My Journal 050

Wow, can you imagined? I’ve written 50 Journals so far. I bet you never knew I had so much to say, right?

SO – A TOAST TO ILLOGICAL RAMBLINGS, OUR NEW HOME AWAY FROM REALITY.

Now you would think that I would have something really spectacular to write on this momentous occasion. Ha-ha, wrong again. It’s just the typical non-sensical ramblings. Sorry if I disappoint you (Not really J)

It’s Saturday morning, around 5:30 am. Yup, I am up and going. And guess what, I’m at work. Yup, for three years when I started this job I worked every weekend and finally made a deal that someone else can handle the weekend duties. But as usual this changed. SO here I am, once again.

Anyway, last night I am driving down the freeway and I see a school bus full of High School Football players going to a game. It’s actually playoff time in Texas, so this team was apparently good enough to make the state playoffs. Now some of you may be from other states, so let me explain what this means here in Texas.

Football is KING! And most cities in Texas literally shut down on Friday nights to watch the local boys play. Football in Texas is HUGE, and High School football is the biggest draw. Texas supplies more football players to the NFL each year that any other state in the union. Texas youths are put on running, lifting and diet programs in Junior High School preparing them for the level of competition they will be facing.

So, High School football in Texas is a really big deal as typified by such movies as “Friday Night Lights”, “Varsity Blues”, and the infamous “Meat on the Hoof”.

And of course I played football in the state of Texas. I don’t mean to brag, but I was All District three years in a row, All City twice at two positions, and All State once at two different positions. I was in Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Monthly as one of the top 100 athletes in Texas in 1977. And I receive three athletic scholarship offers upon graduation.

Now I assume that you all know about football. But perhaps you don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. So today I will share my old PRE-GAME RITUALS with you. This may be boring, but . . .

My Game Day started with my mom making my Game Day breakfast. She would have three steaks, a bag of hash brown potatoes, and a dozen fried eggs ready for me at 5:00 am. That may sound like a lot, but I was 6’ 1” and weighed 205 pounds. My waist was only 26” around and my chest was 52”. I ate everything and anything all day long, and couldn’t gain another ounce. A typical lunch for me was 6 hamburgers, 6 fries, and gallons of lemonade. So this breakfast was the fuel I would be burning during my game.

I travelled to school every morning for 4 years with the same 4 guys. Bobby, Scott, Tony and Jessie. So around 5:30 Bobby would show up and honk. We would drive together to the field house and each game day we listened to Ritchey Blackmore’s Rainbow. IN four years of driving together, no one ever spoke in the mornings. On game days, we were all focused on the war we had that night.

My school was a division 5 school, which was the top division in Texas. But the school was basically a country school. It was located about 8 miles outside of the city. So basically we were a bunch of country boys. Compared to other schools in the same division in Texas, we were small and slow. But we all grew up together, knew EVERYTHING about each other (strengths and weaknesses) and worked as a team. So even though we weren’t a team of super-stars, as a group we were pretty darn good.

But we all knew that we would be battling kids bigger, stronger and faster than us every week. So we began our focus very early in the day.

Upon arrival at the field house, we had stretching exercises to do. Then we each would watch some more film of our opponent. As a defensive back, I would watch  films that only showed our opponent’s pass plays and it mainly was about the one guy I had to cover that night. Each game I was assigned to cover the best receiver on the other team. My goal was to keep him from catching a single pass.

Now I played some offense too. I was an “H” back, which meant I came in on critical plays. When I came into the game on offense, everyone in the stadium knew that I was there to get the ball somehow. This made it difficult as the other team would design defenses specifically to keep me from succeeding. So after I did films, I met with the offensive coaches to go over the game plan for getting me the ball.

Then I would shower and take a nap.

Now back in my day, if you played football then school was definitely secondary. I had two period of physical education in the morning. That was my morning practice time. Then I had one real class, where I usually slept more. Then I had an hour and a half lunch. Well my real lunch was the required 30 minutes, but the coaches taught a “Sports History” class which met in the film room or cafeteria. After this, I usually had another class, and another nap. Then I had two more Physical Education classes, which was my afternoon workout time.

On Game Day, I didn’t attend classes.

Around 9:30 there would be a pep rally. My Spirit Girl would come into the field house and wake me up. I would slip on my jersey and walk out to the football field, where all the students would have gathered. There would be bands playing, cheering, introductions, speeches, etc. I believe the concept was to motivate the team. But we didn’t need cheers to motivate us. So I sort of believe this was really to motivate the rest of our school.

After this pep rally, my boys and I would leave school. We went to a field in the hills north of our school. Each of us had a spot where we would go to alone and just think about shit. Mine was this really big ash tree in the middle of a clearing. I could look up at the hills and the rolling grass and it put my mind at ease.

We had to be back for more film study and lunch around 11:00. My lunch was a bag of pears. This was my fluid for the game. I usually ate between 20 to 30 pears during our film study.

After lunch the press stuff began. If one of the local radio stations or TV stations had requested me for an interview, I had to attend. If I was not selected then I just wandered the campus for an hour or so.

Around 3:00, we all got together for our PRE-GAME meal. For years the Home Economics class prepared this for us. But some kid complained that it wasn’t fair that the school provided us meals and not him. So it got cancelled. Hey, go risk your body every day for 5 months a year and then you can complain about what I got for free. Oh, by the way, the 20,000 people that paid $5 - $10 to watch me play every week was actually paying for your stupid computers, so shut up!

After that deal was cancelled, the school made a deal with Luby’s. So we would all pile into our cars and drive to Luby’s to eat. Now by this time of the day, we were getting a bit wired. It was closer to battle time, and all these aggressive, alpha males were beginning to get riled up. So on the way back from eating, we smoked a little to relax. Yup, the football team got drugs too . . . for free.

As soon as I got back I took another shower. This was a long, hot shower usually lasting about an hour. Then I would air dry while putting on my “walkman” and listening to my favorite motivation tunes. I spent the next hour or so in the training room getting taped, and shot up.

I had both ankles taped, this was required to step onto any field in Texas. I also had my knees taped and my wrists. Basically, the knee taping was to hold me together long enough to play a game that night. Oh, and let’s not forget the shots. There was a drug called “Instant Freeze”. Once injected, the area injected was completely numb for about 6 hours. I mean you didn’t feel anything at all.

I would get two shots in each ankle, three shots in each knee, and two shots in my bad left shoulder. You got it right, I would get 12 shots every day of my life throughout High School, just to make the pain bearable. Then the trainer would give us our PRE-GAME drugs. It was a cup of about a dozen pills. I know that some of them were Fosfree, which is a salt to keep you from cramping up. I guess the rest were uppers of some kind.

I usually finished this process about an hour before we were scheduled to leave for the game. I was now clean, taped, shot up, and drugged. All that was left was getting my mind ready. I would place a tackling dummy over the stalls of the restroom. I would climb up to the ceiling, put a different tape in my “Walkman” and listen to speeches from famous leaders in history. What can I say, I got pumped up listening. Oh, for the record, I was still completely naked. I never put on a stitch of clothing until it was time to go to war.

Bobby would always come get me when it was time to suit up. That is when I would begin dressing out. From the waist down I would be ready to go. But I left my upper body in a workout “shimmel” shirt for the trip to the stadium. I now switched my “walkman” to the radio. Yup, I listened to the PRE-GAME show for my own game.

We had people to unload any gear we weren’t wearing when we arrived at the stadium. The players were usually the first to arrive, then the bands, then the cheerleaders and dance teams, and finally the fans. So my first quest was to inspect the field. If it wasn’t my stadium, I would walk every foot of the field, looking for holes and bad patches. My legs were already becoming shit at that age, so I wanted to know where every hole was so I could try to avoid them.

After that I would stand on the field and watch the game in my mind. I would run through everything I wanted to have happen and see it vividly in my mind. I was a firm believer that if you could see something happening, then you could make it happen. I still believe in that philosophy.

Then we would go inside the dressing room and finish “gearing up” for the game. We would have to consume 2 quarts of this fluid. It was like Kool-Aid with a ton of sale dumped into it. Again, it was designed to keep us from becoming dehydrated and cramping. I hated the taste of that crap, and to this day I can’t drink Kool-Aid.

Once every one was ready we would exit the dressing rooms and enter the tunnel leading to the field. By this time the stadium would be full. You could hear the rising cheers as fans were beginning to anticipate our arrival. Bands were playing loudly, cheerleaders were jumping and screaming, and fans were in a frenzy ready for the onslaught to begin.

I have repeated the next statement many times in my life. Today, I live a life of pain. Every day my knees, ankles, back, neck, shoulder and elbow hurt so bad that I have trouble moving on cold mornings. I have a dead spot on my brain from my 6 concussions. My nose clogs or bleeds occasionally form the 7 broken noses I suffered. But . . .

“ANY ONE THAT RAN OUT OF THAT TUNNEL ONE TIME, LISTENING TO 20,000 PEOPLE SCREAMING FOR YOUR TEAM AND SCREAMING YOUR NAME, FULLY EXPECTING YOU TO WIN A GAME FOR THEM . . . THEN THAT FEELING IS WORTH A LIFETIME OF PAIN!!!”