“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.
