It’s late autumn now, so football season must be in full swing--though life without TV enables me not to hear about it. I’ve hated football ever since I played it in junior high and high school; I think it’s a modern version of the gladiators.
         Before continuing my tirade, I must say that many people I respect love football. There’s great strategy, strength, skill, and beauty in this sport. My views stem from personally painful experiences with organized tackle football.
         I attended a three-year junior high, seventh through ninth grades. Lonely and seeking social acceptance, I tried out for the eighth grade team. Being big from an early growth spurt, I was installed on the first-string defensive line. I was horrendously nervous before games, and never enjoyed the daily practice sessions. I learned to love Halloween and the end of daylight saving time, as practices were suddenly shortened. In ninth grade we were undefeated champions, mostly because we had John Hernandez--a running back whom no one could tackle. Playing middle linebacker, John also led our strong defensive team. A “stick mark” was considered a badge of honor; you got one when direct head-banging left paint from an opponent’s helmet upon your own. I had just one or two, but John’s helmet was covered with stick marks.
         A few junior high experiences hinted at the nightmare ahead. Once I got clobbered so hard I saw stars and could barely stagger off the field. One team had powerful identical twin running backs--the first one would blast through like a speeding locomotive and blow me out of the defensive line so his brother could charge through for a 10- or 15-yard gain. Finally, in an “open field” kickoff situation, I once got creamed from the blind side. It felt like a knife thrust deep in my side; I couldn’t breathe in or out, and knew only panic and terror for a few endless moments. Still, junior high was mostly a lot of pushing and shoving and trying to get at the quarterback, or struggling to reach the ballcarrier and wrestle him to the ground. In high school, things got violent.
         Anaheim High School in 1972 was burdened with a long tradition of winning football teams. Thousands attended the varsity games, and the coaches desperately hoped to continue winning despite a declining enrollment relative to other schools, which reduced the pool of raw football talent. So they pushed their teen athletes harder. The varsity team practiced daily from 2 p.m., often until eight or nine at night on a lighted practice field. They studied films of their games along with films of upcoming opponents. The Anaheim “Colonists” nearly turned high school football into a professional sport; players spent more time in football than in all their classes combined. All players were given “buzz” haircuts every few weeks, lending a quasi-military tone to the whole affair.
         In junior high I had heard the horror stories, and had no intention of subjecting myself to Anaheim High football. But Anaheim’s coaches bludgeoned us with letters peppered with brilliant quotes like “You learn more character inside the five yard line than anywhere else in life.” I was told that the next three years would be the best years of my life, that I had to “make the most of it,” and that I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t have the “guts” it took to play football. What a crock. But I succumbed under the pressure, signed up for the sophomore “junior varsity” team, and undertook one of the most painful and pointless experiences of my life.
         The season began long before school started, with summer weight lifting and then a crash conditioning program designed to infuse you with the fear of being branded a “wimp” while turning your lungs inside out with 50-yard “bear crawls” on all fours, calisthenics, “wind sprints,” and “stadiums,” where we had to repeatedly race up and down the 22 big cement steps of a small stadium overlooking the sophomore field. It’s potentially destructive of knees to pound them by running down thousands of cement steps, and even my junior high football coach (a good man) had told me it was a bad idea.
         After two weeks of conditioning punctuated by the 1972 Summer Olympics on TV, we were issued football gear. In full battle garb we then had two weeks of “double sessions” (both mornings and afternoons) in stifling heat and smog until school started in mid-September. Along with helmets and pads came legalized assault and battery. We were all a year older, bigger, and stronger; this together with coaching exhortations to “pop,” “hit,” and “stick ‘em,” made the game suddenly very adult, very brutal.
         I especially feared and hated the “linebacker/end drills” (I was a defensive end). In this version of running the gauntlet, there would be three guys--one five yards back, the next ten yards, and the third (the ballcarrier) 15 yards back. They were each spaced about five yards apart in the lateral direction as well. The rest of the small group lined up to be pummelled one by one. You had to shuffle sideways along the line until you faced the first guy, then you and he ran straight at each other and banged together as hard as possible. Then you backed up to the line and ran sideways again until coming opposite the next guy. Repeat sequence at greater speed. Then again--possibly quite dazed--back to the line, sideways five more yards, then the ballcarrier charges at full speed and you’re supposed to “Put your forehead into his chest, and drive him into the ground,” as the head coach once screamed at me. Completing this cycle, I’d return to the end of the short line, indulge my voiceless loathing of the coach, wonder how army boot camp compared, and begin steeling my nerves and girding my loins for the next trip through. I resonated with the fear and contempt in the eyes of a few teammates in this bizarre line, but our mutual silence was enforced by fear of being branded a “wimp” or worse. Occasionally we traded places, so each served time in the three-man punishing crew.
         The head coach of the sophomore team was vulgar and sadistic, often coming out with gems like “Well, Julian, are you going to be tough here, or are you going to have a loose bowel movement?” (Players who weren’t “tough” enough or who smarted off in any way could expect punishment of 40 or 50 stadiums.) One day we were doing double leg-lifts (another questionable exercise; it puts massive pressure on the lumbar discs). While I strained to hold my legs up, the head coach stepped on my abdomen, putting his full 200-plus pounds into the effort and twisting his foot as if extinguishing a smoke. Some things the head coach said aren’t fit to print. The other coaches were nicer to varying degrees, but I didn’t especially like or respect any of them.
         I was relieved not to be on any of the starting teams, except the kickoff team. At games, I stood as far from the key coaches as possible and prayed I wouldn’t have to go in. I desperately wanted to walk away from the whole stupid nightmare, but the stigma attached to supposedly being a “quitter” was intense. I finished the season.
         We practiced three or four hours or more each day; all players had physical education scheduled as their final period in the school day so that practice could begin without delay. We lacked the lighted field of the varsity team, and I again got some blessed relief at Halloween. Still, the coaches drove us to simply out-practice the competition, and we were undefeated champions, blowing some opponents away with scores like 63 to 6. In the immediate drunkenness of victory in the final game, some of my teammates shouted a cheer of “We love you” to the head coach. I was deeply disappointed by this display, because I knew I wasn’t alone in despising him.
         Others didn’t despise him. There were players who loved the game, players who loved to “pop” and hit hard. These, of course, were our stars. I’m sure their experiences were completely different from mine, and I would never wish to disparage their happy memories. Still, I was in the wrong place myself; I wish someone at the high school had recognized that and helped me to exit the scene with firm resolve. My parents weren’t thrilled about football, but they left the decision up to me.
         At our 20-year reunion, I spoke with a former teammate who shared my feelings about the sophomore team. I also talked to one of those guys who “loved to hit.” He had proceeded onto the varsity team and now smiled as he remembered football as a highlight in his life. Most interestingly, I saw a fellow I had always liked but never knew well, who had quit the sophomore team in midseason. Now a dignified environmental engineer clad in a business suit, he told me he had indeed received intense pressure not to quit and blistering criticism when he did. In retrospect, I think he’s the one who displayed guts and courage.
         I’m confident that present-day coaches in Humboldt County are much more humane than the contemptible thug I got stuck with. Still, I think it’s unfortunate that football is the most stridently followed sport in the United States; the violence inherent in football speaks ill of a country so enthralled by such a game. Also, it’s a bad idea to subject the human body to repeated pummelling. About ten years after high school graduation, I ran into a former teammate who had continued with the varsity team and maybe a year or two of junior college football. A big, strong guy, 28 years old and a carpenter, he told me he suffered horrendous back pain each morning for several hours until he got “warmed up.” Such pains don’t wear name tags, but if they did his might read “Cumulative Trauma, Football.”
         My own story has a happy ending. As for the social acceptance I sought, I found it more each year--not in football, but rather through finding my own real interests and channels of self-expression, which naturally led to satisfying friendships.
         I didn’t go out for the varsity football team. The coaches barely even hassled me, probably figuring I wasn’t “tough” enough for their world and that I couldn’t help them win anyway. In the spring of my sophomore year, I tried out for tennis. What a blast! I ended up playing varsity tennis for 3 years. Anaheim High didn’t have “75 Years of Pride” to defend on the tennis courts; pressure was nil. We had loads of fun practicing each day after school, and every player worked toward his personal best. Our coach was a gentleman and sometimes a trusted confidant for adolescent males struggling with their emotions. Being on any varsity team placed you in final period physical education, which was called “Athletics” and was supervised only loosely by coaches when your sport was not in session. Left alone in the fall, we’d play exhilarating games of volleyball and strenuous full-court basketball. I’m sure some of those football players envied us as they trudged out to the practice gridiron in their hulking plastic armor.
         My tennis improved. In my senior year, I was declared “Most Valuable Player.” I won many of my own matches, but as a team we were 0-28 for the season. I think it’s amusing to have been the best player on the worst team. But we all had fun, and fun is mostly what sports should be about.