There are a lot of things that make football special.
It took me nearly thirty years to figure out which one mattered the most.
THE QUARTERBACK NEVER SAW ME
It was one of those perfect South Dakota late September afternoons.
The kind where the sky almost doesn’t look real. Deep blue. Big white clouds.
The stands were filled with our home team fans, dressed in blue and gold and the best band of college football, “The Pride of the Dakotas” was in high gear. There was just enough coolness in the air to remind you that summer has an expiration date up here.
Today belonged to football.
I don’t remember the score anymore. Honestly, I don’t even remember who we were playing. That’s probably strange considering how important football was in my life, but memory doesn’t always keep the things you think it should.
What I can remember is the play. Thirty years later I can still go back there. Instantly.
Our coach had dialed up the perfect call. I was the Jackrabbits middle linebacker and was standing about four yards off the line of scrimmage with a slight outside shade on my teammate and nose guard, Mark “Meat” VanMeeteren. Jason Aune was in my peripheral vision on the edge and Tim Fogarty was there on my left, Mike Barber was lined up to my right.
It was third-and-seven.
A stop mattered.
Not every play matters the same in football. Some are just part of the game. This wasn’t one of them. Everybody on that field knew this play counted.
A bead of sweat rolled off the end of my nose, but I couldn’t feel it. By that point I had already been in about two dozen collisions, or at least, more than I could count. Everything hurt, or at least it should have. Football lets you postpone pain. I’d deal with that later. The funny thing about football is that once you’re in it, you stop noticing those things. The outside world sees exhausted athletes. Inside the game, you feel invincible.
Then the ball was snapped.
People who have never played football think the game speeds up in moments like that. It doesn’t. At least it never did for me.
Everything slows down.
You’ve seen the movie scenes a hundred times. The hero sees every detail. slow motion sweat and breathing, the dirt and grass from the cleats churning and everything kind of hangs in the air. Time stretches. The soundtrack intro of a killer hip hop song starts to play.
That’s exactly what it felt like, and exactly how my memory holds onto the details.
I could hear the grunts coming off the line of scrimmage. I could hear shoulder pads colliding, smell the grass, the sweat, and probably the hot dogs coming from the concession stand. I saw my boy Meat take the guard into the tackle and clean out a lane.
Every detail got burned into my memory.
Then the offensive line split apart like the Red Sea for Moses.
One second there were bodies everywhere going every direction, the next there was nobody between me and the quarterback.
Nobody.
I don’t know if Coach called the perfect blitz or if God decided He wanted to play linebacker for a snap, but there wasn’t another human being standing between us. He never even saw me.
I hit him and honestly the collision barely registered. I went THROUGH him. Sometimes the emotional surge is so much bigger than the hit itself that you barely remember the impact.
One second, he was standing there. The next he folded underneath me like a sack full of sticks.
I jumped to my feet and grabbed the nearest teammate by the back of his helmet, our facemasks touching. We were inches apart and I screamed directly into his face.
I don’t know what I yelled.
I honestly couldn’t tell you if there were actual words involved. It wasn’t language. It wasn’t communication in the way we normally are.
It was Primal. Pure energy.
Then I turned toward the crowd and threw my arms into the air. Twelve thousand people disappeared and became one thing. A sea of blue and gold.The band was playing. People were screaming. The sideline was erupting. Helmets were crashing together. Guys were slapping helmets and punching shoulder pads.
For a few seconds nobody was thinking about tomorrow.
Nobody was worried about classes or future jobs or about life after football. We were simply living in the moment.
Completely and Totally.
We were on another plane of existence, if only for a few seconds.
At the time I thought I was celebrating a key sack in a big moment. A highlight in my career.
Thirty years later I realized it was something much bigger than that.
THIRTY YEARS LATER
Every year a group of former South Dakota State football players gathers at the same lake in Wisconsin. We call it KES Fest. This year will be our thirtieth year.
Think about that for a second… #KF30. Thirty years.
Thirty years of showing up. The same lake. The same friendships. The same stories.
We’ve all built lives. Careers. Families. Businesses. We’ve buried parents. Raised children. Watched those children become adults. And somehow every year we still find our way back to the same place. Like many football gatherings, the conversation usually starts with football and eventually becomes about everything else.
The games get discussed. The stories get exaggerated. The tackles get bigger. The victories get better. The mistakes get funnier.
Then somewhere in the middle of one of those conversations last year Mike Barber stood up and made his way to the front of the pontoon.
Mike was the 42 to my 47. Two linebackers who spent a lot of Saturdays trying to stop other human beings from moving forward.
He was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, it may have been older than some current players. He wore board shorts, flip-flops, and a blue baseball hat with a gold SD on it, that looked like it had survived a year under his couch.
Then he started talking. Loudly and with intent. There were hand gestures.
Lots of hand gestures. Finger pointing. Karate chops of his right hand into his left. An exclamation point of emphasis and importance.
The full Mike Barber experience.
Then he grabbed an imaginary teammate by the facemask and pulled him close. He started acting out a celebration like the one I described above.
The yelling.
The shoulder-pad punches.
The chaos.
The excitement.
And suddenly I wasn’t sitting on a pontoon anymore.
I was back on the football field.
Back in that stadium.
Back in that moment.
The funny thing was nobody laughed. Nobody thought he was being dramatic. Nobody rolled their eyes. Because every single person sitting there knew exactly what he was talking about. We had all lived it. It was already there. Buried underneath thirty years of life.
Mike didn’t teach us something new that afternoon.
He simply made us aware of something we had all been carrying around for decades.
IT STILL WON’T BE FOOTBALL
Mike made a point that afternoon in the middle of a lake that changed the way I saw the game I loved.
He asked us to imagine sitting in a boardroom as an adult. For you players currently still active or recently finished, do it – take a second and do this – think of it as a “life exercise.”
Barber:
“Maybe your company just landed the biggest deal in its history. Everybody around the table is about to make millions of dollars. Maybe it becomes one of the greatest accomplishments of your entire life.
Then he paused.
“It still won’t be football.”
“You can’t jump across the conference table and grab the CEO by the face.
You can’t scream directly into a coworker’s face from three inches away and have him scream right back.
You can’t chest-bump the accounting department. Or pelvic thrust to the board members while screaming to the crowd with your hands up in the air!
You can’t sprint down the hallway and completely lose your mind.”
If you did, you’d be fired by noon.
Everybody understood exactly what he meant. He wasn’t saying football was more important. There will be and ARE more important things.
Marriage is more important. Children are more important. Family, purpose, and the life you build afterward are more important.
That wasn’t the point.
The point was that even if the boardroom moment and when the other greatest moments of your life happen, you still can’t celebrate it the way you celebrate football.
Football gives you permission to experience a level of emotion that almost disappears from adult life.
Not because we stop feeling things.
We don’t.
But, for a few seconds after a huge play, nobody is trying to be composed. Nobody is trying to be professional. Nobody is worried about appearances.
The entire sport becomes a celebration of raw human emotion.
That’s the thing Mike had figured out. That day, he gave me a gift.
For thirty years I remembered the tackles, the games, the teammates, and the laughs. I remember the locker room, the plays…
What I had never really identified was the feeling itself.
NOT THE SACK. THE FEELING.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized football wasn’t unique because of the collisions or the strategy.
It wasn’t unique because of the competition.
Football was unique because of what it allowed us to feel.
You may forget the score. You may forget the opponent. You may forget the season. Somebody else wears my number now. I’ll never experience it again.
But football doesn’t leave you when the game is over. You’ll never forget the feeling, even if you don’t fully understand it at the time.
The strange part is that most players are living right in the middle of it and don’t even know it.
BRAYLON
I’ve thought about Mike’s speech over the last year, and his lesson to me, the gift he gave me often. I think part of the reason it finally came to the surface this week is because my own son just graduated high school.
Braylon is heading off to the next major phase of his life. He’s going to be a college basketball player.
Like every parent, I want him to succeed. I want him to challenge himself. I want him to grow as an athlete and as a person. I want him to experience victory. I want him to learn from defeat. I want him to build friendships that last a lifetime.
But the more I think about it, that isn’t the thing I wish for him most.
What I really hope is that he gets to experience those moments. Those primal moments. The ones that are almost impossible to explain to somebody who hasn’t lived them.
Is it the same as football?
Definitely not.
Football’s got its thing and it belongs to football.
But I’ve got to believe basketball has its version too.
I’ve never dunked on anybody in my life, but when I watch my son rise up over another player, throw one down directly on top of him, hang on the rim while the crowd loses its mind, the defender standing waistband high underneath him in total disbelief, and his teammates come running from every direction… I have to imagine that’s pretty close.
Not the dunk.
The feeling.
That surge of energy that takes over for a few seconds.
The moment where the crowd, the competition, the teammates, the preparation, the emotion, and the adrenaline all collide at exactly the same time.
That’s what I hope he gets to experience.
Not once.
A hundred times.
Because someday the games will end. They always do.
But those moments stay with you. Thirty years later they can still come back as clear as yesterday and make the hair on your arms stand up.
BE AWARE
Maybe that’s the message.
To the former players, you already know what I’m talking about. I hope the message hit you as hard as it did me. The next time you see Barber, thank him. It was his idea; I’m simply recording it in my own way.
To the athletes who are living it right now, pay attention.
And to the young athletes who are just beginning the journey, understand that some of the most important things you’re going to get from sports won’t show up on a stat sheet.
Be aware of what you’re actually feeling while you’re experiencing it. Be aware of the moments that freeze time.
Be aware of the moments that make you lose track of everything except the present.
Because one day you’ll realize those moments were every bit as valuable as the wins and losses.
You won’t miss it because it’s gone.
