“PERSONAL FOUL”

Gemini Magazine, May 2012

Senior year in college. The final hurrah before the hard slog of adulthood. The last taste of campus celebrity. The fleeting perception of being a big shot. The hard reality of taking a cheap shot.

“Get in shape, Don,” Rutgers hard-nosed offensive coordinator grumbled disapprovingly, his steel-capped cleats clanking the macadam walkway leading into the locker room, me sitting on a bench outside the door wheezing my ass off and threatening to barf…again.

We had just finished the first practice session of Rutgers football summer camp—two weeks of two-a-days in New Jersey’s late August hell.  The days ahead promised to give new meaning to the description I had once heard of “a football practice”…a period of intense boredom punctuated by moments of acute fear. The author of those words was presumably equating fear to the physical aspects of a game that demands the repetitive collisions of large bodies intent on doing damage to one another. Honestly, that part never bothered me as much as the psychological challenges of becoming a “starter,” and remaining one. That said, and what with my having been Rutgers starting fullback for the past two seasons, one would think I would have arrived at my final summer camp in the best shape of my life. Clearly, I did not. And so began my last year in football…one year too late, as it turned out!

I’d had a terrific collegiate run through my junior year. Scholastically, I was on the Dean’s List. Socially, I was an officer of my fraternity. Politically, I was a member of the university’s prestigious Crown & Scroll Society. And athletically, despite recent knee surgery, I had performed well enough on a team that lost as many as we won (actually a few more) to peak the interest of NFL franchises like the Chicago Bears, Kansas City Chiefs, and Houston Oilers.

Life was good, perhaps too good. So there I sat, outside the locker room, totally spent, wheezing like I had emphysema, and knowing that I was carrying a few too many pounds.  I had tipped the scales that morning slightly north of 225—considerably over my ideal playing weight. The next couple weeks promised to be brutal—a promise quickly fulfilled by the presence and performance of a younger, faster, magnificently conditioned sophomore who was pushing hard for first team fullback reps. By the close of summer camp, my starting job would be in serious jeopardy. Good news, as it turned out!

There are times in one’s life when negative circumstances conspire to not only focus the mind, but actually free it. I had last experienced that focus as a Rutgers freshman with such a lowly place on the frosh team’s initial depth chart that there was no way to go but up. It was a “what the hell” moment that saw me pull out all the stops and ultimately land on the first team. Now, three years later, I found myself at risk of teetering off that prestigious pinnacle—a fall that would hurt far more than never having made it up the hill in the first place.

By the end of summer camp, I had wheezed and barfed my way into pretty decent shape, but my coach maintained a serious bug up his ass about my not arriving that way two weeks earlier. “Show me something Saturday, Don, or Mel will be running with the ones.”

Coach Hard-Nose was referring to that Saturday’s summer camp coup de grace…the final, full-tilt, game-condition scrimmage. Open to the public, officiated by pros, and observed by scouts, it defined the team for the season ahead. If I was going to enter the season as the man, I was going to need to pull out all the stops that afternoon…my one chance to make up for a lazy ass summer and an embarrassing summer camp.

Nearly fifty years have passed since that suffocating, late August day. Years over the course of which I have had at least my share of “negative circumstances that focus the mind.” But I can think of no time when I was more determined to take it to the absolute max than on that Saturday afternoon in Piscataway, New Jersey. It was simply the best game of my life.

Playing with reckless abandon, I ran over anyone who got in my way, and went out of my way to run over those who didn’t. The crowd was juiced, officials buzzing who’s the fullback, scouts taking note of big number 35, and me high with the exhilaration of kicking ass—my head never clearer, my heart never hungrier, my adrenaline literally feeding off itself.

No one touched me that afternoon without paying a painful physical price, no one except Byron.

The game was in its final moments, our dominating offense threatening to score one more time, the ball on the 14-yard line. Coach Hard-Nose called my bread-and-butter play—a power slant off right tackle. I took the hand-off and rumbled toward a hole that was opening to daylight. A linebacker and a defensive back quickly moved to plug the gap. I probably smiled when I saw them coming; it was that kind of day. I steamrolled both of them and sauntered into the end zone—the perfect finish to a brilliant afternoon. Or so it seemed.

Byron, playing strong safety, had pursued me into the end zone. He either didn’t hear the whistle blow or was too overwhelmed by his own momentum to stop his charge. Two steps across the goal line, I was beginning to turn, relaxing my body, when Byron’s shoulder drove into my right knee. Ligaments and cartilage were instantly rearranged.

In one brilliant and brutal arc of an afternoon, my season was effectively over.

Years later, I had occasion to run into a former teammate—a tough running back from Maine. It had been maybe six or seven years since our playing days, so there was plenty to catch up on. Yet, not ten minutes passed before Jim said, “I’ll never forgive that fucking Byron for that late hit on you! It was a cheap shot.”  I hadn’t thought about that moment in years—marriage, kids, career, and the rest of adult life’s bag of tricks having all but obliterated the memory. But as I was suddenly reminded of it, I realized that I wasn’t the only one affected by Byron’s untimely hit. When I went down, Jim lost the best blocking fullback he ever had clearing the way for his fleet feet.

Personally, I never held Byron accountable, as if he’d intended to do damage. It was just one of those things…one of those shitty, unfair, life-altering things that make you want to kill somebody…one of those things!

I did end up playing some that year, but half the season was gone before my knee was rehabbed enough to return physically. I never returned mentally.

And so it ended. Football had been a part of my life since I was six years old when, every Sunday afternoon, my dad would take a bunch of the neighborhood kids to a field near our Baltimore row house to teach us the basics of a game I would grow to love. As I got older, fall Sundays were often spent at Memorial Stadium cheering for the Baltimore Colts and my role model, Alan “The Horse” Ameche, the Colts great fullback, immortalized in an iconic photo as he dipped his shoulder and barreled into the end zone to score the winning touchdown on a snowy December night in 1958 when the Colts beat the New York Giants in sudden death overtime to become the World Champions and seal the NFL’s destiny as America’s premier sports’ attraction.

I suspect that somewhere inside my psyche, as I galloped into the end zone on Rutgers main practice field nearly ten years later, I was channeling Ameche’s iconic image. Sadly, I never achieved my dream of becoming “The Horse II,” but I did get a glimpse of it on that hot August afternoon in 1967 when I scored that final touchdown and began to turn in triumph.

I wish I could have that moment back. I wish Byron wouldn’t have smashed my knee with his late hit. I wish I could see what that last football season might have been…and how my life might otherwise have evolved.

But we don’t get to hit life’s do-over button. Good thing, too. Where in the world would we begin?

 

THE END

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