My football career: The only thing shorter than my attention span.

I am such a sports nerd. Its almost embarrassing. I literally like have fun researching different formations and packages and such. The only other people I know who enjoy talking about it like I do are people who played the game. This normally turns into a "why the crap didn't you play football??" discussion. It's a bit of a long story, so I figured it would make an interesting blog post. Why the crap didn't I play sports in school? The story goes a little something like this:

Before I jump into high school, let me give some background information. Basically, from the time I was two, I was told by everyone that I was born to be a football player. My mother's side is full of broad shouldered, barrel-chested men, and my Dad is 6'5". I basically got the best of both worlds. Huge shoulders, a barrel chest, 6'4.25" height and even longer wingspan. It just seemed meant to be.

So as a 6 foot, 275lb 13 year old, I naturally wanted to play pop-warner. I begged and begged my mom, but she said she would have none of it. If I wanted to scramble my brains I would at least have to wait until high school. I was crushed. I counted down the days until summer training started at Apopka High School, a 6-A football powerhouse in Florida high school football.

The day finally came where I was going to achieve my dream of playing America's game in a highly competitive program. By freshman year I was 6'3", 240lbs, and expected to be one of the biggest kids trying out. I couldn't have been more wrong. I showed up to the first practice and told the coach I would like to try out for offensive lineman. He just laughed. I could NOT believe it. He told me I was too skinny to play lineman but hey, it was my funeral (this was a historic moment. I can't recall any time before or after that remark where I had been told I was too skinny for ANYTHING. It was frequently the contrary.) I walked up to where the lineman were gathering and quickly realize he was right! I was a twig! Our starting linemen that year recorded weights of 290, 295, 285, 290, 310. Remember we were freshman. 14 year old boys. Or at least thats what they told people. They looked like college players.

Needless to say that I was no match for some of these guys. I weighed less than almost every single defensive lineman as well. The coaches thought about moving me to a Wide Reciever slot, until they saw my bow-legged, flat-footed self run my 40 in about 8.5 seconds. The slowest on the team. I also had a four inch vertical jump. I was quickly returned to the linemen group.

Now this wasn't even enough to deter me. After all, I had the frame, I would just need to spend time in the weight room. The biggest physical challenge was actually my feet. I only dressed for half of the games because I kept either twisting my ankles, hyper-extending my knees, or even worse, straining my achilles tendon over and over again. Now turned ankles and constant aches and pains have always been a part of my life and I've learned to play through them, but ask anyone who has had an achilles injury, there's no playing on it. Insanely sharp pain. Thats the only way I can describe it. Your leg doesn't even allow you to try and go through it, it buckles on you before you can even try.

Another thing I realized after I joined was how intense the sport is. I was completely comfortable with giving and receiving elbows to the face and even throwing a punch or two (something I demonstrated playing Water Polo), but football was a whole 'notha level. We had the team chaplain "Pastor Brown" come in the locker room to pray with us. I think the one thing Pastor Brown liked doing more than praying was giving pep talks. Some quotes include "I love football, its the only sport where you can try to kill someone and its legal." and "Smack 'em so hard you make they mama cry!". I wasn't really into that. I didn't mind trying to hurt someone, but in order to be good at football, you either have to be incredibly athletic, or have an incredible desire to inflict harm. I didn't really fit that criteria, and that was a major turning point.

Even despite this, I moved to Texas fully expecting to join the football team and give it another go, but two major things would change my mind.

I remember when my guidance counselor signed me up for newspaper. I didn't have the prerequisite, but my teacher would give me lessons on the fly. I realized how much I loved writing about sports, without having to deal with the ticking injury time bombs below my knees. I also wanted to spend more time on my music. I told myself that if I played football again I would need to be willing to put my whole effort and all of my time into it, I soon realized that I wasn't. I miss it sometimes. But then I think about all the things I wouldn't have been able to do if I had played. I may have never discovered some things that I absolutely love to do. I would really like to coach someday, or do something to be around the sport, and I'm sure I'll have to keep on answering the same inquiries as to why I never played. At least now instead of having to repeat the same story over and over again, I can just send them the link.