The Football Brainiacs

In 1998, I was in my redshirt junior year at Missouri Southern.  We were returning 17 starters on a team that had gone 7-3 the year before and had taken the eventual Division II National Champion, Northwest Missouri State, down to the wire at their house.  We had a Harlon Hill candidate (Division II Heisman) at QB, and we had just had what we believed to be a great offseason.  My teammates and I were brimming with confidence, though that wasn’t all that common for our program.  The upper classmen who had gone before us had won the MIAA (considered to be the toughest D-II conference) in 1993, and we had come close in ’94, ’95, ’96 and 1997.  There were several of us from good programs scattered across the country, but mostly from Texas, Oklahoma, SE Kansas, SW Missouri and NW Arkansas.  We believed that we were good enough to win the MIAA and maybe more.  A few of us were talking ‘natty’ around the locker room and in our minds, if we could get past the normal conference heavyweights in Northwest and Pitt State, not many teams across the country would be better than them.

I know I had had a great offseason.  I had worked my way into what I had hoped to be an all-conference type year.  I was going 6’5″ about 295 and getting 225 on the bench between 28 and 32 times when we were working out over the summer.  I was really confident, and my o-line mates and I had all been together for what was going to be the second year in a row.  We thought we could run it on anybody, and our offensive line coach made us believe we were nasty.  July 29, 1998 I suffered a massive grand-mal seizure that rocked me to the core.  I felt as weak as a cat after that and going through two a days I just wasn’t the same.  I was slipping and stumbling out of my stance, and though I was trying to fight through it, I knew I wasn’t the same.

We opened with NSU in Tahlequah that year and my Uncle came to see the game.  He asked me after the game if I was okay, because he said I just didn’t seem as quick as I had been and deep down I knew he was right.  The following week I had a couple of seizures in my sleep and felt worse than ever.  Later that week, after conferring with our trainers, doctors, and my family, I decided to let it all go.  I was 21 years old and every dream I’d had up to that point was shattered.  It was over, and I was crushed.  I was young, and I was scared.  To this day I have had a hard time coming to terms with it.  No matter what anyone says, I felt (and still feel to a degree) I quit on my teammates.  I’m loyal to the nth degree, and for those of you who have been part of a unit, you know what I’m talking about.

Those guys in the locker room were my brothers, my family, and even now I keep up with a few of them.  Some times, at random, I’ll be driving along and just start laughing.  I’ll tell a story about how we pulled a prank on one of the other guys and my wife just shakes her head and tells me how awful we were to each other.  Then I try to explain that ‘s what guys do, but she doesn’t understand.  That year, 1998, didn’t end up at all like what any of us had hoped.  Several of us had season or career-ending injuries, and we ended up going three & something.  We were all devastated.  For the guys who hadn’t been redshirted like I did, it was our recruiting class’ senior year, and to send them out like that sucked.  On all the things I feel like I missed out on that year and the year I didn’t get the next, my senior day is something I wish I had.

Tennyson wrote…”Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”  I think Alfred was smokin’ something, because while the memories are irreplaceable, the pain from things at times can consume you if you let it.  When I read about Tennyson when he wrote that poem, it took him 17 years to do it.  The original title of the poem is “The way of the soul.”  You have to get to the depths of the soul to understand what drives guys, men who play this game.  When I was describing what my teammates and I had gone through that year, it’s because I was thinking about what the guys in Norman are going through this year.  Don’t get me wrong, I could never compare our talent to theirs, but how they’re having to navigate and deal with the loss is digging into their character reserves for sure.

They rode high all offseason long after the win against Bama, a couple of mistakes here or there, and then after their hopes had been dashed on the rocks against Baylor, every preseason goal they had as a team is now unattainable.  While not nearly as close to home, I know that us as fans have gone through some mourning this year as well.  So when you see a performance like what Samaje Perine had on Saturday, it makes you just sit back and smile.  For a lot of us who have lived their entire adult lives away from Oklahoma, the Sooners have given us sort of an identity.  And what I saw Saturday made me prouder than any national championship trophy ever could.

Not because a Sooner now holds the record.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take it, but what makes me proud and happy is that that group of guys pulled together for Samaje, and for each other, to be able to share that record.  They’ll look back on this year and while it may not have the hardware to go with it they would have liked, they’ll have some memories that will never leave them.  When the lights go out, when everyone stops cheering, and when they stop giving you awards and compliments, all that will be left is your reflection in the mirror and the truth that runs through your mind.

At the end of the day knowing you did everything you could is reward enough.  The grit, toughness, and character to keep moving forward, even when it doesn’t feel good, is what makes you a man.  I’m proud of our young men, and I can’t wait to destroy Oklahoma State in two weeks.  Happy Thanksgiving you guys.

Boomer.