A Sick Game That Celebrates Savagery

My future as a professional football player got derailed one day in tryouts for my high school team.

It wasn’t the heat that did me in, although it was as hot as hell’s hinges. And it wasn’t the stink, although you could faint from the smell of sweat-soaked pads and polyester jerseys.

What pushed me over the edge was our coach. We were in the middle of a blocking drill when he blew up, screaming like a lunatic until his eyes looked like they might pop out of his head. We were blocking like sissies, he foamed. Then he went up to a chain-link fence and exploded into it over and over again, head first, until his face was a bloody mess. When he turned to us, glaring with a madness that filled his every fiber, he said, “That’s how you block, gentlemen.”

When I quit, it wasn’t because I was surprised that the coach was a psychopath. It was because I wasn’t surprised.

Football is savage and dangerous, and it celebrates and markets those qualities without apology. It’s a game for bullies and sociopaths, the more violent and eccentric the better. And they all go into it accepting pain, paralysis and worse, as part of the bargain. That’s what a man does, because he’s a man, even if it means he stands a good chance of limping away from the game crippled and maimed, his bell rung so many times he couldn’t tie his shoes even if he could find them.

So excuse me if I’m not as shocked as I’m supposed to be that pro, college and high school football players are dropping dead this summer from workouts that make boot camp look like a company picnic. Excuse me for not wringing my hands, wondering what’s happened to the integrity of the game. And excuse me for not standing in line along with everyone else who’s acting as if Northwestern University killed Rashidi Wheeler.

Wheeler, of Ontario, collapsed Aug. 3 in the middle of a grueling workout. He was 22, a defensive back with pro potential, and his death is tragic.

But Northwestern University did not kill Wheeler, no matter what Johnnie Cochran Jr. or the Rev. Jesse Jackson would have you believe, and no matter what comes of the lawsuit claiming negligence filed against Northwestern by Wheeler’s mother.

The culprit was not the glory-driven university, the drill sergeant of a coach, the inept trainer, the faulty phone system that delayed emergency response or the banned stimulant Wheeler had taken before practice. The fingers have pointed everywhere, and, yes, big-time college athletics is dollar-driven, morally bankrupt and more than happy to recruit illegally, cheat for athletes on tests and toss wounded warriors into battle while 100,000 fans cheer wildly.

But do you know why Wheeler collapsed and died?

Because he was a chronic asthmatic. The medical examiner said death was caused by “a classic case of exercise-induced asthma.” He did not think the stimulant, which thousands of athletes take even where it’s banned, was a contributing factor.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the stimulant was a factor. Wheeler is the one who decided to ingest it. He was the one who decided to play football despite the risks presented by his asthma.

Wheeler did not die because he was black, either, as Jackson suggested with these trite words:

“We’ve gone from picking cotton balls to picking footballs, baseballs and basketballs.”

I must be uninformed. I thought ridiculous, multimillion-dollar salaries, unimaginable perks, unwarranted adulation and pampered living were available to all athletes, regardless of color.

Jackson did clear up some of my confusion, however, when he suggested that college athletes ought to get paid too. Not just pros.

He could not have missed the point by a wider margin.

If the grave-dancing reverend cared to accomplish anything other than see his name in print, he might have used the occasion of Wheeler’s death to remind black America, and white America too, that there is no more corrosive fantasy than the idea of sports as a career. Yes, the fame is intoxicating and the fortune obscene. But the odds of getting either are nowhere near the odds of becoming a doctor or lawyer.

Rashidi Wheeler died thinking he could beat a deadly disease, finish out his college career and go on to the pros. It was an understandable miscalculation, and you can not help but feel for this young man and his family. But things happen. Unfortunate things. Tragic things. And sometimes there is no one to blame.

The truth of the matter is that when Wheeler went down, no one had any idea he was dying. That’s because players collapse all the time in summer football drills that border on torture. He wasn’t even the only one on the ground that day at Northwestern.

That’s the nature of the game. Break a few bones, and they bring out the tape or shoot you up with something and send you back in. Knock someone senseless in a collision of smashing helmets, and it gets replayed a thousand times on television.

Is it sick and demented?

Yes.

And I can’t remember the game ever being more popular.

Steve Lopez can be reached at [email protected].