Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Man in the NFL by Esera Tuaolo

Author:Esera Tuaolo [Tuaolo, Esera]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781402209239
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Incorporated
Published: 2007-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Vikings had a lot of entertaining personalities in the early nineties. One time when we returned from an away game, one of the team’s stars and I drove over to his apartment. He pulled out a pipe and a bag. I sat there thinking, Wow. Here I am getting stoned with a guy I watched play in the Super Bowl when I was in high school. That was another one of the unexpected twists of playing in the NFL.

Jack del Rio, now the Jacksonville Jaguars’ head coach, was a Pro Bowl linebacker for the Vikings then. He was a great guy and a great athlete. He knew what it meant to play with a good nose guard. He encouraged me because he knew if I played a good game, he played a good game. He used to give me a pat on the back.

John Randle, a defensive lineman who was a seven-time Pro Bowl selection, was on fire all the time, on and off the field. Seeing him, you would swear he was on some narcotic. He wasn’t, but it seemed like it. He was like that 24/7. John always went 100 percent. Didn’t matter if it was practice or a game, he went all out.

He took the rivalry between the offensive and the defensive lines to the limit. If a defensive lineman lost out to a hog in a drill during practice, the rest of the defensive line would haze him. John led the charge. The competition was intense. The opposing lines traded talk and taunts. The Vikings were more verbal than other places I’ve played. That intensity sometimes boiled over into fights.

John was strong and quick. He was also into the technical part of the game, the mechanics. He knew how to use his hands and feet. He was able to use his short, stocky build to his advantage. Barry Sanders, the Detroit Lions’ great running back, stood five foot eight and ran so low that he was extremely difficult to tackle. John was the equivalent of Barry Sanders as a pass rusher. He was a tree stump that blockers couldn’t knock off balance. At just over six feet tall, he was considered too small even to be drafted in 1990, yet he became one of the game’s great defensive linemen.

Once John got the taste of success as a starter in 1992, he never let go. He grew up poor in Texas. He told me that his house had a dirt floor and no indoor plumbing. He walked to school. The way he went from nothing to everything was inspiring. If anybody deserved success, John Randle did. It was great to be able to play alongside him.

He used to say crazy stuff on the field. On the line against different teams, John would suddenly explode at the guy lined up across from him. “You call me a nigger? What? You call me a nigger?!”

Or, he would say, “You going to be my bitch tonight. I’m going to make you my bitch, yeah!”

One game, I was lined up across from a rookie.

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