Probably, I started paying attention to football when I was about eight years old. I remember playing at recess in the third grade at Blessed Sacrament school in Tallahassee, Florida. I remember it because the son of the Florida State University football coach, Tom Nugent, was in my class. His name was Terence Daniel Nugent, but he liked to be called TD, for obvious reasons.
Many of the eight-year-olds had helmets, so I began annoying my father to get me one. I wore him down and he bought me one, but it was an old leather kind of helmet and the other kids had new shiny plastic headgear. I was a little embarrassed to wear it.
That same year, I recall watching Notre Dame play Oklahoma on television. The Sooners owned an enormously long winning streak, I think forty-seven games in a row, but the Irish won, seven to nothing, much to my satisfaction. I had been told, after all, that Notre Dame was a Catholic school, and I already had some slight feelings of inferiority as a Catholic in Tallahassee.
By the time I was ten, the family had moved back to Miami, and my father began taking my brother and me to Miami Hurricane games. Aside from the father-son bonding, I guess the highlight of those games was seeing the Heisman Trophy winner for 1959, Ernie Davis, when UM hosted Syracuse in the Orange Bowl. Syracuse didn't do much passing in that game, I don't think. Their offense was pretty much, "Davis to the left, Davis to the right, Davis up the middle." Years later there was a movie about Ernie Davis called, "The Express" which I recommend.
By ninth grade I had become pudgy and I had always been a slow runner, and asthmatic, so I quickly gave up efforts to make the Columbus High junior varsity team. I watched a lot of football games, in person and on the tube. I do remember seeing a Miami Dolphins game, in 1966 I guess, the only pro game I've ever attended. In those days the Dolphins, only one year removed from their expansion team origins, were practically giving tickets away. I had a grandstand seat in the Orange Bowl for one dollar. That night, th e Houston Oilers clobbered the Dolphins and their rookie quarterback, Bob Griese.
At Florida State, I went to many games, often alone, sometimes with a date. Football games were formal occasions then. Men wore ties and coats, women wore dresses, stockings, and make-up. It seems very quaint to think of it now.
Since then, I've been to a few high school and college games, but most of my exposure to football has been via television. Gradually. I've become disenchanted with the sport and with the entire football culture in American life. I guess this started when I heard that an FSU offensive lineman had to come out of a game because he was bleeding from both ears. He was bleeding because the opposition lineman was jamming his fingers through our boy's helmet earholes on every play.
Aside from dirty play, there was the matter of illegitimate payoffs of one kind or another to college players. I read that one high school player decided to go to Syracuse after making a visit to campus where one of the cheerleaders was encouraged to spend twenty minutes in the back seat of a car with him. I doubt they were discussing defensive strategies. Rumor had it at FSU when I was there that the star wide receiver on the team was being paid a large stipend for turning out the lights in the physics building each evening. I don't think anyone became upset with him if he forgot to do it.
Sex and money, the two motivators in many a young man's life. In the years that followed it often seemed that prize athletes - not just football players, though they seemed to get most of the press - came to believe they could get away with anything. Sex assaults, bullying behavior, stupid behavior while driving are hardly confined to football players, but they do seem particularly prone to them.
And the money. Football coaches are almost always the highest paid employees at state and many private universities. I ask my readers, does it make sense at an institution of higher learning, to reward a coach with something like twenty times the salary a tenured professor makes? Or more, as it often is now?
And the injuries. "Football is a rough game," I still can hear coach Aiello telling us during my brief effort to play high school ball. Rough I can support. Broken bones I can tolerate. Men I have known who did play high school ball often tell me how difficult it is to get out of bed in the morning now, how their knees creak, and pop.
The simple truth is that anyone who plays football for any length of time is just about guaranteed to have health problems later in life.
What has finally tipped me away from football, however, is the head injuries. It appears that concussions are endemic among football players, and brain damage occurs all too often. Young men are selling out their later years for a chance at fleeting fame and fortune.
It isn't right. I venture to say it's immoral. And I have decided that I'll have no part in it. So no NFL Sundays for me, no BCS bowl games, even though FSU might well play for the national championship. I'll have none of it.
I miss it already.
And don't even get me started on the exploitation of the young women who become pro football cheerleaders.
