Penny Thoughts: Missing Football

Two weeks ago my wife, Elizabeth, and I helped our son, Ben, celebrate “Senior Night” as part of Demopolis High School’s football season. It was a memorable and significant event in our lives.  It also gave me pause to reflect on what football has meant to me over the years.

As a consequence, every year sometime during football season my perceptive wife, who understands the blood-deep imprint football has on my total being, manages to subtly ask, “Well, Honey, do you miss it?”  And Ben’s “Senior Night” brought this question to the forefront of my recollections about football. So, for the first time since I left the sidelines and the auxiliary roles I have played since then, I must admit that I began a steep ascent into a nostalgia that usually evolves into mythology more than fact would verify.

You see, regardless of the academic positions I have held, football has always been an integral part of my life.  From my introduction to the sidelines when I was two years old to my full retirement from its mystique some 47 years later, football provided me a significant foundation for establishing a career with a solid work ethic.

It was my Uncle Bill Hinson, a high school All-American quarterback at Miami (Fla.) Jackson High, who took me to his ball games as a kind of good luck mascot.  Lee Corso was his back-up for the Jackson Generals and I was able to enjoy a unique deference since Uncle Bill was captain of their championship team.  I remember only that the enthusiasm, the excitement, and the sheer joy made me a very happy little boy – and those emotions have never left me.

I became a team manager when I was in seventh grade since we could not play in junior high school until we were in the ninth grade.  I gave up my two newspaper routes to be the team manager, and although I missed the cash, I never have regretted making that move.

The rest of the story goes along the same route, and we were State Champions my junior year but managed only a mediocre 6-3 record as a senior.   College was nothing monumental except that football paid for my degree.

The experiences carried me to the next logical step after college, and I began coaching.  And here is where my wife and others ask that familiar question about “missing it,” for coaching is where most of us who carry football to some sort of logical conclusion make the greatest memories.

So, yes, I do miss it – but first, let me tell you what I do NOT miss about football coaching.  I do not miss the “contributions” regarding strategy which well-meaning – and sometimes not-so-well-meaning – alums are more than willing to offer.  If the kicking game was not what it should have been, you can bet that a phone call or, my favorite, a large package in the mail detailing the intricacies of the kicking game will be forth coming.  That’s no fun.

I don’t miss the grind of two-a-days either.  Players think that coaches are happiest during this always grueling preparation for the upcoming season.  Not so, in my case.  The players don’t know that coaches get tired, too.  And then they have to go home and still be husbands and fathers.  It is quite demanding.

And I don’t miss those calls at 3:30 in the morning!  You know, the ones coming from a player that start, “Uh, Coach, uh, could you talk to the sheriff here?  There’s a little problem and, uh, well…you know, Coach…”  First, the problems are never “little” and the sheriff is always very upset!  The outcome is no fun either because some sort of discipline must ensue.

All that aside, there are far too many positive events which make it all worthwhile. I am not talking about the clichés involving “character” or “unity” or any of the other hackneyed expressions which are spewed by people who really do not know football. 

Football makes me miss all the nuances so often overlooked by civilians to the game.  It is for them that I have penned this semi-homily.

I do miss watching young men develop from wide-eyed freshmen to savvy upperclassmen who know the value of hard work.

I miss the brotherhood of coaches who honestly work to make each player become better, as the coaches themselves seek to better their own beings.

I miss the camaraderie and cohesion fused in the intensity of competition which holds a bond through victory and defeat.

I miss the tears of joy as well as the tears of frustration.

I miss the smell of the practice field in early autumn and the sun’s taunting rays as they challenge all of us involved to step up the level a few notches.

I miss my opponents and what they forced me to overcome.

There are at least a thousand other pieces of football that I miss, but do not have the time to cite here – but what I miss the most is my players.  The players who were great as well as those who made contributions through just being there are all part of the images and collage of football.  I miss watching Super Bowls and seeing my boys playing in the game’s greatest spectacle, as well as being invited to a high school game by two of my players who are now opposing coaches in that game. Yeah, I do miss it, all of it – from kickoff to final whistle – because football is THE game by which America gauges its attempts at success – and there is no other sport in any part of the planet which can make that claim or offer as much!