Guts vs Glory (12 page)

The next few weeks were dedicated
to school.  Thanks to a surprising performance by Faith Community College, I
spent my first post-season in three years following the playoffs as a spectator
rather than as a player.  Since we were out of the playoffs, our coach had no
use for us until summer practices started back up the following season. He
wanted us to enjoy the break and use the time to let our bodies heal.  I took
his advice and enjoyed the time, but I did not let my body heal.  Instead, I
continued with my intense weight lifting, as well as speed drills on the
treadmill.  I figured that if everyone else took the coach’s advice, then I
would be the only one in the weight room during the off-season, which would
give me a huge advantage.  When I wasn’t working out, I was using my extra time
to study and complete homework assignments.  The only time I gave myself a
break was when the University of Southern Michigan was playing on TV.

As a fan of the sport, Mike was fun
to watch.  Any time he had the ball, he could turn the play into magic.  As his
best friend, it was still hard to believe that he was the same guy I witnessed
running from the Becker County deputies a few years back.  The guy I grew up
with was a star on national television.  He wasn’t the best performer on the
team, nor was the team built around him, but I had a strong feeling that he had
a lot to do with their 10-1 record going into their last game of the regular
season.

Their last game was an important
game.  Even though they had only lost one game, their record still wasn’t good
enough to play in the Major College Football Championship Game.  They were,
however, trying to play for another prestigious post-season game.  In major
college football, there were over 30 post-season games.  Depending on which
game they played in, the winning school of that game would get a specific sum
of money, while the players received gifts such as jewelry or shoes.  As each
game grew in prestige, the value of the gifts, and the sum of money,
increased.  Additionally, major college football teams were ranked after all of
the post-season games were complete.  So winning a more prestigious game would
increase a team’s overall national ranking.  That format was similar to junior
college, however, junior colleges didn’t receive money or gifts for winning -
just pride.

Other than the national
championship game, the top four prestigious college games were played on New
Year’s Day.  The only thing keeping USM from playing on January 1st was a battle
with their rival, and our hometown team, the University of Northeastern
Michigan.  It was a game that divided the town of Whitaker.  Half of the town
would root for UNM, because you could practically see their campus from
Whitaker City Hall.  The rest of the town would root for their hometown hero on
the rival team.  Either way, nobody planned on missing that game, and not a
seat was available in Becker County Stadium.

A few days before the rivalry game
was set to kickoff, Mike gave me a call.  He couldn’t stop talking about how
excited he was to come back home and play in front of his friends and family. 
It would also be interesting for him because he grew up rooting for
Northeastern, but he was trying to be part of a team that beat them.  Once he
caught his breath, he gave me even better news.  The students were allowed a
certain amount of tickets to go to the game and represent the visitors’
cheering section.  He was able to grab two of those tickets, and planned on
giving them to his parents so that they could watch him play.  As he was
getting those tickets, his parents were getting tickets of their own.  He was
left with two extra tickets to the game.  He knew I would want one of them, but
he didn’t know what to do with the other.  My parents never missed one of my
games, so it was an honor to take my dad to his first major college football
game.

I went through many experiences as
a high school football player, and it was fun to go through those experiences
with my best friend.  That Saturday, I was able to enjoy a new experience with
my dad.  To enjoy the full experience, my dad and I parked in the shuttle lot. 
The shuttle lot was a parking lot used for partying and tailgates prior to the
game.  Buses would run every few minutes to take fans from the parking lot to
the game at no charge.  It was fun to park with the other fans and ride to the
game in a bus full of rowdy college kids.

When the bus dropped us off, we
were standing in front of Becker County Stadium.  I’ve seen it on TV numerous
times, but in person, the stadium was the biggest thing I had ever seen in my
life.  The walls were so tall that my neck hurt as I was attempting to look up
to the top.  Once inside the stadium, we were greeted by a sea of fans
traveling from left to right.  We had no idea where we were going, but it was
so busy that we didn’t have time to stop for directions.  We simply jumped in
with the crowd and looked to the ceiling for our section number.

The stadium held nearly 60,000
fans, 10,000 less than Southern Michigan’s stadium.  About 50,000 of those fans
were wearing the colors of Northeastern Michigan.  Spread throughout the crowd
were the other 10,000 fans wearing black and red.  UNM had a record good enough
for a post-season game, but it wouldn’t be a very prestigious one.  However, it
was a rivalry game, so the fans were going to support their team as much as
possible to beat their cross-state rival.  I chose to be unbiased and wore my
college uniform to the game.  I wanted to root for Mike as a player, but I
wanted to root for Northeastern as a team.  Either way, I was just glad to be
there.

As we were looking for our section
number, I couldn’t help but try to understand the layout of the stadium.  The
only time I had been to a large stadium was as a player on the field.  We were
walking down a large indoor tunnel that seemed to go straight for a while then
make a sharp curve.  I realized that the tunnel went around the stadium in a
large circle and allowed fans access to the section they were assigned to.  In
the long tunnel were vendors, traffic directors, and rowdy fans.  While in the
sea of fans, we felt closed in and seemed to move like a herd of cattle.  Once
we found our section number, we were free!

Our section number took us to a
smaller tunnel that led inwards towards the field.  As I looked ahead, I could
start to see the field.  The more we walked up the tunnel, the more I could
see.  Finally, we were at the end of the tunnel and I could see everything. 
After finding our seats, I got a chance to soak it all in; It was breath
taking.  The scoreboard was crystal clear and had a large television built into
it.  It allowed the fans to watch the game, while keeping track of game
statistics.  The grass was bright green, and the field well maintained.  Once
the overwhelming feeling was gone, I was ready to watch a great game.  A few
minutes later, that overwhelming feeling came back.

As both teams made their way on the
field, I was able to see how much bigger, and stronger, major college football
players were.  On television, they seemed like they were the same size as the
guys I was used to playing against, but in person they were much larger.  As I
sized up my future competition, I saw a familiar face.  There he was, in his
red and black, the future star of the team.

I had seen all of his season games
on TV, but that day was his best game by far.  I don’t know if it was due to
the post-season being on the line, the energy of playing a rivalry game, or the
fact that we were there in his corner, but something gave him extra fire
power.  That performance gave USM their 11th win of the season, and a ticket to
play on New Year’s Day.

Once the game was over, I was able
to meet up with Mike.  He was about to board the team bus when he saw his
parents, my dad, and I coming towards him.  He was bragging about his game, but
he was even more excited that we showed up as promised.  He boasted that he
stepped up his game because he knew we were there.  He also wanted to show the
University of Northeastern Michigan that they made a mistake in not offering
the both of us scholarships.  After our very brief conversation, we wouldn’t
see him again until Christmas break.

While he was home on break, we
spent quite a few days hanging out together.  Both of our schools gave us three
weeks off, but Mike was only in town for a week because he had to get ready for
his post-season game.  One of those days, while hanging out at the mall, I was
able to share my grades with him.  I made it through my first semester of
college and had just finished my final exams.  When all of my grades were in,
my transcript was sent to my house.  I had managed a 3.75 grade point average. 
He enjoyed my surprise, then smiled because he had a surprise for me too; an
all-expenses paid trip as a recruit to watch his post-season game in Wyoming. 
I could hardly wait for that day to arrive.

On the day of the journey to the
Wyoming game, I was asked to first check in with the recruiter at the Southern
Michigan stadium.  From there, I boarded the team bus with a small group of
high school students.  The USM recruiter we met the previous year was on the
bus and explained to me that the reason I was being treated as a new a recruit
was that they were still interested in me playing on their team in a few years,
so they wanted to give me the same experience that they would give any other
high school recruit; a trip on the luxury bus, a plane ride with the team, a
bus ride to the stadium, and a field pass to watch the game on the sidelines. 
While on the plane, I felt like Mike must have felt when he was being recruited
by those numerous universities.  Although he was making the same trip I was
that day, we rode on different buses, and I was in a different section of the
plane.  Even on the field, I was in an area reserved just for recruits.

Watching the game in the stadium
was similar to the time I watched it with my dad.  I wasn’t too overwhelmed by
being on the field because I was used to that.  I was, however, amazed with the
Dragons’ entrance.  For all New Year’s Day games, both teams were allowed to
enter the stadium the same way they would as if they were playing at home.  Maine
State University simply ran onto the field as soon as their fight soon began to
play.  The dragons’ entrance was different, though.  As soon as they were ready,
the indoor stadium went dark.  I could barely make out a large statue being
dragged out from the concourse and placed in front of the player’s tunnel.  The
statue then lit up and looked just like the head of a dragon.  The dragon was
black and had bright, red eyes.  The eerie dragon opened its mouth and a large
ball of fire came out, soon replaced by smoke.  From the smoke emerged the
University of Southern Michigan dragons.  My heart was pounding.

They ended up losing their
post-season game and eventually became the number nine team in the country. 
Even though Mike was disappointed, he was looking forward to the next season
because he would be the clear starter.  Just like me at the end of my season,
he found more free time without football.  He would have two months to himself
before spring practices began.  Unlike me, however, he used that time to let
his body heal.  He was already on a major college team, and was sure to get the
starting position.  He didn’t want to risk injury by pushing it too much.  He
also didn’t worry about his grades because he was maintaining a 2.5 grade point
average, which was just over the 2.0 average needed to stay in school as a student-athlete.

During the spring, his team ran a
team scrimmage.  At the scrimmage, their potential starting offense, with their
potential backup defense, would play against their starting defense, with their
potential backup offense.  This gave their coaches a chance to run new plays
and see if they felt comfortable with their proposed starters.  Mike was on the
starting offense during the scrimmage, and the coaches seemed happy with their
decision.

Our team couldn’t run a scrimmage
because our team was too small.  We would only be able to scrimmage with the
guys returning to the team from the previous season and couldn’t use our high
school prospects.  About half of our guys were leaving that year, which left us
with 30 players for the new season.  Mike’s school, on the other hand, had a
four-year program, so they had about 60 returning players.

Because we had the spring off, the
coaches allowed us to practice on our own.  They didn’t have enough players to
run official practices, but we were allowed access to the field, use of the
weight room, and use of any of the team equipment that we needed.  Those
practices were fun because we ran them as players, and there wasn’t any
pressure.  The level of intensity was lowered because no one wanted to risk
injury, but the level of activity was consistent with regular practices.  Those
practices allowed me to settle down and actually enjoy playing for once, rather
than stressing out about starting.  That would wait for a few months once the
summer practices began.

After the spring, my second
semester of school was over.  We both had maintained the same grade point
averages we’d had in our first semester.  I was proud of my grades and knew I
was definitely going to be able to transfer to USM as a student.  With school
over for the year, Mike was able to enjoy a two week summer break before
jumping back into practice.  We spent that time just like we did at Christmas
break.  As Mike left for his second year, he pointed out that I was already
halfway done with junior college.  That season would be my last season to
display what I had learned at the college level.  He would continue to sell me
to the recruiter, but it was up to me to improve as a player.