This is a great example of how you can get lost while trying to make a point. I was inspired to write by a conversation my oldest son and I had while watching a high school basketball game. I was getting into it - I get into almost any kind of competition - and The Heir laughed at me, saying he doesn't know how I can get wrapped up in a game where I don't know anybody and don't have a side. He said he has to have a personnal interest in the game to watch.
That got me thinking about the motivation for people to play or get involved in sports. And somewhere along the way, I got lost in thinking about the people and half-stories I've stored away in my brain somewhere, and this is what happened ...
I ask myself every year about this time, the time of year when underclassmen in the college game announce their intention to leave school early to turn pro; the time of year when high school players start committing to where they will play college football:
Why do they play?
Is it for the glory? The money that waits the select few who make it to the NFL? For the championship that eludes all but the very elite teams?
And when does the sense of entitlement start? At what age do these athletes realize they are special?
I've know some of the finest athletes in the college game. I don't believe they seek special treatment. They're just used to it. They've always been treated special, so they don't know any other way.
Sure, some of them learn to take advantage of that. They realize they will always get another chance, that being so big or fast or strong or all three brings privilege they use to their full advantage.
But after a lifetime spent around these guys, I don't think it's quite so sinister for the majority of them. They don't demand second chances or expect to get away with things the average person doesn't get away with; it just happens to them. It's just the way life has always been for them.
I've known more than a few college football players who are genuinely surprised when a non-athlete fellow-student suffers some consequence for his actions - flunks a class, gets suspended from school, whatever. They believe the kid must have done something more than "just" fail in a class because nobody they know "just" fails - at least, nobody they know; certainly none of their peers in athletics unless the athlete absolutely just quit trying or had become dispensable to the team.
There is no question these guys - and girls, although our society hardly gives female athletes the same measure of status as male athletes - deserve admiration. Professional athletes are among the top five percent in their sport in the world.
And any lawyer or doctor or businessman who is in the top five percent in the world in his chosen profession is going to be similarly financially rewarded. They just don't get endorsement deals or show up on video games. If anything, they wind up owning the teams and therefore control these world-class athletes, or produce the product that uses the image of the athlete so successfully.
But I'm way off track here. The question is, why do they play?
Years ago, when I was a young beat writer covering the University of Alabama, the Crimson Tide had a young quarterback named Billy Ray, who came out of high school as arguably the top prospect in the nation.
Ray had it all - great arm, great legs, great intelligence, leadership. Everyone wanted him.
But somewhere during his sophomore year at Alabama, in the course of a conversation, Ray told me - and I don't know why, but it's a conversation that has stuck with me to this day - that he was tired of playing football. That he'd been playing football since he was in the second grade, lived with all the expectations that grew every year as he got better and better, and he was tired of it. He played because everyone expected him to play and he was good, but he really wanted to quit football and study to become a doctor.
Later, Ray did indeed quit football at Alabama. He transferred to Duke, where he continued to play football and had a stellar senior year at quarterback for the Blue Devils. I don't know what happened to him after that, but I like to think that he used football to become a doctor and is happy living his dream, with no regrets.
Somewhere along the way, the game stopped being fun for Billy Ray. (At least, on that day sitting in the lobby or the old Bryant Hall in Tuscaloosa, he told me it had.)
On the other hand, there is Brett Favre. It appears that Favre has finally retired from football once and for all, but no one can know for sure because he's made a habit of "retiring'' every year for the last several, only to show up again in time for another NFL season the next fall.
Favre has become a punch line, the personification of not being able to make a decision. Why? It can't be the money, and he's already a Hall of Famer so it's not the glory. Maybe it's winning, but he's among the elite quarterbacks who has won a Super Bowl ring.
I don't know Brett Favre, but I like to think he simply loves playing the game, that in those Wrangler jeans commercials where he's playing pick-up football in a field with a bunch of actors he's having as much fun as he would if it were at Soldier Field, playing the Chicago Bears.
Another quarterback story that has always stuck with me: Cliff Stoudt was the quarterback who followed Terry Bradshaw with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and no matter how successful Stoudt was (and he was successful, leading the Steelers to the playoffs), he wasn't Bradshaw. So when the opportunity came to leave and join an upstart league known as the United States Football League, Stoudt left and came to Birmingham and led the Stallions to the playoffs in both years he was with the team.
One night, while shooting pool in a lounge on Valley Avenue in Homewood, Stoudt told me he was terrified of retiring because what else could he do that was as clearly defined as athletics? You work all week for a game, and on Sunday you either won or you lost, and then you started over. In business it might take a lifetime to determine winners and losers, but in football, the scoreboard answered that question every week.
Stoudt did not want to become a coach, but told me he was terrified that a coach is exactly what he'd become because he couldn't see any other profession that provided the immediate reward and sense of accomplishment as football.
For the record, Stoudt didn't become a coach. Like Billy Ray, I lost track of Stoudt, although I'm pleased that his son has apparently signed to play quarterback at Ole Miss this fall. I'm hoping I get the chance to catch up with Stoudt again. There was a time when I considered him a friend.
I have always loved the game for the sake of the game itself. I can watch almost any competition and get caught up in it. My son and I went to a high school holiday basketball tournament, and he couldn't figure out how I could cheer for both teams, how I could be frustrated that one team wasn't doing the things to be competitive with the other.
He told me he can't watch a game unless he has a "side,'' and when he has a "side,'' all he wants is for his "side'' to win.
We all know (don't we?) the guys who can't watch a game unless they've got something riding on it (usually money). If there is nothing personal at risk based on the outcome, what's the point?
Which brings me to Nick Saban, who I liken to the John Calvin of football coaches
Saban is a Catholic who coaches by the Protestant Work Ethic. You hear it all the time - he doesn't talk about winning or losing, but about his players playing their very best and letting winning and losing take care of itself. I've heard him say this over and over, and I'm not sure a lot of people believe him, because he does seem to get the best athletes and motivates them to play their best so his teams tend to win a lot more often than they lose. But I believe him when he says all he wants is to see each individual perform to his absolute best, and that's how he judges success.
That's why I call Saban the John Calvin of coaches. Calvin, among other theologians, believed the chief end of man was to glorify God. Man worked not to make money or be a success or retire early or gain fame and power and prestige, but to use whatever ability God gave him to the best of that ability because that brought glory to God.
It became known as the Protestant Work Ethic. This country was founded on the idea that you work hard not to impress the people around you or to achieve a life of comfort, but because it was how you brought glory to God.
Financial success was seen as a blessing from God for using those talents so well. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for financfial success to become the goal because it was a visible demonstration that you had found favor with God. Men began to do whatever they could to become successful because success was the end in itself.
Its part of the reason so many church "leaders'' tend to come from the most financially successful individuals in the church community. It's a hold-over from the days that financial success was seen as a blessing from God, and if a person was wealthy then they must be close to God, never mind how they achieved that financial success.
Meanwhile, we forget that some of the people God used the most were dirt poor by our standards. We forget the way God measures 'success' is not the same as the way the world measures. The Bible is full of those stories.
And it's the way Saban coaches. It doesn't mean it's the best way, or the most successful way ... but it's the way I'd like to think I'd coach, if I coached. It's the reason I'd like to think I played, if I could still play.
Well, I could go on. But I've gone on long enough. It's like a guy I once knew who told me, "I love conversations, except for that part where the other person talks.''
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