The Wedge

This post may be a little different. A memory mostly just about me. My Freshman year at Miami is as big a blur as my whole college experience, but a significant experience has recently resurfaced in conscience memory and I wish to capture it while I still can. It was a miracle I was able to report for football on August 1st to begin with. Thanks to a month long hospital stay I showed up twenty pounds lighter than I was when recruited the year before as a defensive tackle. I had a limp and a horseshoe of scar tissue around my right kneecap from the surgeries and staph infection from months earlier in the Spring. Even with the limp I was able to make my 800 and 400 track times that first morning and avoided dawn patrol knowing it would've ended my career at Miami before it even started. If you didn't make your times you had to report for dawn patrol at the track until you made your times, quit or died trying. Rose's weeder class for those unfit, unable or too fat to make the team.

Because I showed up too skinny for coach Hat's defensive line or for him to even look at me or acknowledge my presence, the quick decision was made to make me a tight end. I was told I was too skinny to be a long snapper too, but during special team drills I was tied for first string long snapper. Me and another true freshman where the only two who could consistently toss a dart between our legs, no one else was even close. To everyone's surprise I could catch and stone people cold with my blocking. So by the end of that miserable first summer camp as a skinny little true freshman I had made third string tight end and second snapper. Which meant I made the traveling team. I made varsity as a freshman. I say miserable because it was. Not just because of the grueling physicality of the whole thing, but mostly because of the homesickness and heartbreak. I had broken up with my girlfriend before leaving thinking it was unfair for her to stay for her senior year of high school while I was  most likely off at college being unfaithful. 

I can safely say that that first week of camp was one of the most challenging experiences of my life. The level of physical, emotional and psychological pain was higher than anything I have experienced to this day. And I have not lived an easy life. In that first week at least twenty guys much tougher than I had quit, walked, or disappeared in the night. At the start of the second week a few miracles happened. My limp went away. I think the pain in my knee was drown out by the pain in the rest of my body. My dad said it was OK to quit, in fact he and my mom started to encourage it. And my ex-girlfriend started calling me. Tina said it was OK if I wanted to breakup and all, but she missed me and wanted to talk. Honestly, without her I would have never made it. 

That brings me to the moment or event that has inspired this post. Against all odds, at our home opener, as the 3rd TE (we had a three TE set for short yardage and goal line making me the starting wing back in those situations) and starting Long Snapper and Center Wedge-man on kick-off returns I was slated to get considerable play time in the first game of my freshman year. This being the case my parents decided to make the 500 mile drive to come see me play and they brought Tina! They would get there late Friday night and I wouldn't get to see them until Saturday afternoon after the game. I must have seen them before that, but my memory of that is unclear. I do remember seeing them in the stands stands during warm ups. And looking and waving to them just prior to heading out for the kick-off.

If you're not familiar with the position of Center Wedge man it's because it no longer exists. The Wedge has been banned. The NCAA has made setting wedges for kickoff returns illegal. The job of the Center Wedge man was to judge where the return man was going catch the kickoff and as the ball was in the air set up five yards in front of him. Two other Wedge man would swing in and lock arms on either side of the center man. When the ball was caught I would start up field with my arms locked with teammates on either side forming a wedge and at first contact with the defense the return man would break either right or left of the wedge.

For every great offensive plan or strategy there is an equally great defensive plan or strategy to counter it. In this case for every kickoff return team who sets a wedge there is a kickoff team who has a Wedge Buster, or Bomber, or Hammer to bust the wedge. 

I don't remember who we were playing. I don't remember if we won or lost (probably lost because we sucked until my junior year). I don't remember much. I do remember it being a beautiful day. I remember taking the field. It was the first home opener in Miami's brand new stadium. The field was in perfect condition. Deep plush green Kentucky Blue Grass, perfectly groomed, freshly painted gridiron on a perfectly clear Fall day in Oxford, Ohio. Literally a perfect day for a football game. As the Center Wedgman I also set the huddle on the 50 yard line just inside the sideline. I called the break, such an honor for a freshman, and we sprinted out to our positions for the kick-off return. I was positioned in the middle of the 15 yard line. It was a high, rolling, kick that came down around the 5 near the right hash mark. I had done the hardest part perfectly positioning myself 7 yards in front return man just prior to the catch and locking arms with my teammates just as the catch was made. We were moving up field just as we heard the go go go call, a perfect wedge, 600 pounds of bodies moving, a giant arrow head, I was the tip of the spear, a formidable mass, an irresistible force, invincible. This is what I remember. Being Locked arm in arm with my teammates accelerating. With every stride forward I was pulled further into an upright position. Every step forward my arms were pulled outward and I stood further upright. Crucified. I saw him coming and I was completely defenseless as the Hammer came down. Helmet to helmet. An immense explosion of sound and a brilliant flash of white light and nothing. Out. Down. Being Unconsciousness really isn't so bad. It's the waking up that sucks. 

Waking from the dead is definitely better than the alternative, but not by much. It wasn't the first time I had been knocked out. In fact I was good at shaking something like that off. It was different back then. Being able to function after your bell was rung was an expectation. I walked off the field, but could tell by everyone's faces and the applause from the stands that it was really bad. I remember being on the bench and being examined by the team doctor when the call for the punt team was made and I struggled to grab my helmet to run out there to long snap. The training staff had to practically wrestle me back onto the bench. I would be the second string snapper for the remainder of my career. Concussions are crazy. As the adrenaline starts to ware off and the symptoms start to set in its a little scary. The tunnel vision. The ringing in the ears. The vomiting. The pounding in your skull. The inability to think straight. All these things start to wear on your resolve to keep those who love you from worrying so much. Eventually you start thinking you may die. Usually I would start wishing that I would.

My parent had had my whole life to get used to me destroying myself and my near death experiences. My girlfriend had only a couple years. I remember all three of them being really shaken when I came out of the locker room after the game. As the evening wore on their unease and my suffering would only get worse. 

I played the rest of the year and three more after that. I wonder sometimes about the toll that was taken. The price I paid for my college education. It's thirty years later and am I still proud I got my degree, but was it worth it. I wonder. Still I wonder.