An Animal on the Field

Today's blog is written by Alex Wilcox. Alex is a senior Film, Television, and Theater major, and a student in the Social Foundations of Coaching course taught by Play Like a Champion Founding Director Professor Clark Power and Program Director Kristin Sheehan. Alex is also a student coaching assistant for the Notre Dame Football team.

One of the most influential men in my life is my high school varsity football coach--a stout, fiery Italian who played football in college. He was intense, demanded the best out of everyone around him, and forced his players to dig deeper than they ever thought possible. He toughened you up both physically and mentally, and even if you didn’t like him – and many didn’t – you had to respect him. As many football coaches do, he had many favorite expressions that he would bark out on a daily basis. One of these was that he wanted his players to be “an animal on the field, and a gentleman off it.”

For a while, I loved everything about this quote and football. I loved the intensity, the emotion, and the violence of the game. I loved the idea that you could take all your inner anger, all your aggression, and take it out on the field. I saw this dual identity as a positive, and I pointed to the example of Deacon Jones,an NFL Hall of Famer, to support my claim. During his playing days, Jones was credited with “inventing” the sack because of how dominant he was, and for how he ferociously he went after the passer. On the field he was known as mean and nasty, but off the field, he was known as one of the kindest, gentlest men one could ever meet. When asked how such a kind and gentle man could turn into a snarling lunatic trying to crush the quarterback and anyone else who got in his way, his response was simple – it was his job. He said to act the way he did was required to do his job to the best of his ability, and that in order to feed his family, he had to his job.

While the Notre Dame Football team was at Culver Academy for training camp this summer, we brought in U.S. Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, of Lone Survivor fame, to give a talk to the team. One of the things he said was that when he was going through SEAL training, he had to flip a switch in his mind as to when he had to turn it on, be an aggressive, physical maniac with no regard for his well-being and keep pushing when his body begged him to stop, and when he could be a normal human being. “Flip the Switch” has now become one of Coach Kelly’s rallying cries.

Football is now the most popular sport in America. However, this popularity has taken a hit. With concerns over player safety and long-term health, as well as the NFL’s approach to crimes such as sexual assault and domestic violence, more and more parents are making the decision to not let their children play the game I have idolized since I was four years old. Through it all, I voraciously defended the game and the league, but after reading the report on Greg Hardy’s assault on his ex-girlfriend and seeing the gruesome, disgusting pictures of the attack, I have had a change of heart.

Yes, there are some examples of players who are able to control their dual identity, such as Deacon Jones. However, Mr. Jones was not only an exceptional football player, he was an exceptional man. In today's game, a vast majority of players have no problem unleashing their inner rage, aggression, and violence on the field to perform their job at the highest level. However, it is channeling this aggression off the field that is the issue. 

For these athletes, this aggression and violence has been celebrated from the time they first put on a pair of shoulder pads and buckled up their helmets. This ferocity and tenacity made them standout players in high school, earned them a scholarship to play at a major college program, and led to them to a lifestyle as an NFL star they never could've dreamed of. This aggression and violence made them celebrities, and the harder they hit, the more we cheered, and the more they got paid. 

For these players, football is everything. It is not only their job, it is their life. When violence and aggression are an essential part of that, it shouldn't be surprising when this aggression doesn't stop after the final whistle. Being violent has gotten them to the pinnacle; it has changed their lives, and has always been celebrated, when it should've been curtailed. 

A stud recruit in high school will get offers from every school in the country, as coaches are so enamored with their 40 time they look past "that one time" he slapped his girlfriend. After four years on a campus where he was taught he was above everyone, including the law, and women were nothing but sex objects for his pleasure after a good game, he is then drafted by an NFL GM who has no problem overlooking a few "minor blemishes" on his criminal record and signing him to a multi-year, million dollar contract, because, hey, "kids make mistakes."  But these aren't mistakes, they are a pattern. A pattern of abuse, of unchecked aggression spun out of control. Add money, fame, and sex to the equation, and your first-round draft pick becomes little more than a ticking time bomb. 

The NFL is littered with examples of this. Greg Hardy and Ray Rice are the most obvious cases, but look further back and you'll find Ben Roethlisberger arrested for allegedly raping a woman in a bar, Ray Lewis arrested for murdering a man outside a club, and Lawrence Taylor, one of the most celebrated football players of all time and widely regarded as the single greatest defensive player in NFL history, who was just as well known for his propensity to smoke crack and beat strippers as he was for sacking the QB. Earlier this season, the NFL actually applauded its personal conduct policy as effective because, for the first time in years, the league went a whole month without one of its players getting arrested. 

For so many players, they have been groomed into being the best possible football player they can be, but no one bothered teaching them how to be a good man. They have been taught to unleash their aggression, rather than control it. Over the course of their life, these players' brains have been wired that whenever they face a "fight-or-flight" scenario, they automatically choose "fight", every time. So much time, energy, and effort has been spent on how these athletes perform on the field, that how they act off the field is treated as almost irrelevant. 

In light of these recent circumstances, I do not believe that this "dual identity" is a good thing, as I previously thought. I do not believe humans are capable of "Flipping the Switch," no matter how many times Coach Kelly screams it, and more often than not, instead of examples of athletes being an "animal on the field and a gentleman off it," it is more accurate to say, "an animal on the field and an animal off it," or simply, "an animal."