Playing Both Offense and Defense

I love to watch college football but I never got to play at that level because I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t big or strong enough. In high school I was good enough to play both offense and defense along with special teams but I was only playing both ways because I lived in a small town that was far away from metropolitan areas so we had a small roster. The town was not known for football. It was known for natural beauty. Charlevoix the Beautiful is what it was nicknamed. 

My senior year I scored nine touchdowns. That’s a touchdown per game but in one game I didn’t score and in another I scored twice. The only game my dad came up north from Ann Arbor to watch me play was my two score game. I was happy to put in the extra effort. He was actually a very good football player himself and may have been offered to play in college but instead he was recruited to Vietnam, against his will. 

After the game he told me that I did really well on offense but it seemed like I was dancing with the other players on defense, which was the side he played in high school. At the time I just figured he didn’t think I was good enough to play that position as well as him. I have since heard the story of why my dad did not pursue college but instead gave up on football. 

He made that choice in a split second, against his better judgment. While playing against a rival school he hesitated taking out a leaping receiver at the legs because he didn’t want to hurt the guy who caught the ball and scored a crucial touchdown. Indeed he would have hurt him if winning meant more to my dad than integrity. He felt like a quitter and for the rest of his life may have been indignant towards himself for not hitting somebody when they were vulnerable. 

Maybe he thought by telling me it looked like I was dancing with the opposition that I would try harder, hit the other guys, never let up and never turn on myself for not winning. What he didn’t know is that I would have taken out any one of them without hesitation. I kept my head in the game, not my heart. I didn’t care about being good enough at football to give up in an instant. I gave up all the time. I lacked drive more than I lacked natural talent. I needed to take a cheap shot, to lose integrity early on in the game so that I could win later in life, so I thought.

Off the field is where my heart was kept. I had a soft spot there for special needs kids, burnouts, and pretty girls. I gave way more attention to the burnouts than I should have, received way more attention from the special needs kids than I deserved and got little attention from pretty girls because I was neither a burnout nor special in any discernible way. Except for wearing my feelings on my sleeve and having a clever tongue and pencil, I was kind of average outside of sports. 

I had to regain my integrity by being extra nice off the field to people of all ages whom I felt were good and knew a lot about playing the game of life with me in it. I was harsh to people who were mean and indifferent to those who would not meet me in a parallel world. Some people are climbing mountains while others wallow in the valley. I didn’t know at the time that everybody is playing the same game. The levels at which we play are insignificant compared to how we treat people at every level of our game.

To take the legs out from under a vulnerable player is the wrong choice but there is a natural instinct to do so. Everybody will make split second decisions that could change the course of their life or the life of another. The level at which you play in life is subsequent to how you contemplate the vulnerability of others and approach the vulnerability of yourself as a result.

I am working on my own vulnerability now. Having made impulsive decisions that I still think about to this day has kept me at the same level for far too long. I need to forgive myself for wanting to win so badly that I forget I already have won in so many ways and that I am good enough to get to the next level in life. 

I will dance with the opposition and root for the vulnerable. I think it’s best to be at a level where this is possible.