October 2010
It was dumb, but it can’t have been that dumb.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, right? Texans, especially, know how to speak their minds. Their big, arrogant heads are so full of just how wonderful they are, they can’t help but proclaim it to the world. Their heads are otherwise empty and their one-sided, often misinformed opinions bounce around inside their minds so loudly, they have to speak them aloud, at the highest volume possible, simply to alleviate the noise in their own skulls.
I have not inherited this trait.
At least not in its entirety.
For the most part, I can release the jumble of words in my head by writing. I don’t speak my mind, and I don’t let others in on my inner dialogue. Generally, I am silent.
So why I decided to speak up on this day, at this time, is beyond me.
The football team sucks. Get used to it.
I am the anti-Texan: I hate football, and I rarely give voice to the arrogance in my head. But apparently, since I don’t budge on the football mentality, my Texas heritage shines through via the other attribute.
Speaking my mind without thinking deeper than the thought bouncing around in it.
He plays for the football team! Oh, man, that’s messed up!
Sitting in my corner seat in a room made vast by the small number of people sitting in it, time freezes as my face floods with heat. Oh, shit. He’s absolutely right. That is messed up. Wait, how did I not remember he played? Didn’t we have that friendly discussion? Now that he mentions, I remember. But in my moment of blind hatred, as I chewed out the football team for once again taking center stage when it’s not the best it could be, when it shouldn’t outrank anything else, I didn’t think about who the comment would hurt. I didn’t consider who might suffer offense for my inconsiderate ranting.
But thinking before speaking isn’t a skill of mine. Since I don’t speak often, this isn’t surprising.
Gridiron. End zone. Touchdown. Quarterback. Linebacker. Shotgun. Field goal. Tackle. First down. Second down. Sideline. Goal line. Yard line. Coin toss. Kickoff. Offense. Defense. Zone defense. Offensive coordinator. Defensive coordinator. Head coach. First quarter. Half time. Fourth quarter. Timeout. Overtime. Sudden death. Line of scrimmage. Center. Snap. Rushing. Blitz. Lateral pass. Interference. Incomplete pass. Out of bounds. Interception. Fumble. Possession. Turnover. Drop kick. Punt. Safety. Flag. Penalty. Holding. Running back. Tight end. Wide receiver. Full back. Cornerback. Heisman Trophy. Conference. NFL. Thanksgiving. Monday nights. Sunday nights. Bowl games. Rose bowl. Super Bowl. Blind side. Completion. Game ball.
Would it really be so hard to walk up to him and say: Hey, I’m really sorry for ridiculing the football team like that. I completely forgot you were a player. It was rude, and I apologize. I’m glad the team’s working hard to improve.
Well, yeah.
They stand outside the classroom door in a darkened hallway lined with red brick. Her arms are crossed over her chest, closing herself off, as she shifts nervously from foot to foot, dredging up from her deepest core the ability to speak to him; to admit she was wrong. He stands on the other side of the door, tall frame almost its same height, friendly, open expression on his face; he is oblivious to her inner turmoil, entirely unaware of the scene about to unfold. She can see it already; she forces words to come.
Her:
Breath
Look, I’m sorry I trashed the football team. I wasn’t thinking; I completely forgot you played.
Him:
Startled, looks at her; then, expression changes to one worn by a teenager in an uncomfortable situation: one that includes a sideways look as they try to turn away from the source of their discomfort
It’s no big deal.
Her:
But it is…
breath
It’s just, football and I don’t really get along so well. The thing is, the football team was such a joke back at my high school, we all got away with openly mocking them at every corner. It wasn’t a big deal, and even the team members would sometimes laugh along with us. I shouldn’t have brought that mentality with me to Cornell; I should have appreciated that although football doesn’t have nearly the weight here that it did in Texas, it does matter, and it’s just rude not to think before speaking. I am sorry.
Him:
With a strange look that plainly reveals his confusion and discomfort at listening to her prattle on about her sad past
Seriously, don’t worry about it.
(Breath)
And there’s the root of my problem. Even when I try to be nice, I make the whole event more awkward. Why couldn’t I remember even that? He’s a dude; they don’t really like long explanations. Damn it. This is the root of all my evil.
The truth is, I have residual anger with football. Do I wish I could take that moment back? A bit. I don’t like tension and confrontation; I don’t like pissing people off and making them hate me. Do I wish I could take the comment back? Hell no. The fact of the matter is this: The football team isn’t good. Don’t believe me? You should; the statistics are on my side. We won all of two games last year, and have only won a single game so far this season. Do I feel bad for making the comment that they suck? Yeah; that was too blatant, too harsh. Saying the team wasn’t the best or that they had room for improvement would have sufficed. However, the comment’s said, and I won’t take it back. It’s my opinion, and no one can tell me I was wrong.
Unfortunately, my comment was probably taken completely out of context. I spent four years under the tyrannical rule of the football elite even though the football elite couldn’t get their asses in shape and play well enough to win more than five games in a season. I grow livid just thinking how high the pedestal for football is in Texas. The points against football just keep adding up, up to a sum our team could never score.
Safety for two points: The football players always got preferential treatment.
The story is a classic. He’s failing one of his classes so he can’t play. But the team’s desperate; he’s not only the star quarterback, he’s their swing-man, and they need him to lead them to victory.
The class he’s failing is the hardest class juniors can take: AP English 3, taught by the hardest teacher they will ever suffer. She doesn’t take late assignments, and she won’t let him make them up. There seems to be nothing he can do.
Until Coach marches down the hall and has a “conference” with the hard-ass teacher. It doesn’t last long, and shouts certainly don’t emanate from her room. But in the end, the QB is magically passing. Fast forward six weeks, another student is in the same position; she needs to pass so she can go to Washington D.C. with the choir (who were invited to sing at the White House. Ever seen the football team there?). But can she get the same reprieve? Not a chance, not even when the choir director begs on her behalf. She’s forced to fail that six week grading period.
I hated the football team, and most of us laughed at them behind their backs; sometimes, I even mocked them when they could hear, because it was no secret football is my nemesis. In my mind, it is always overstepping its bounds.
Field goal for three points: Football was the reason my school held a bond election and threw away a few million dollars on a new football stadium at the high school, while only giving a couple thousand to new science labs and other necessary renovations. We had a perfectly good stadium at the middle school; the only problem: the guys didn’t like riding the bus over there. The claim was that the other one was really old, and kinda run down…and this new stadium is going to be so great, it’s going to be part of a full athletic facility…yeah, in reality, the new stadium was a stadium and nothing more, not to mention smaller than the old one. And the scoreboard was wimpy. The reality was the old stadium was a small irritation that outranked better pay for good teachers on the school’s to-do list.
Not enough? Extra point:
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- Fact: My classes got shortened every Friday so we could waste an hour on pep-rallies for those football players who couldn’t beat the 3A school up the road from us — our arch-rivals, though I never got why we hated them so much.
- Fact: My senior year, we finally beat them — first time in 20 years.
- Fact: The time we won homecoming my sophomore year? First time that happened in 16 years.
- Fact (the funniest one yet): Every away game our team played was the other school’s homecoming game. Why? The other school was guaranteed a win.
But Texas has this thing about football, just as it has this thing about pride. Neither of our NFL teams are particularly good, but the University of Texas at Austin has a pretty amazing team — they were national champs in 2005, I’m sure you heard (especially if you were anywhere near a loud-mouthed Texan for about five years following). Though if I hear the name Vince Young, Mack Brown, or Colt McCoy one more time…I cannot be held responsible for what I will do.
But in all of that, there is a worst.
Touchdown: the excuses. No matter what happened, they never found fault with themselves or with the coach. No, it was always something else:
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- Our team was too small, because we were just barely a 4A school. By the second half, our players were winded, and the other school had a second wave of players coming in. We didn’t lose because we were bad; we lost because we were tired.
- Our quarterback got tackled early on in the game and suffered a concussion. He didn’t admit to it and was disoriented for the rest of the game, repeatedly throwing to the wrong jersey. Coach wouldn’t take him out not because he was Coach’s son, but because our team only had one quarterback (we really can’t count the freshman; he’s inexperienced).
- Our QB doesn’t play well under pressure. He was nervous and didn’t perform at his full potential. (Yes, this is the non-freshman quarterback.)
All this is to say, I have a longstanding grudge against football. Maybe my wording about Cornell’s team wasn’t justified, but my opinion was. And maybe in light of my experiences with football, I can be excused for my vulgar statement. Surely if worse people than me can get off on extenuating circumstances, I can be forgiven for channeling that Texan state of mind. I was so excited to come to Cornell, to be at a school where something besides football was revered. In the end, though, it’s no different. Excuses are still made (The refs made bad calls. Yep, that’s the oldest complaint in the book.), football is still held to too high a standard, and there’s always that claim: We’ll get better. Sure. Whatever makes you sleep at night.
This is a work of creative non-fiction. It mentions real people, real places, and real events, but the perceptions and recollections of those people, places, and events are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the perceptions and recollections of said people, places, and events. Additionally, the perceptions are those I had at a particular moment in time, and do not reflect my feelings now – I hate football much less these days, I find myself missing the Lone Star State sometimes, and I’m fiercely protective of the honor of Texas should any non-Texans take a shot at it. Particularly, my description of Texans is entirely my own perception as of the moment of writing this piece in October of 2010 and should not be taken as an accurate representation of all, or even some, Texans, or as an accurate representation of my feelings of Texans today.