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."
