How Football Ended For Me

How Football Ended For Me 

11/16/10

Disclaimer: Some people will read this and might not like some of the things that they read, but that's okay with me, because I didn't write this for people to like it, I did it to get some things out of my system. The people that I tag in my writings are the people I feel would understand where I'm coming from the most, especially since they knew me when I was going through certain things in life. I have had a lot of people read what I write and think I'm trying to get back at somebody. That IS NOT true at all. I have strong feelings about certain things, and all I do is express them. I ask that anybody that reads this would disregard everything that does not apply to them. When it comes to exorcising demons, breaking yokes, and getting rid of strongholds in your life, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BE STRONG. If not, those things will take you out.  

Another painful, but critical step in this cleansing process is being honest with myself about how devastated I was when football ended for me and the effects that it had on me when I got pulled off the field. For a long time, I was too embarrassed to talk about it because of how it happened, and I didn't even talk about football to certain people just to avoid talking about it. I just carried the hurt, agony, and bitterness around for a long time while I suffered in silence. It was only 3 years ago when I started getting answers to questions and figuring this whole thing out. Now that I have it all figured out, I can deal with it accordingly, and finally move on with my life the way I should have a long time ago. I felt that it was necessary to put myself out there because if I don't tell my story, somebody else will. If they tell it, they'll either add something to it, or take the truth away from it completely. Everybody has skeletons in their closet, and it's good to dust them off from time to time. This is not about being bitter or holding grudges, it's strictly about exorcising demons and getting my mind rid of all of the garbage and negativity that it's been cluttered with, and plaguing me for so many years and holding me back from a lot of blessings and opportunities that I should have had. A person can't function the way they need or should be able to with all of that going on. I honestly didn't realize just how scarred I was by this whole thing until about this time last year. 

This is how it all went down: 

Because I was (am) misunderstood so much, when I was in school I was the butt of a lot of jokes, as well as the center of gossip. It was especially true in high school, and I was an easy target, mainly for my football teammates. First of all, I didn't have the advantage that most of them had of playing peewee football. I didn't start playing until 10th grade (I was held back from it until then), so I was already behind the 8-ball coming in. Another strike against me was my size, in the 10th grade, I was 6'2" and only weighed 145 pounds, and was weak as all hell. I could do 10 push-ups, if I was lucky, without straining and had a max of 65 pounds on the bench press. By the 12th grade, I was up to 6'4" and still only 160 pounds, with an 85 pound bench press. The only things I had in my favor were that I was fast and I could catch. Because of all these shortcomings, I caught all kinds of hell from my teammates AND coaches. I constantly was laughed at, put down, and scorned by them every chance they got. The same energy that they used to dog me, they could have used it to help me develop my shortcomings and deficiencies so I could make a contribution to the team. I didn't go through this in just the 10th grade, I went through it in the 11th and 12th grade as well. What really got me was how one of my fellow wide receivers refused to help me learn our playbook when I reached out to him a couple of times, and I reached out to one of my captains to vent to him and he blew me off. I told him I was thinking about quitting, and he told me it was my problem, not his, and that he didn't care.

During track season, I didn't catch hell like this, things went much smoother for me. The sad thing is that a good chunk of my track teammates were football players too, and had a couple of the same coaches for track that I had for football. Again, I got COMPLETELY DIFFERENT treatment during track season than I got playing football. I told a teammate about that one time, and he told me that it was because I was better at track than I was in football. It frustrated me so much because I felt like the reason he gave me for that was a cop-out. I'll even admit that because of the way things went back then, I didn't have the motivation to work harder and get better, and my grades suffered too. I went to summer school my first 3 years. I was just going through the motions in every aspect of my life, and all of this was on top of the hell I caught at home everyday, but that's another story in itself.

After high school, I thought I would never play football again, but right before I went to Alabama A&M I changed my mind. When I visited the school that summer, I talked to a couple of players that were already on the team. With me being so skinny back then, I asked one of them if they thought I was too little to play football. All of them told me no, and that size didn't matter. Then one of them told me that he expected to see me out there when it was time for walk-ons to come out. That's when I decided that I would give it a try because of the way it turned out in high school, and plus I didn't want look back one day and wonder "what if". I knew college football would be a lot tougher than high school, but I never thought I would end up back in the same situation I was dealing with in high school. This was supposed to be my second chance at football, and I really wanted to make the most of it. Man, was that a big letdown!! Like I said, I went through the same thing in college that I did in high school. Since basically every player on the team had a nickname, the one they picked for me was Ziggy, and I hated it like hell. (It doesn't bother me now like it did then, but I only let my Bulldog teammates call me that.) The coaches said that nickname was a perfect fit for me, and then they started calling me that. I can't remember exactly which teammate gave me the name. As soon as the team started calling me Ziggy, it was downhill from there because I was always a target all the way to the very end.  

After a while, I got so tired of being picked on by my teammates on and off the field, I started threatening to shoot them (literally) if they didn't leave me alone. I didn't know what else to do to get them to stop. I felt like I didn't need the garbage I was getting from them after what I had already came out of because I was already mentally fragile with a lot of wounds still being fresh. Sometimes I really did feel like there was a chance I could go postal on somebody. One day in the weight room in the middle of a lifting session, I had a teammate really let me have it that day, and I told him that you really need to watch what you say to people because they can take what you say to heart and commit suicide. Then this cat told me, "If what somebody says to you can make you commit suicide, then you need to go ahead and do it." I can't repeat what else he said, but I could not believe what I had just heard. I used to catch the most hell in the weight room than any other place, especially my freshman year with teammates yelling "Ziggy put some weight on that bar!!" across the weight room. It was mostly from the seniors, but that came with the territory. One day in practice my freshman year, I was sent across the middle on a slant and got my block knocked off by a linebacker, and was slow getting up. When I was on the ground, that same LB told me, "That's why I keep telling your ass to put some weight on that damn bar!!". After taking that hit, every practice for the rest of the season, I always knew where #59 in the maroon jersey was.  

Toward the end of my redshirt freshman year, one day after practice, my position coach pulled me to the side to have a talk with me. He started out by saying, "You ARE NOT a Division 1 football player." Then he went on to tell me why I wasn't cut out to play football. Then he told me, "The only reason why I let you stay on the team this long is because I like you." What made things worse, was that my head coach started to wonder if I had ever played football before. He asked me had I ever played, and where I played. Then, HE WAS TEMPTED TO CALL MY HIGH SCHOOL COACH TO VERIFY THAT I PLAYED!!! He didn't tell me that outright, but it was obvious to me that it crossed his mind, and I was FURIOUS. Two days after that, I was even approached by the equipment manager to be one of his assistants. What made everything so bad was that our coaches didn't pull players to the side to talk to them, they called us out in front of people, whether it was teammates, other coaches, cheerleaders, whoever. I used to catch a good chunk of it. I don't take that too well at all, that's a good way to get me ready to fight. Anyway, my teammates gave me hell after they heard the equipment manager ask me about working with him. They even found creative ways to tell me that I sucked at football. Again, it felt like high school all over again. They even started telling me I looked like JJ from Good Times. I might have grown maybe an inch in college, but I was still 160 pounds (I was that size until I was 22), and was still weak. By then, I really didn't have the motivation to push myself to get better.  

Including me, there were about 115 people on the team, and I was the only one who couldn't bench press 200 pounds. As a matter of fact, I still couldn't even do 100. Everybody, coaches included, was quick to remind me about it. Just like in high school, nobody would take the time to help me get better so I could be able to contribute, instead they would dog me about what I couldn't do. I had one teammate say that the team "had to make a man out of me first before they could make me a baller". One day at practice, one of the coaches that ran the scout team offense even told me that since I didn't know what I was doing, he didn't want me in at scout team receiver. I even had a fellow scout team receiver cock-block me from getting reps one day in practice, but since I was trying so hard to be nonconfrontational, I just let it ride. Also by then, I was being kept out of hitting drills and from using the blocking sled. 

Not quite halfway through the season my redshirt sophomore year, I was ostricized from the team. One day in practice I made a wrong move in the bull-in-the-ring drill, and the head coach blew his whistle before I would get contact. He looked at the equipment manager and said, "He's a part of your staff now." Words can't describe the embarrassment, shame, and anger that I felt at that time, especially with as many people out there as it was. After that, I was so numb that all I could do was watch the rest of practice. As soon as practice was over, I flew to the locker room to get dressed. I waited until I got back to my dorm to take a shower because I was too embarrassed to be seen by anybody from the team at that time. The next day when I went to talk to the head coach, he gave me his parting words, basically telling me how dangerous he thought it was for me to be out there and how scared he was of me getting hurt. I tried to at least get him to let me work out with my teammates so I could have somebody to push me to get stronger, and he wouldn't let me. 

After I left my meeting with the head coach (which I thought would be private), I went to see the equipment manager to turn my equipment in. He told me that I would never be able to come back to the team as a player, I would have to be a manager. Then I bumped into the recruiting coordinator/offensive line coach a few minutes later, and he also told me there was no way I could get back on the team because I was too little and that I was puny and had no strength whatsoever. After that, I went to the cafeteria for lunch. After I got my tray and was heading to a table, I felt a bunch of my teammates' eyes on me, so I looked over that way and saw them laughing and talking, and glancing at me. I already knew they were talking about me because I heard Ziggy come out of one of their mouths. Then one of them looked up at me, gave me a dirty look, shook his head and told me "YOU SUCK!!". I didn't want to be seen anymore after that, so I stopped going to class and turning my work in. 

Like I said about my teammates in high school, I felt like the same energy used by my teammates to pick on me and make fun of my shortcomings could have been used to help me develop into a key contributor for the team. I'm a firm believer that NO teammate should be left behind. I was the one that got left behind and allowed to slip through the cracks. I went into a deep and long depression after I left the team. I was so depressed after turning my equipment in, that for a split second, I wanted to go home and DRINK A BOTTLE OF PINE-SOL!! The best way to describe how I felt, to borrow a line from Kelis, "YOU TOOK MY HEARTBEAT FROM ME, SHOULD HAVE JUST STABBED IT FOR ME." I really felt like I was being thrown away.

My grades dropped so low, that I ended up being suspended for a semester. The worst thing for me at that time was for my family to find out, because the way they do things is KICK YOU WHEN YOU'RE DOWN/POUR SALT IN THE WOUNDS FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER. They refused to believe any explanation I gave them, took the easy road and gave me hell about it instead of helping me cope with it and taking the time to find out why it happened, and when I was official that I would be out of school for a semester, they did and said everything they could to make me feel like they didn't want me there.  

Not too long after the school year ended, I ended up making what I feel like was the biggest mistake of my life, I enlisted in the Army. I can promise you this, if you go in the Army or any other branch of the military and not join for the right reason, it won't take you long to figure it out. Up until 3 years ago, I knew I had made the wrong choice to get in the Army, but I didn't know what my reason was for enlisting. It came to me out of the blue that the reason I went in the Army was because I was so depressed about being ostricized from the football team, and I felt like the only thing worse than being treated the way I did by teammates and coaches was having to deal with a drill sergeant in basic training, so I went on and enlisted. How is that for a wrong reason? Combine that with being 20 years old and "young and dumb". After I got out of the Army, I thought I would be able to move on with my life, until in June 2004, I got a Western Union telegram and a manila envelop from the Army with orders in it. They were calling me back in so they could send me off to Iraq. God had other plans, because 2 weeks before I was supposed to leave, I had a car accident on the interstate. The weather was awful, it was raining so bad that I couldn't see, and as I tried to pull off the road and wait for the rain to ease up, I did a couple of 360s and hydroplaned off the highway and landed in a ditch with the front of my car caught in a sewer. Since I couldn't open my door, I had to punch out my window to get out, and then I climbed out of the ditch. When I went the doctor the X-rays showed that I had a TWISTED SPINE, 6 sprained ligaments in my back, 5 pinched nerves, 2 of my discs came out of place, and I had a sprained neck. I WALKED AWAY from the accident and I didn't even have to be put in the hospital. Even though I regretted being in the Army, I did learn some valuable things that still serve me well today, and the strengths that I had to develop to survive my childhood got even stronger. I'm talking about things like resiliency, resourcefulness, perseverance, intuition, and sensitivity. I definitely needed these for what I was about to go through next. After I got out of the Army, I stumbled on some hard times for a little while. I had 16 jobs within a 5 year period, 13 within the first 3 of those 5 years, and I was homeless for the better part of 2 years. The majority of my struggles were from 2003 to 2005.    

Looking back on it, being pulled from the team started a disturbing trend for me, a domino effect of me starting things that I couldn't finish. I'm talking about everything from football to school to jobs. I didn't have this problem before that happened. Going through this also played a major role in my self-esteem being shattered. Like I said earlier, I was already mentally fragile when I first got to college because of things I went through growing up, and this just compounded everything. Now at 30 (almost 31), I find myself trying to figure out how to scratch this football itch that never went away before I really get too old. I also have ex teammates tell me all the time that if I was the size I am now back then, I would be in the NFL, and that's getting old. That's something I have been dealing with for the last 10 years. I won't stress it though, because I know it will work itself out. 

Thanks to writing this and taking the other necessary steps to get over this happening, I can officially say that I'm no longer angry and bitter about going through the football banishing. It wasn't easy to get to this point, and it didn't happen overnight. After I left the team, I have to confess that I was so bitter, that I rooted for the team to lose every week up until the teammates I had graduated. I have only been to 3 games since I left the team. At first it was because of my bitterness, but then after a while life got in the way. I can honestly say I would be OK from now on if I went to a game. I'm still a work in progress, nowhere near a finished product. I'm not where I want to be, but I'M NOT WHERE I USED TO BE EITHER!!!