Why Football Matters by Mark Edmundson

Author:Mark Edmundson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

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SPIRIT IN THE SKY:

PATRIOTISM

One day at practice behind Hormel Stadium, something strange appeared in the sky. I can date the event with some precision. It was October 15, 1969, a Wednesday. Suddenly what was going on with us Medford Mustangs was about to intersect, if just slightly, with major events in the world. And I was about to take another step in my football education.

I was a senior now. It was my second year playing ball, and the whole experience of the game had changed for me. It wasn’t that I’d become a star—nothing like that had happened or would. I was still going to do a lot more watching of the games than playing in them. After the opening kickoff, when I was usually on the field, I could be found sitting on the long splinter-filled bench, blue cape over my shoulders if it was cold, helmet tilted back on my head, legs straight out, taking in the ball game. So I was a benchwarmer, a pine rider. And mostly I disliked it. I wanted to play; I wanted to play all the time. But in another part of myself, I was pleased to be on the periphery, taking in the show and thinking a little about it from time to time. I liked being “both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it,” as the poet says.

I was enrolled in a philosophy class with a brilliant teacher, Franklin Lears, and slowly (very slowly) the world of thought was opening up to me. I didn’t read much, not yet. But the questions that my teacher was asking were beginning to take hold. What is goodness? What is justice? Why does Plato think that it is better to receive harm than to do it? This last question was particularly tough for my football player self to handle. Was it really better to receive harm than to commit it? Better to get hit than hit? Better to be knocked on your butt than to do the knocking? But the teacher admired Plato, and without quite knowing it, the class began to admire the persistent, ironic teacher who posed these impossible questions.

Still, my main identity was as a football player. On the day the spirit in the sky appeared, I could claim to be a hard-core member of the team. I was well accepted by the other players. I had a quotient of football-based character: Over time I’d become more and more like that guy in the mirror, well padded and close to being at one with himself. I’d developed some football courage too, but the quality of my courage had changed. Sometimes I would still throw myself into a rage by flashing back on a bitter image or summoning my magic (black magic) words. But now, I often didn’t have to amp myself into overdrive to throw a decent block or stick my head in on a tackle. I was used to doing those things, and they didn’t hurt as much as they looked like they did.

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