Guys Like Richie Incognito

“Guys like Richie Incognito made me hate playing football. The NFL should throw the book at these types.”

This is a facebook post I threw up monday after reading about the treatment of Jonathan Martin of the Miami Dolphins by essentially a team captain. I acknowledge two things: first that this is way more topical than I prefer to be with my facebook posts. Second, that I was a bit vague, and I feel like those who played football with me, and those who are considering having their sons play football, probably deserve a bit more explanation as to what I mean.

I played football for 8 years. From my 4th grade year, to a few days before my senior year started when I handed in my pads, Football was my life. All other interests came second. I spent all my time watching, reading, playing video games; anything with football in it was in my wheelhouse. So when I say that guys like Richie Incognito made me hate playing football, I don’t mean that the world was full of Incognitos and I spent 8 years living in fear of them. It means that a few players and coaches that embraced the worst parts of football culture, ultimately lead me to abandon my dream of playing Davis High Football my senior year.

My football career didn’t get off to the greatest of starts. I was always big for my age. In 4th grade, I was way too big to be playing with other fourth graders, and about 10 pounds to heavy to play with the fifth graders. In Northern Utah, sixth grade is the first time that big kids can play with their age group. As a side note, this is asinine. Allegedly for the safety of smaller players, this rule fails to account that at younger ages smaller players DOMINATE the big ones. Big, docile kids like me obviously wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Instead the Wasatch Front Football League in all its wisdom decided it was better for kids like me to play up with kids with two more years of physical development. Oh, two years up I was one of the smaller kids on the team. By far the smallest lineman.

Anyway, my first year of football was memorable in several ways. First, we did not win a single game. As I recall we didn’t even come close. Second, my coach would not refer to us by our first names, and encouraged us to do the same. So for those three months, I was Smith, usually said with a great deal of disdain. Because third, I was really bad.

So my fourth grade fall went like this. I’d spend my days as Nathan in the advanced class. I had friends. I did well. I felt pretty confident. Then I’d go home, and after about an hour of unwind, I’d strap up my pads and my mom would take me to practice. Then I was SMITH, the useless. The head coach and defensive coordinator, ran practice in a manner that made me equally terrified of both (something unusual for me at that age, six months later I’d be chatting up a Weber State political science professor at a fundraiser my uncle threw). The line coach was a nice guy, he had a son my age, who was playing up and was slightly better than me (being at least 30 pounds heavier).

My coach seemed to embrace player hierarchy. I was stuck of the second-string defensive line, which they’d send in a couple of times a game because the league required every kid to get to on the field for 10 plays a game, no matter how worthless. We ran a 5-2, which means we had two linebackers, who were the anointed kings of the defense. I stepped on ones toes once and got slapped upside the helmet. (Revisiting this all now, this whole thing seems really reminiscent of Ender’s Game, with the main difference being that we couldn’t win a game, let alone an alien war). These two linebackers would seek me out to run hitting drills against me. Typically a coach wouldn’t let his best players spend all their time against the worst player on the team, but again, it was a strange coach. So we’d run open field tackling, or quarter eagles or drive blocking, and I’d usually end up on my back. This would get the backers high fives from the coaches and teammates, and humiliate me to the point where I’d start trying to pretend I was sick to miss practice. My parents were suspicious of the coach, but they have a zero tolerance policy for pretending to be sick.

Aside from all this my helmet was too small the whole year and gave me constant headaches. This worries me a bit now that I might have given myself some long term brain damage, being so young.

Most of the time, those of us who sucked were left on the sideline watching practice. I was probably the second worst player on the team, so even amongst that group I was a target. I remember getting spun around by my helmet by another player on the sideline till my facemask got ripped off. The other player and I got in equal trouble for “horsing around”. Even more vividly I remember being allowed to join in punching and kicking the worst player on the team (another 4th grader) till a few parents in the parking lot came out and stopped us. Now, not only was I a scrub, I was a bully. The coaches never addressed this situation.

I remember my coaches yelling a lot. It seemed normal to me at the time. Coaches on T.V. yelled a lot too. But it really bothered my dad, who promised me about 4 weeks in that if I stuck out the season he would make sure I never played for that coach again. Now it strikes me how insane the yelling was. The oldest kid there was maybe 11. The Quarterback got non-stop verbal abuse. He was also blind in one eye. I’m not sure if the coach ever knew that, but a half blind quarterback sounds like the set up to a joke; not an issue that should have driven a 50 year old man into screaming fits.

As bad as that first year was, it got better. The next year, I decided to play up two years again, because my coach was still coaching the sixth grade team. So as a fifth grader, I played with 7th graders. My coach was Kelly Oram, who would later become my favorite teacher in High School. Mr. Oram spent a lot of time individually with us. He seemed less concerned by wins and losses. He didn’t treat anyone like 10-play kids. A few of my older brothers friends were on the team and looked out for me. My dad even took some time out of what was then a very busy schedule to coach the line. We only won one game, over Roy in October. But that season made me actually enjoy football for the first time.

The next several years I got to play with my age group. I didn’t need protectors anymore. I was actually an asset to my team. I worry that at times during these years I was more Richie Incognito than I’d like to think. But as I made friends with the kids I played football with, my love of the sport increased.

Ultimately, my junior year at Davis, I ran into an assistant coach whose philosophy resembled my first coach. Back was the poisonous environment of my first year. While I keep a great admiration for almost all of that coaching staff, that one assistant brought back everything that I hated about football. It wasn’t so much the yelling. It was the belittling; the way he could make you feel so small and worthless. That senior group was a tough one, with a hierarchy. At some point my cleats got taken out my locker (I generally kept it unlocked, who steals cleats?) I tried to practice in regular tennis shoes (which obviously wouldn’t work. The coach chose to single me out in front of the team, laugh at my excuse and send me back to the locker room. Finally, one of the starting guards lent me a new pair. I did not enjoy a single moment of football from that point on.

That coach left after the season, but my love of football was gone. I practiced for a few months, but I didn’t care, anymore. My play got worse and worse. I was worthless to the team again. I was losing weight, instead of putting it on. Finally, I gave up, and gave my equipment back. It troubled me my whole senior year. I felt like I’d let down my friends. I felt like a quitter. But the thought of another practice made me sick.

I can’t stand this idea that these strategies of toughening guys up through verbal abuse. I think its absolute bullshit. I think it has a lot more with coaches who aren’t smart enough to motivate players in positive ways. That’s not to say there aren’t times when getting in someone’s face is a good idea. I had great coaches who at times had to yell at me: Kelly Oram, Mike Belnap, Bob Kariya, Ryan Bishop, Quinn Gardner, even my own father. But it was different with them. It was never to humiliate me. They didn’t take their frustrations out on me. Good coaches don’t need to hurt their players to make their point.

My brother joined Coach Bishop’s coaching staff at Davis a few years after I graduated. I once flipped through the instruction book everyone on the staff had. It amazed how many of the rules that one coach had violated. Perhaps that lead to his departure. But honestly, I wish they had kicked him to the curb sooner, because he absolutely sucked the love of the sport from me.

This is why I feel so strongly about the Richie Incognito-Jonathan Martin story. I remember feeling like that. The fact that everyone involved are adults makes it more disturbing to me, not less. Football culture has an ugly side that it needs to change.

BOLD STATEMENTS

1. Who is the ESPN the Magazine Body Issue for? It's subscriber base has to be 90% straight males. So you send us an issue half filled with naked men? I understand some of the pictures are of women. But its 2013. Pornography is ubiquitous and mostly free. Nobody needs ESPN the Magazine to provide that. Are you making a statement about body image? Than why not show pictures of normal people naked rather that the top 1% of 1% athletes. This doesn't offend me as a prudish Christian. It offends me as a consumer.

2. Every cast member of Modern Family is replaceable. You could replace Ty Burrell with Zach Braff, Ed O'Neill with Ted Danson, Jesse Tyler Ferguson with basically anybody and it would be the same show. Try Community without Danny Pudi. Or Parks and Recreation without Nick Offerman. The show would be 50% less funny. The Emmy's should consider this next year.

3. I saw this great play where 2 guy and 2 girls came into the same room at different times and argued, it was called (insert name of almost any play since 1950).

4. Every musical is 30 minutes too long. There is absolutely no need for falling action in musicals. No one leaves the theater saying "But what happened to Character X?" They just want to talk about their favorite songs which almost always happened before intermission. Wrap it the eff up!

5. Cuteness is the most important evolutionary trait for animals in the world as human's rule. Pandas have been saved and protected by humans because we can't get enough of them. If Panda's looked a chupacabra we would have handed out a medal to the guy who killed the last one. In 1910.

6. Comparing someone to Hitler is a great way to say "I'm worried I'm losing this argument" or "I'm a colossal a-hole." The only exception is if your counterpart says "Don't you feel like we're a bit heavy on the Jews in our society" or "I sure could do with s'more lebensraum."

7. Did you just think "too soon" on that last statement? Grow up. It's not too soon if you weren't alive when it happened. If you were alive when this happened you're clearly reading over your grandchild's shoulder, so knock it off!

8. Oliver Stone thinks America should be apologetic for its past foreign policy. I agree. But not as apologetic as Oliver Stone should be for the last 20 years of his career.

9. To the drunk guy at the party that wants to get up in my face at the party because of my religious beliefs: You can take my decision to come to this party--despite not drinking--to mean that I'm here because I'm able to have friends who don't share my exact views of the world. Maybe we can reschedule your saving of my soul to next weekend.

10. You should watch Bill Burr's stand up. He's a pretty funny guy. I think you'd like him, if you can handle what we'll call "Massachusetts Language".

A Night Amongst the Casualties

When I drove up to Salt Lake this weekend, I did so with the intent of seeing the Dropkick Murphy's, screaming some lyrics in my heavy imitation of a Southie accent and god-willing bleed a little from my eardrums. I was not expecting to be served an plate of punk rock hors d'ouevres two nights prior. Little did I know I had a date with destiny courtesy of the Casualties.

The Casualties are a "real" punk band from the nineties. Not punk like Green Day; punk like Sid and Nancy. They were performing in the Salt House, which in a venue/warehouse I had never heard of. It's unclear to me if the Casualties had played bigger venues in their heyday or the Salt House was par for the course for bands with ever expanding earlobes.

I ended up seeing the Casualties because I'm a lemming. I stopped in Salt Lake to see my buddies Aaron and Spencer on my way up north, and that's where they were heading. For the record, they are not punks. They're essentially hipsters with a scholarly appreciation of bands like the Casualties. So off we went. Needless to say, I was not "dressed appropriately". I was actually dressed unusually preppy: jeans and a light green polo shirt. Amidst a sea or gauged ears, liberty spikes, studs, tattoos and anti-establishment sentiment, I stood out like any of the other concert goers would have stood out at the College of the Cardinals. While I was initially self-conscious at the lack of metal in my ensemble, I was assured that punk music is all about rejection of style and social norms. So in a way, I was the most punk rock of anyone there.

The noise certainly did not disappoint. I stood in the back, away from the speakers and the mosh pit; both of which terrified me. The Casualties consisted of two mohawked guitarists, and a front man who looked like the love child between Kurt Cobain and the one of the Gorillaz cartoons. The stage/platform they were playing on was cramped as it was, only complicated by the apparent punk tradition of allowing members of the audience to climb onto stage and stage dive. It was surprisingly democratic. Though the mosh pit was at best five rows deep, those involved seemed to get the best of it.

I was on my way to bathrooms to check for bleeding from my eardrums, the front man stopped his yelling over power chords to begin just yelling at the audience. After a short preamble he got to his point:

"We hate racists! (Cheer) We hate Cops! (Cheer) We hate rapists!"

So much for controversial stances from our punk rockers. I'd suggest at least throwing in some solidarity of WikiLeaks or something, just to keep the squares on their toes. By the time the thrashing had started up again, one guitarist's mohawk had gone completely flaccid.

I did try a bit of moshing. I found it surprisingly satisfying. The precepts essentially echoed that of being an offensive lineman: keep your feet shoulder width apart, hands out front, put your weight forward. Were it not for the occasional flailing limbs into my face it would have been an utterly amiable experience. Given the amount of spikes, piercings and loose hangings earlobes it really seems like there should have been more carnage than there was.

Once I'd had my fill youthful mistrust of authority I went outside with the smokers, ironically, to get some air. At that point a group of concert goers violently dragged another out of the venue in a full-nelson. Apparently the punks self-police. Although it wasn't clear what somebody had to do to get expelled from this type of thing, I was definitely sure not to do anything that might get me full-nelsoned out.

While the concert died down--the lead singer declined to rejoin the band on stage for the encore--Aaron and I surveyed the crowd and noticed a studded 10 year old repeatedly jumping off the stage. Apparently his parents had dropped him off. While this is insane for several reasons, we couldn't help but admire the kid.

"That kid's gonna be able to kick both our asses by the time he's 14." Aaron remarked truthfully.

So the message of this post is that if you know that kid: do NOT mess with him.

Robert Gets Clean

This is a short story I wrote for my Creative Writing class. Hope you enjoy! 4-1-13

The room was a mess. It seemed as if a hurricane had attacked a city made of pizza boxes and beer cans. The bed sheets had fallen off, and stuck to the beer-glazed floor. It had been a rough night. Come to think of it, they were all rough nights. Robert lay asleep, half-hanging off the bed. In a few seconds, his alarm would shake him from his stupor. Today’s date had been marked on the wall calendar for weeks. Sera was coming. Today was the day. Robert had to clean up.

                As he opened his eyes he found himself face to face with the pamphlet, lying open, tethered to the vinyl floor. Step 4: The unflinching, unforgiving self-inventory. In the past 30 years, Robert must have hit that wall two dozen times. He held no illusions of what kind of life he had led. But all the same, writing it all down seemed more daunting than swimming the length of the Mississippi. Part of him felt that he had an alibi at the pearly gates if he didn’t put his crimes on paper. But he would have to change that. Today was the day.

                As he surveyed the room, he knew a deep clean was overdue. It was necessary. He didn’t want Sera to see him like this. It was bad enough he was still in Nutbush, the pit of a neighborhood in Central Memphis. He might have been the last white man in a 3 mile radius. He hadn’t stepped a foot out of Memphis in ten years, and then it had only been a jaunt up to Millington to see his mother. But he could only fix a few things today, and the first would be the weeks of trash he’d let pile up. That was easy. Bottles, boxes and bags, all empty, like Robert. They were past sins, the easiest to let go of. He took out a garbage bag and filled it. And then another. After 8 bags he’d finally got the worst of it cleaned up.

                He stumbled out to the dumpster. The apartment next to his had the windows open to invite a breeze. No air conditioning in the summer was a fate worse than death. They had their radio on full blast, using it like a fan. He tossed the bundle of trash bags in. Done. Everything in those bags was behind him.

After the garbage was taken out, the floor needed to be scrubbed. The whole place was disgusting. Booze was the only thing that made it livable. Pops would have died of shame to see Robert scrubbing the floors, hung over. Pops had been a good-for-nothing drunk too, but his floors had always been spotless. Momma had made sure of that. She had been the ever patient Protestant woman. Cleaning up after her husband in the morning and praying for his soul at night. She got him to work every day at the airport. The key to functional alcoholism is a long-suffering woman. Perla had been that kind of woman. But Robert had found a way to ruin that too. He always found a way.

The worst of the stains wouldn’t come out, but at least now someone could walk from the kitchen to the bed without worry of getting trapped like a cockroach. The bed needed some work as well. Robert had shared his bed with a hundred other women since Perla left, but each one was just as anonymous as a bottle in a brown bag. They were all addicts, like him; victims to pleasure and a lure of painless existence. He had brought them all back here for a time, and they shared their drugs of choice: booze, coke, meth, sex. In the end the supply would dry up and both parties would move on. Being a drunk means a life of revolving doors. As Robert stripped the sheets he thought of everything and everyone he’d tried to use to black out his memory of Perla. She wasn’t like those other girls. She had been clean, pure. She’d never shared as much as a glass of wine with him. She wouldn’t even let him bed her till the Padre pronounced them man and wife. It was hard to tell what bothered Pops more: Robert marrying a Puerto Rican, colored and Catholic, or the fact that for one instance, Robert had seemed happy.

The trip down to the laundry room was unpleasant. Nobody in the complex cared about tidying up any more the Robert. The whole place reeked of sloth and vice. Oh, Sera was going to be in for a surprise tonight when she saw the landfill her father was living in. But Robert couldn’t fix that. He could just fix his apartment. As he threw his dirty clothes into the washer he caught his reflection in a mirror to his right. Lord Almighty, he’d gotten old. His hair was all white now, but his teeth were far from it. He looked every bit the town drunk. Well, it was time to clean that up too.

He left his wash in the dryer to go freshen up. Crime may be rampant in the area, but he felt all right leaving some old clothes unattended. He’d gotten used to not having anything of value. He had a medal from Vietnam somewhere in his house, which he supposed must be worth something. He chuckled to himself as he realized it had been 40 years since he did something respectable. And that was in Vietnam. Whole lotta good he’d done. Last time he checked the old VC had taken Hanoi, and his year of duty had been for nothing. It was fitting somehow. Everything in his life had ended poorly, why shouldn’t he be part of the first war America had lost? It wasn’t all for nothing, he reminded himself. Military pensions were the only thing he could subsist on, now that they’d taken his disability checks away.

Robert turned on the shower, which was freezing cold. The water heater hadn’t worked in months. It was actually a blessing in disguise, as the cold water made him feel more alert, more sober. This was the time. He was done with the sauce. He looked at his naked body and the toll it had taken over the years. He was fat. Scars ran up and down his body from bar fights and drunken accidents and God knows what else. He ached. This is what the glorious body God had given him had turned to: a beat up Volkswagen that ought to have been junked years ago.

There was a part of Robert that was feeling better already. He felt like a hard exterior was being peeled back. The soft spot in his heart was opening again. Sera had that effect on him. She made him feel like he had a future. He’d named her after his mother, Sarah, but altered the spelling when Perla explained that the Spanish word será meant will be. He liked that. Sera could be anything she wanted to be. She didn’t have to be like her father.

The final step of the clean was the hardest. He needed to empty out his cabinet. He needed to get rid of all his alcohol. Bottles were easy. They were past sins. But these unopened bottles of whiskey? They were his future sins. If this hadn’t been the day he swore he would start his sobriety, one or two of these bottles would have been singing him to sleep tonight. He remembered his first drink as a teenager: a shot of rum. It had made his innocent head float gently into the clouds. It had made him feel warm. His first time being drunk he’d made sure that he took in every wonderful feeling. This was how Pops felt all the time.

He remembered the wine at his wedding: the taste of virginal bliss. He remembered sharing whiskey with his platoon the night before he’d seen half of them blown up. That was the only two images he could muster of them; their bodies blown to bits, and their immature giggling of the night before. Alcohol had marked every moment of his life. And that’s when it truly dawned on him: alcohol had marked every moment of his life.

This was the liquid that had made his childhood a nightmare. This was the poison that had lost him every job he’d ever earned. This was the rat piss that stole Perla from him. Perla could put up with it all, until he strayed. That was when she must have known that the alcohol had truly replaced her. When Robert could spend all night with another woman, just a bottle of whiskey and a bed, that was when the marriage was over. Robert only ever cheated once. But it was all it took for Perla to take Sera and disappear.

His knuckles grew white as he clutched the bottle of Jameson. How pathetic. He was a child that had been so obsessed with his candy; he’d forgotten to grow up. This bottle was the devil. He’d sold his soul for a quick fix. He took it right to the curb and threw it as hard as he could at the ground: steps 5 through 7 all in one. It shattered, sending shards of glass across the gutter. He felt a little weight release of his shoulders. He ran into the apartment and grabbed another one. This is for Perla! This is for Momma! This is for Sera!

At six in the evening a brand new silver Civic pulled into Nutbush. The driver, a sharp woman in her thirties carefully examined each street sign, looking for the right one. She was on a mission. She had come to the dirtiest part of the city to pull the last bit of her childhood out of it. She’d been a toddler here, but nothing looked familiar. Everything looked like a miniature Mexico now. She pulled over to the curb. A few Chicanas were loitering on the sidewalk.

“Oye, chicas. Estoy buscando los apartamentos Berclair.”

“You lost, girl. There ain’t no country clubs around here.”

The woman got out of the car. She was taller than the Chicanas had expected. But they were right; in a pencil skirt and high heels, she fit in about as well here as a presidential motorcade. She saw directly ahead of her, a sign with peeled white paint. Berclair Apartments. Just outside she saw a man sitting on the curb, hands cuffed behind his back. A police officer stood behind him, scribbling on his notepad. If only this had been the first time she’d seen this sight.

“Officer, that’s my father. I’m here to pick him up.”

The officer gave her an odd expression that was hard to read behind his sunglasses.

“Well, he made a pretty big mess. It looks like he made his own little Rodney King riot. The landlord said its gonna take him months to clean up all this glass”

“Look, I work for the state. I’d be willing to pay whatever in damages...”

“Nah,” the cop smiled, “just get him outta here and keep an eye on him. First time I ever seen him sober.”

 The cop reached down and unlocked the cuffs and took them off her father’s hands. The old man spun around, his eyes were full of tears. There was a look here that Sera had never seen.

“Papa, are you ok?”

Robert gave his daughter a fatherly look, one he hadn’t mustered in years. There were still 3 bottles of whiskey in the cabinet. He wanted them like hell. The withdrawals were killing him. In fact, they probably would. He would think about those bottles tomorrow. He’d think about them every goddamn day for the rest of his life. But he couldn’t even pretend he minded now.

“Let’s get outta here, Sera. My life is over. My life is over, and I’m ready to start a new one.”

 

The Empty Stadium

 This is part of the Poetry Project for my Creative Writing Class this semester.

            American architecture seems to differ from its European counterparts in many ways. But one seems to be most obvious: a grand, American structure derives its greatness from the people it can hold. The Pantheon, the Parthenon or Notre Dame would probably seem even more majestic if one could be entirely alone inside them. But Americans build structures for people. Just as the European continent is sprinkled with Cathedrals big and small, the American Heartland boasts a football field in almost every town.

            And the greatest of the fields—the stadium—can be a wondrous structure that can house tens of thousands of spectators. When the game is being played the air is rife with the smell of hot dogs and roasted peanuts. 40 thousand strong cheer and scream with every ebb and flow of the game. Their voices come together to form a whisper, a buzz that dominates the mood in the stadium. All wearing the same colors, such a mob is certainly a sight to see.

            But Football is only played once a week. For the other six days the stadium is empty. When winter truly falls and there is nothing left to be decided on the field the stadium enters months of silence. Though some of my fondest memories took place inside the walls of this stadium, when I enter alone I discover a foreign land.

            The green lake of grass is still there, but it seems less natural at this time of year. Like football, AstroTurf is a creature of the fall. The seats are all the same color, like those who sit in them during the season. But whereas the sea of red seems amazing and comforting when worn by people, when worn by seats it just seems corporate. There is no distinct smell, but that winter smell that permeates the entire valley: of melting snow and growing grass. The silence would seem ideal for the funeral of a dignitary. The seats mournfully gaze upon the empty field.

            In a few months, the hibernation of the stadium will cease. The fans will enter and the place will become whole. But for now it is just a sad, empty stadium.

Lurch, Lumber, Strut

 This is a section of my Poetry Project I handed in this term. Just putting it out there.

              This week I was walking up a flight of stairs when I heard someone call out to me. I turned and saw Josh Kariya, the little brother of one of my close high school friends, new this semester to SUU. I had not seen Josh in 5 years, but I could have picked him out of a group any day. There aren’t many half-Japanese, six-foot-three, football players running around the state. What surprised me was that it was him who recognized me. When Josh last saw me I had close cropped hair and was clean shaven, not to mention a little more svelte. Yet he did recognize me from a distance.

            “I thought I recognized the Nate-Smith lumber,” he said almost immediately.

            I knew exactly what he was talking about. It’s the style of walking I’ve had ever since I started growing into my body at age 12: hands in pockets, head cocked to one side, leisurely pace. The word he used was lumber. And the way I walk, along with the word Josh used to describe it, tells a great deal about me. It shows that I have always been bigger and taller than most of my peers, and thus took to slouching. My head cocked slightly like I’m in a low ceiling room. You might guess that I’m deep in my own world by my leisurely pace, and you’d be correct. And my hands stay in my pockets to try to convey comfort and ease, which is usually the exact opposite of how I feel.

            Thus, “the Nate-Smith lumber”.

            There are a thousand words more useful to describe the way a person walks. An air of confidence follows those who strut. Youthfulness and glee are usually apparent in one who prances. Business and stress mark the man who bustles. Serene beauty follows her that glides.

            I like to watch the way people walk. Do they swing their arms? Do they sway their hips? Are they comfortable or not? Do they have somewhere to be or not?

            The Greeks supposedly have 100 variations of the word love in their language. Yet one wonders how many variations they have for the word walk.