the state of Ohio. So, if you were a male with a pulse, you could put on pads and likely earn a varsity letter. (I earned two.)

These days, hastily “healed” injures haunt me. They are specters in my bones and a few joints. My body reminds me I had no business playing football. But, I did play, and the game became my teacher. The game taught me about life. The game taught me virtue.

Industriousness

When I was a spindly eighth grader, in the Spring, we could start working out with the football team. I’d leave my elementary school most days and walk the half-mile to the high school munching on a Twinkie I bought at the Circle K. I remember walking into the weight room the first day. I had no idea how to lift weights. I had no idea how to work the machines. I needed help and I found it in Russell.

Russell was four years older than me. He was a junior, heading into his senior year. Probably a foot taller and 125 pounds heavier than me at the time. Maybe more. Russell was a team captain, star defensive end, and he knew what was up. To this day, I’m not exactly sure how we got acquainted, but he took me under his wing during that offseason and taught me the game from the inside.

Apart from learning how our team’s system worked, I learned virtues that make someone a good football player. Through his mentorship and modeling, I learned industriousness, for example. Russell was a diligent worker. He was steady and faithful. I got the sense from him that he could outwork anyone because he did outwork everyone. When it comes to hard work, my parents had already provided the kindling in this regard and Russell lit the match. After that offseason, I knew I could outwork anyone on the football team (except Russell). First in the weight room. Last one out. Stadium workouts all summer long in the hottest part of the day. Focus. Intense focus. Hours spent watching film, becoming a student of the game. Football brain. I would never be as big as most of the guys, nor would I have the technical skill, but I could raise the bar when it came to work.

Courage

Sometime during that same spring (of my 8th grade year), the varsity coach pulled all the wideouts up to the gym to run some routes. When we got upstairs, Nate Keller was standing there with a football in his hand. Nate was about to graduate. The previous Fall, he was the first team Division VI quarterback for the state of Ohio, and the offensive player of the year for Division VI. I spent every Fall weekend during Jr. High watching this guy put up ridiculous numbers, and now I was lining up to try to handle his fastball on a slant route.

Nate took great pride in whipping the ball at us with tremendous speed and precision. The smirk on his face made it clear that as the 8th graders stepped up he was going to try to take one of our heads off. I watched as guys barely deflected the ball away before it wedged itself in their faces, or as they let the ball get to their body only to see it bounce off and away. I think I probably closed my eyes as the ball reached my hands, but I held on. “Okay.” I thought to myself. “I can do this.” It was a huge moment in my life. Putting myself out there, stepping into the arena, and succeeding.

Football is a violent, brutal sport. It’s interesting in that you go into every game (really, every practice, in a sense), knowing you are going to get hurt. Football hurts. You can’t play a football game, really play a football game, and wake up the next morning feeling fine. You’re going to feel the game somewhere deep in your bones.

I learned what courage is from football. I learned how to feel intimidated, how to feel afraid, and to move through it and try to win the game anyway.

Resiliency

I didn’t always succeed in football. In fact, more often than not, I didn’t succeed. I had to fight through constant injuries. Something was wrong with my thumb ligaments, so I’d sprain both thumbs within about one hour of the season starting. Next came jammed and broken fingers. I think I tore something in my shoulder lifting weights heading into my senior year.¹ Ah, yes, the broken ribs and struggling to breathe. I remember having goosebumps and shivering on the field once. I bet it was 105°on the turf and I was dehydrated. The field was melting to my cleats. I remember getting hit, over and over — collisions reverberating throughout my skeleton. I remember scraping my body off the ground and smelling the rough combination of sweat, dirt, and blood.

I got clipped a few times in games. Those were the most painful hits. Once, I’m pretty sure I blacked out, because this brute smashed his helmet into the back of mine and drove me into the ground. Another time, I got hit by some lineman. Knocked my ear pad out. I think my body formed an upside down V or worse. I nearly snapped in half. I actually swore the side of my head hit the side of my own knee and knocked the ear pad out. I can remember the sting of taking a face mask to the elbow. Turf burn and cuts were the worst. They wouldn’t heal. You’d use gauze and tape to stop the bleeding, just to rip it open again at the end of each practice as you’d pry the gauze out of your flesh and release a fresh stream of blood. Guys would get staff infection. You’d try to keep everything clean, but in that environment, it was just so hard.

But I kept fighting. I knew my only shot at getting on the field would come through effort and and physical and mental toughness. So, I’d battle. And keep battling. Keep going. Keep fighting. I’ve always taken pride in being scrappy and in never giving up. That’s a lesson that came from my dad and football challenged that decision every day.

Resiliency spills over, too. I saw this firsthand as a guy a year younger than me fought for his life after a failed suicide attempt. Then, surrounded by the support of his family, friends, and our team, he recovered a sense of purpose and rehabbed his way back to the football field.

Community

I often wonder why I played football. My frame is well-suited for soccer or cross country. Soccer was barely on the radar in my small town and cross country garnered little attention. The Friday night lights were where it was at. As a little boy, the atmosphere was electric. It seemed like the whole town was at the games. To be part of that was a decisive factor for me.

But more than that, I found the community that formed within the team something unmatched in my life. Feed-the-team followed by a few hands of poker. Strangely hilarious superstitions. Guys fighting each other for starting spots, and then fighting side-by-side against the next opponent. The locker room talks. The highs and lows. Learning how to win with class and how to lose without being sore. Learning how to get back up again, as individuals and together. Learning how to take commands from adults (and peers). Learning how to respond when your coach chews you out. Or how to respond to your teammate after your coach chewed him out — grateful it wasn’t you this time, and knowing he needed some pick-me-up to regain the confidence to try again. To this day, I can’t recall a single egoist on the team in all the years I played.

As a team, we were after one thing: a state championship. My high school hadn’t brought home a title in over 20 years and like every other team in the state of Ohio, we were determined to make this year our year. League was just a step in the process. So were districts and regionals. We came closest my junior year when we lost 10-6 in the regional final. We fought hard for our goal, which existed somewhere outside the confines of our weight room and practice facility. And I found myself totally captivated by being part of something way bigger than myself, and in a long tradition of boys trying to learn how to become men together, and through a game.

Tradition

Football showed me that tradition is not something you understand by reading about it, but by experiencing it, living in it, and living through it. Rarely, if ever, were the traditions of our football program explained to me. They were not told. They were shown. And while the lore of the program rippled out into the community, only the guys in the locker room really knew the tradition from the inside.

Inside the locker room, for example, I’m fairly certain we listened to the same CDs all four years I was in there. The seniors were always the disc jockeys. It’s not that we couldn’t burn some new ones, I just don’t think anyone wanted to. To us, this was what football sounded like. It was Jimi, Bob, CCR, AC/DC, Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Eminem, and Al Pacino’s Every Given Sunday speech (on game days only). To this day, all of this music conjures up memories etched deep in my subconscious — sweat-wet pads, aching muscles, and the boys.

A tradition is made up of many doctrines and disciplines, I suppose. It’s a kind of intangible thing that’s rendered tangible through ritual actions, language, and symbols. On my team, one of the most impactful disciplines was a deeply symbolic action conducted on game days in complete silence. Upon arriving at the stadium (home or away), we would enter the locker room in silence and set down our carefully packed gear. Then, we would leave in silence and walk the length of the field. It was a meditation. A chance to smell the earth and feel it, without all the fanfare, cheerleaders, and marching band — and without the opponent. You would walk in silence and try to visualize the game and calm your nerves. You would touch one goalpost and then turn around and walk the length of the field to the other. I don’t know if anyone ever made eye contact with anyone else. It was like the moment was too sacred and you wouldn’t want to disrupt it for anyone else. But we all did it together. To this day, I still go back to the memory of that silent procession when I need to retreat to my interior cell.

Humility

I suppose the greatest lesson football taught me was undoubtedly the most painful. My growth spurt came at the worst time. I think I grew about six inches over the span of a few months, all leading into to my senior year. Suddenly, I couldn’t get my body and my brain to connect. I went from being decently agile to unbelievably clumsy. It was terrible. Armed with levels of incoordination hitherto unseen, I started the season as a starting wide receiver for the first time (the class ahead of me was filled with a bunch of studs who took us to the regional finals).

It didn’t last long.

After making it to the regional finals the year before, we lost our first two games of the season. Pressure was on. In game three, we were the definite underdog but we were in the fight. I dropped a crucial pass on a deep route that was a sure touchdown and I lost my starting spot. Complete and utter humiliation. Disappointment radiated through my being. I had disappointed myself, my coaches, my teammates, my family, and my whole town.

I had fought and clawed for years for that spot and in one play, it was gone. I lost my starting spot after that game.

My seventeen-year-old brain realized at that low point that I had a decision to make. I could complain about the coaching staff and unfair treatment, I could make excuses, or I could shut up and figure out how I’m going to make the team better. I chose the latter. I ate my humble pie and got back out there on the scout team.

By this point in my illustrious career, I had more or less cemented myself in the scout team hall of fame. For those who don’t know, every week you have to prepare for the opponent. This means you essentially have to run the opponent’s offensive plays and defensive schemes against the first team. In other words, you have to learn the opponent inside and out and replicate it for the first team. It has to be decent enough to give them a good look. I was fairly smart and caught onto football strategy quickly. This made me rather helpful on the scout team. So during my sophomore and junior year, I was the first team’s tackling dummy. Now, as a senior, I assumed the role again — the first team’s rag doll.

We went 1-9 that season. The whole thing was a disappointment. But, I learned two important lessons. First, I learned that just because you work and outwork everyone, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to succeed. Bad timing and bad breaks happen. It’s humiliating. How you endure the humiliation and respond accordingly matters. Second, I learned in the hardest way I could at the time, what it means to put others first, to put the team first. For me, it meant shutting up and taking licks for yet another (and final) season. It meant watching sophomores take over my starting spot while working my tail off at practice to make them better and to mentor them. I had a chance to put the team first and I took the high road, which is often not the most glamorous one and certainly the one most don’t notice.

In the end, my brief football career would be considered forgettable by most. But, its lessons for my life have been unforgettable. And though I would have likely been far more successful in other sporting ventures, I don’t regret playing football. The game offered me far more than I brought to it.

1. I desperately wanted to make it into the Century Club. This meant you could bench press 100 pounds more than your weight. I had just gotten 85 pounds over my weight and was all jacked up. We threw 15 pounds more on. I got it halfway up and my left shoulder gave out. I never did anything about it because I was afraid it would require surgery and I’d miss a portion of my senior season.