My husband still tells people he married me because of my spiral pass. You might say it was inescapable.
Football brought me to Kansas City when I was nearly two and my dad, a small town Alabama boy and newly signed Dallas Texan, left the South to become a charter member of the Kansas City Chiefs. As I would later write in high school, football was his ticket, and mine, to the big city. That was in 1963 and, these many seasons later, I can't help but wonder how football can mark a life, or at least a memory.
The first boy I ever loved was Chris Faros, the high school player who lived next door and taught me to keep my fingers wrapped around the laces. I was five. I grew up to be the grade school girl playing backyard football who made the boys cry. He grew up to be a college coach and lost his life when his plane crashed on a recruiting trip for Memphis State. Although we were only neighbors for five years and he has been gone for thirty, I still catch my breath a bit when I drive past his house, just down the road from where my boys practice.
When I was seven, Daddy was the starting right tackle for the Super Bowl champions. I watched the game at a family friend's house. I don't remember the game as well as I do the signs and banners that decorated our small ranch home on Red Bridge Road when the team returned from New Orleans . Or as well as I remember the 1971 Christmas game against the Miami Dolphins. Fans still remember Jan Stenerud missing the kick in overtime; I remember listening to Donny Osmond sing "I Knew You When" on my new record player while my mom and older brother, Rusty, were at Municipal Stadium. I do remember other games, at Municipal and later Arrowhead--sitting with the other players' families, drinking hot chocolate from a thermos, wearing baggies inside our boots to keep our feet warm, yelling "charge" in response to Tony DiPardo's trumpet call.
My mother, originally a tap dancer and softball player, became, and remains, an enthusiastic and educated football fan. She can still read a defense better than most quarterbacks. Like her, I became a zealous spectator, and gave up most of my playing to take up cheering for my brother and his buddies in little league, junior high, and finally, high school. Friday night football became more sacred than Sunday afternoons. Sports stories were more glorious than the writers who wrote them, and even I was more excited about a Bulldog win than the Quill and Scroll Gold Key I received for feature writing. Our team was good and fast and confident. Rusty wore number 8 and ran the wishbone offense as the quarterback. He could best be described as the golden boy who enjoyed a little tarnish. A loss to Hickman Mills High kept us from the State playoffs his senior year . The defeat was staggering then and somehow still stings today. My husband, Greg, also played on that team and later that year, lost his best friend and teammate Bill, who died after collapsing at a practice for the Big Brothers All-Star game. I had been cheering for Bill since he and Rusty had played in the little league Super Bowl together as Cy Young Hardmen.
That next winter, I watched Rusty as a Razorback cause a fumble against the University of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and then watched him slowly drift away from, and, for a time, even hate, the sport that had defined him. Had attempted to define us all. Christopher, my younger brother, played in high school as well, and though a quick and lean cornerback, he found more space to breathe on a surfboard.
My dad made a name for himself in the car auction business while I headed to Alabama to discover a new direction among the people and places of my parents. I was a freshman at Auburn, Daddy's alma mater, when I received a call from my mom to tell me that a friend and former Chief had taken his life and that of his wife. I began to understand that these men were not retired, but were rather giving up a life and the light it had offered. I played in the intramural football championship game that year--Greeks vs. Independents-- and also learned that SEC football requires a date with a fraternity boy, a preppy dress, and a deep seeded hatred for the opposing team. I rather quickly made my way back to the Midwest to get serious about a degree in writing and to hang out with the football team at K-State.
Although I lost my bearings and some of my affection for football in my early twenties, I didn't lose my strong, accurate arm and I used it to clinch a proposal from a college kicker who also happened to be my brother's favorite high school receiver. We are now raising five children who, though groomed to be golfers, have come to love the sport of my father. I am now the crazy woman, wearing her son's jersey and snapping pictures on the sidelines, cheering in the end zone. I cried the first time I saw my oldest son in full pads. I can't really remember what I did after I watched my younger boy kick the winning field goal at a football tournament in Florida with his grandfather in the stands. I might be most proud that my three girls can throw a better spiral than mine, make an open field tackle, and kick an extra point.
I come to the game now as the daughter of a retired NFL player, a sister of brothers who both embraced and fought against a legacy, a wife of a straight-on kicker, a mom of passionate players, and a mostly grown up version of that five year old who wanted to play but mostly wanted to be noticed . Daddy has been inducted into two Halls of Fame, but has lost some of the fire that makes football fun. He reminisces most, not about college ball or the pros, but about his high school days and the greatest coach he ever had. We lost Rusty a year and a half ago, not to football, but in some ways I believe he was a casualty of the sport. However, in the last few football seasons before he died, he paced the sidelines with Greg and talked a little trash as he watched my boys take the field. He was at his best in those moments and he finally seemed at ease being himself under the lights.
Football isn't a metaphor for my life--but rather a frame or a reference point for the wins and losses that have shaped me. All roads lead back to a football field in a mill town in Alabama where Daddy first wore leather helmets that didn't have face masks. Or maybe to the backyard across from the Methodist Church where I learned to decipher plays drawn with Chris's finger in his palm. I've lost some speed in my step since then and my moves aren't really moves at all any more. But if I get my fingers around the laces just right and I plant my foot, I can still throw the ball.
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