A Small Disclaimer Before We Start

If you’re new to these little stories of mine, I like to include music with a lot of them. It gives the stories a different vibe and connects the brain to body experience in a way I think you’ll enjoy.

So at some point I’m going to tell you to stop reading, pull out your phone, and play a song while you finish the story. I know it’s weird.

But I’m different. I write different and I’m telling you, it’ll be worth it.

1994

The South Dakota State football locker room I became a man in was not the luxurious, NFL-looking setup it is today.  The one with cool recessed lighting, couches, video games, and all the extras.

No, mine was a small white building made out of painted cinderblock, and if I remember correctly there may have even been a blue and yellow stripe painted around the top near the ceiling in its heyday. There were actually two locker rooms with a tiny athletic training room wedged between them. Maybe six training tables shooting out in different directions like some kind of starburst.

One locker room was for the varsity players and one was for the incoming freshmen.

Like every football team, we had one or two players during our time there who became legendary even as they were beside us as teammates. Adam Timmerman was ours.

Bigger than life. The air pressure changed when he walked into the room, and if he spoke up, you listened. He was an offensive guard from Iowa who eventually went on to play in the NFL and win Super Bowls with both the Green Bay Packers and the St. Louis Rams.

(I only bring up his professional accolades for the younger Jackrabbits who never saw him play, as proof…yes, he was that good.)

It seems he was already married by his senior year, and somehow the coaches had talked him into coming back for one more season with us. Remember, this was long before NIL. Nobody was calling Adam and offering him a half-million to stay another year, but if he were playing college football today, that phone would be ringing.

Our locker room was kind of a joke, and that was okay. It was all we knew. Even then though, we made fun of it. Especially the year it rained so hard that we had about four inches of water in the locker room for what seemed like an entire week of practice, but still, it was our home.

The music in that locker room had a pretty specific feel too.

It was the glorious music of the 90s and we were a rock ’n’ roll locker room. Imagine AC/DC -Thunderstruck, that type of stuff was always somewhere in the rotation. A lot of Guns N’ Roses. Some grunge was starting to creep in, but that was basically the feel.

A couple of years later, when I was a captain and had earned a little more say in what came through those Sony speakers, the Beastie Boys started to show up more often. Maybe a little Snoop Dogg. Some music that, to me, felt a little more like football.

But in 1994 I was still a second string linebacker who mostly saw the field on special teams and in the nickel package. I knew when to keep my mouth shut and listen to whatever somebody else put in the CD player.

I can remember one particular day like it happened yesterday.

 

It had to be 108 degrees outside, and it was one of those weird South Dakota days that somehow also felt like 100 percent humidity. If you’ve ever seen that old Scooby-Doo cartoon where the fog is so thick that Scooby cuts a doughnut out of it and takes a bite, yeah, it was one of those days.

The special teams guys who had already been outside came back into the locker room saying it was miserable. Film session in our tiny cramped trailers was rough and put most of us to sleep. Nobody wanted to be there.

We all knew we were going to drag ass at practice that day, and Timmerman knew it too.

So he walked over and put on something different.

 – (Reader – This is your part. Cue up “Sympathy for the Devil” by The Rolling Stones. Normally, when I add music to one of these stories, I tell you to listen for about thirty seconds just to set the mood and then turn it off. For this one, I think it works better to start the song and after about 15-20 sec, turn it down just enough that it becomes background music. Let it play while you read the rest of the story. I think you’ll understand and feel why.)

To a bunch of college football players in 1994, this was old music. Our parents’ music.

YES, we were a “rock ’n’ roll locker room”, but we listened to OUR rock ’n’ roll. So when he put on The Rolling Stones, there were definitely a few sideways looks and probably some low level grumbling.

Nobody was going to say much because it was T, but I’m sure more than one of us was thinking, “Why are we listening to my dad’s music?”

The song started slow. A little percussion. A little piano. Mick Jagger almost talking more than singing.

It actually fit the room perfectly because we were all moving about the same speed. Guys were tired, hot, stressed, and nobody really wanted to go outside.

That stuff happens during a football season. There are practices when the energy just isn’t there.

At South Dakota State, we had a name for what came next. False Enthusiasm. We called it FE.

If you’re a Jackrabbit and you don’t know what FE is, I feel like you’ve lost one of the threads of what makes Jackrabbit football great. Because the term itself, “FE” was born here. (link)

The idea is simple. When the energy is dead, you manufacture some. You fake the hype and fun until something starts happening, it builds and it does so pretty quickly. FE has a magical way of becoming RE. Real Enthusiasm.

Today somebody would probably call it a mental hack or biohacking and charge you money to teach it. We just called it FE.

What Timmerman did that afternoon was probably one of the strongest doses of FE I have ever felt in my life.

As the song played, we started getting ready. Shoes got laced. Shoulder pads went on. Teammates helped each other pull those tight jerseys down over pads that always seemed too big to fit through them. Guys started taping wrists and hands.

Then the song began to build, and as it did, you could feel something starting to change in the room.

I remember looking over at T, this gigantic offensive lineman with the flat top from a different era, taping up those hands that looked about the size of pie plates. He was nodding his head with the music.

Then he looked around and smiled. One of those huge Cheshire Cat smiles where you could tell he knew exactly what was happening. He had planted a seed.

And we were in.

By the time Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones got to the Woo-Woo part of the song, and it turned jungle-ey, most of us were no longer sitting on the benches. We were in the middle of the locker room dancing, singing the background Woo-woo and hitting shoulder pads. Everyone was smiling. Yelling. Watching or participating. There was zero judgement- just a kind of crazy infection that a mob of kids can create. It was wild in a way only football can do. Not a frenzy. But something close.

The walls of that little cinderblock building felt like they were shaking.  Almost…Tribal.

A few minutes earlier, nobody wanted to practice.

Now you would have had trouble keeping us inside.

Even the coaches and trainers came out of their little cubbies to see what all the noise was about. What they saw was a room full of college football players completely losing their minds to a Rolling Stones song that was older than most of us. And them.

And right there in the middle was Timmerman. Twenty-three years old, huge and in the zone- ready to walk outside and wreak havoc.

And we were his warband.

When the song ended, we poured through that little side door and onto the practice field.

We practiced. We got better. We did what Jackrabbits do until the Last Play. We brought it because we always have.

The men who came before us did the same thing. The battles, the sweat, the frustration, the glory. Everything that makes college football what it is and makes Brookings, South Dakota, one of the best places to feel all of it.

I get it. College football has changed radically over the last decade. Yet somehow, South Dakota State has changed right along with it and still managed to stay the same.

The locker room is different. The jerseys are better. The Under Armour gear is pretty damn cool. Guys are rolling into the NFL, and the amount of success this program has had would have been hard for us to imagine back then.

But something underneath all of it is still there.

So sure, we’re not the only school that claims the word BROTHERHOOD.

But we may very well be one of the last schools that actually lives it.

If you’re a former Jackrabbit, you know this feeling. If you were there with me in that locker room that day, you can probably remember the details of that moment just like I can.

And if this story is new to you: if you’re a Jackrabbit now or you came through during a completely different era, you have or will have these stories too.

I write a couple of these every year because I don’t want to lose the memories, and honestly, they’re fun to write and rediscover years later.

That is exactly what happened to me today.

I was at work, walking down the hallway between patients, when “Sympathy for the Devil” came on. I’m a sports chiropractor now. I’ve got patients waiting, things to do, a completely different life.

And then that song hit over the speakers in my clinic. For a few seconds I wasn’t there anymore. I was back in Brookings, back in that cramped, damp cinderblock locker room with my guys.

That is the strange part about all of this. When you’re living it, you don’t or maybe CAN’T realize what’s happening because everything is moving too fast. I certainly wasn’t aware of anything more than a cool moment and feeling psyched up.

I was worried like you are… about whether you’re going to get the starting position, whether they’re going to throw you the ball, whether you’re playing enough. Maybe you’re dealing with a girl, school, your family, your future, or whatever comes next.

You’re always looking ahead, and yet despite all of this forward thinking, something is happening around you whether you are aware of it or not.

IT.  All of it, is attaching itself to your DNA.

Football, South Dakota State, and the Jackrabbits become part of who you are. Years later, the smallest thing can bring all of it back. A smell, the sound of cleats on concrete, a cold morning, a dream.

Or sometimes a song recorded before you were even born.

One song can rip you out of your daily existence and take you back to a completely different time in your life.

I can still feel that locker room. I can hear the walls shaking. I can feel my teammates, pounding my shoulder pads and slapping my helmet. I can see Timmerman changing the way WE FEEL!

I can remember exactly what it felt like to be twenty years old and standing in a room full of guys you believed you could take on the world with.

For a few minutes, the years disappear. Your friends are young again, your body feels electric and invincible and practice is about to start.

Football is what taught me that time travel is real.

I just hope every once in a while, you are aware of how incredibly unique and lucky we all are and that you thank God that you got to experience it too.