BCS Polls Don't Tell The Half Of It!

           “Four!”

           I spun—but not fast enough! Bob Cassidy crashed helmet first into my left rib cage. I staggered but to my surprise, I didn’t go down.

           “Seven!” Coach Scott gave me just enough time to regain my equilibrium.

           I caught Eddie Carden’s first step out of the corner of my eye. I wheeled to my right and brought up my forearm. I partially stopped his charge but he still managed to get a good lick in. It snapped my head back and bruised my arm. I didn’t have time to assess the damage.

           “Three!”

           Bobby Roberts was too quick. He hit me full force in the right kidney. Every breath I’d taken in my entire fourteen years on earth blew out of me! This time I dropped to one knee. I didn’t stay down. That wasn’t the way the game was played.

           “Six!”

           I turned quickly to defend myself as David Paschall steamed toward me……

           The “game” was Bull in the Ring. It was football practice in the fall of 1961. It was ninety-eight degrees. In the shade! As Billy Barksdale pointed out at most every practice, “We didn’t have no shade!”

           David lifted me about five feet off the ground and I would have flown out of the “ring” except Mike Ferrigno caught me in mid-flight and shoved me back to the center.

           “Five!”

           Through blurry eyes and with a three alarm fire whistle clanging in my ears I lowered my center of gravity and wheeled to meet the next challenge.

           Bull in the Ring was a fairly uncomplicated drill. You got eight big guys in a circle and put a “volunteer” in the middle. Coach Scott numbered each of the big guys and when he called out their number they exploded full force into the “bull” in the ring. I had heard rumors that Coach Scott carried a two by four in previous years in case the big guys needed some encouragement to leap on the chosen one. I never saw him with a board of any kind at practice. He didn’t need one as far as I was concerned….

           Twenty-eight seconds in the middle of that circle was an everlasting blasted eternity…..and then some!   

           They recently fired a coach at Texas Tech for putting a player in a small dark room and leaving him there while the team practiced. I studied on that one long and hard. And I thought of Billy Barksdale. Listen, if Coach Scott had asked if anyone wanted to “sit this one out” in that shed over by the bleachers where Mr. Gallimore kept the lawnmower, me and Billy would have been jumping up and down for joy.

           Another college coach lost his job for grabbing a player by his shoulder pads. There is some controversy as to whether he hit him or not. But I’m fairly certain he didn’t whack him in the kidneys with a two by four.

And listen carefully, I’m not defending those coaches, or condemning them. I am not that close to either situation. And unlike some news people, I don’t want to guess, speculate, add fuel to the fire or attempt to sway you one way or the other. I don’t care. I’m just thinking out loud. If I had a choice between cooling it in a dark room or being mince meat for those big guys in the ring……that’s a no-brainer!

And let me finish a thought about Bull in the Ring. Every player on the team had to get in that circle. Even through the one good eye I had left, I could see the fairness in that. The older more experienced players fared better than the rookies, which made perfect sense to me. That one drill made us all quicker on our feet, a little more watchful of our surroundings, it forced you to find your balance, keep your wits about you, lead with your chin and, I guarantee you, if you survived it, you were a little tougher for the experience.

I was a freshman in 1961. Bob Cassidy was a senior and our best player. He stopped by my locker and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Kes, that lick I gave you knocks most people down. You are going to be alright.” I don’t expect you to understand this, but I still remember exactly where I was sitting in that old dressing room. I remember I had my jersey and cleats off and was trying to manage enough strength to untie the strings on those old practice pants. I remember Eddie Carden nodding in agreement. I can hear the showers running and the stale locker room odor still fills my nostrils. 

A few years later I was unloading a train car of lumber for Mr. Tommie Hill’s son-in-law. It was literally (for some reason the station master had to have a thermometer in the car) 112 degrees in that boxcar. The first five hundred boards weren’t too tough. The second five hundred begin to get heavy. And the bear jumped on my back! I was ringing wet with sweat and my head was spinning. Mr. Tommie’s son-in-law drove up to see how I was doing and remarked on how this had to be the hardest work I’d ever gotten into. Out of respect I didn’t say nothing, but I was thinking upside Bull in the Ring this was a walk in the park!

I laid awake long into the night in 1975 after I’d just signed a note on a house I wasn’t sure I could pay for. I had a wife and a baby and a car payment and now I had to come up with an additional $159.84 every month for the next thirty years! I smiled as I finally drifted to sleep. Wasn’t nobody down at the bank going to have me in a circle calling out “Seven”, “Three”, “Five”, “Two”……     

Billy, Eddie, Bobby, David and all the others had no idea on those piping hot afternoons in that little practice field behind the tennis courts…..that they’d be helping me with my banking one day.

 Respectfully,

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