Late night ramblings

So here we are in the den.  It's dark out, darker than normal.  The shadows are very playful, even the big mean ones.  And I can't sleep.  Sometimes it happens.  Well it happens a lot actually, but usually I just read through it.  Sometimes that works, most times really.  Right now I'm all antsy and my tummy is upset.

So in case it wasn't painfully obvious from a bunch of other places, I love football.  A LOT.  It is easily one of my biggest passions and something that continues to fascinate and enthral me after all these years.  I love the game, and will most likely continue to coach and participate in it for years and years.  Probably until they cart my body off to the nearest medical school to be hacked up by medical students.

And I want all of you to consider having your child play football.  Kinda.  I read an interesting article by Chris Schultz on the TSN website when he talks about how he feels when parents ask him if their kids should play football, and he's pretty honest about it.  I rather liked what he had to say.  It's very true that football comes with a very heavy price.  But he's somewhat short on what that price is beyond the physical, mostly because he was speaking very specifically to the violence he witnessed in that week of football.

And trust me I understand that price.  I have:
1)  Two completely fucked up knees that make all kinds of interesting noises, the right one more so than the left.  The right will also swell up to roughly cantaloupe size when the weather changes. 
2)  A shattered elbow that never healed correctly.  It was literally shattered, but because of how physically built I was it held together but now under x-rays looks something like a school of blow fish. 
3)  A blown out set of tendons in my right ankle.  It was my usual starting foot and took the majority of punishment on initial contact.  It creaks audible. 
4)  Very messed up nasal passages.  Bone crunching hits in my second year with a helmet that didn't fit properly caused broken noses.  A lot.
5)  Last and certainly not least, over a dozen medically recorded concussions, two of which were serious enough to require medical supervision, and which research has now made a tentative link to my depression.

This is not to mention the litany of injuries I've witnessed.  Some I caused, some I watched happen, and some I still get queasy about when I remember them.  That guy who I knocked out?  Guh.  That one still makes me feel bad. 

But he didn't talk about the price you pay for failure.  For those times you still come up short.  The moments when you doubt yourself because you thought you did everything you could and you still didn't win, and for the rest of your life you think about it and wonder what else you could have given.  The nights when you're thirty five and thinking about that city final game when you shattered that right elbow in the first series of the game, and then had it taped up and played out the rest, and wonder if that might have made your performance worse, and even with that sacrifice of your body that you're still paying for you didn't win, and was it worth it? 

He didn't talk about the drive that comes from wanting perfection and never getting it.  That perfection that other people can't even imagine but you can see it, you can feel/taste/smell/hear it and know exactly what has to happen but you always come up a little shy.  How that desire for perfection seeps into the rest of your life and hounds you to do things no one else will for that exact reason.  You will step up, you will take the hit, and you will like it just because it's nice to be known as that unstoppable guy.

And he didn't tell about the vanity.  The pride that comes from being a part of a true team, of having brothers who are a part of your heart and will never ever leave you.  How you remember those you fought with in the trenches, in the open field, in the end zone, and how when you meet them all you can talk about is football, past/present/future and how it pulls at you still.

He doesn't talk about how no one who is a true football player ever gives up the game voluntarily.  Sure, guys say they retire, and it is made to seem as their choice, but it is usually a forced issue, one where it is one thing or the other and no matter what you say, you would always give up just about anything to strap on those pads one more time and head out onto the gridiron and test yourself against the very best you could.  You can close your eyes and still remember the first time it took hold of you and your entire body bent itself to become the best football player you could be and how you will never give up that goal, even after twenty years, it still drives you.  You want it more than a junkie wants his fix, more than new lovers want to sink their desires in each other, more than a mother wants to see their newborn's face. 

Why do I tell you all this?  So maybe you'll think of those of us who still talk of our glory days as more than an Al Bundy joke.  So maybe those of you with children who will wish to play football can properly council them on what they're getting into.  So maybe when you see me out there coaching a new generation of football players you'll understand why I seem so harsh, why all us coaches seem so harsh.  And finally, when you see us passionate about it, when you see us give up so much of ourselves for it, you will understand why we have that passion and why we are willing to give up so much.