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RR at Eureka reunion
Posted on Fri, Jun. 11, 2004
Who says there isn't life after football?
By Mark Story
HERALD-LEADER (KY) SPORTS COLUMNIST
Stubborn idealists have long clung to the belief that college athletics should be more about college than athletics.
We realists long ago accepted that football players mostly go to college to play football.
The aspiring offensive lineman was among the latter.
Like so many college athletes, he came from a background of humble means.
There was never enough money. Today, we'd say his dad had a "substance-abuse" problem. Back then, the non-charitable just called him the town drunk.
Like so many of our athletes, he became especially close to his mom. In many ways, this God-fearing woman raised her two boys on her own.
Even though no one in his family had ever gone to college, the youngest of the two children decided that he would.
He had his heart set -- funny how this works -- on the very school his girlfriend, the preacher's daughter, had already chosen.
"I'd like to say I went to college for love of learning," he would say, "but probably I was more motivated by love for a pretty girl and a love for football."
On his campus visit, he went out of his way to look up the football coach.
I want to go to college and I want to play football and I want to do it here, but I don't have much money ...
A football program can NEVER have enough offensive linemen, of course, so the coach went to bat and found the aspiring guard enough aid money to get into school.
It all went wrong from the start.
The young player spent his freshman year glued to the bench, sat over there and fumed and sulked.
By the time the year was over, he had decided to quit. Not only football -- college.
So he went back home and got an outdoors job with a surveyor, was gonna work and make money and forget about this coach who, he was sure, had no use for him.
Yet, on the first day of college for what would have been his sophomore year, the now ex-college football player couldn't go to work.
The rain was falling so hard, several bearded men in robes started building Arks.
What the heck, he figured he'd go back to campus for the day, say hello to his old frat buddies in the TKE House, be with his girl.
When he got there, the pangs inside his chest felt like earthquake tremors. Only then did he realize how badly he wanted to return to school.
So, he went back to the football coach, Ralph McKinzie -- the man on whom he had quit -- and again asked for help.
God bless the college coach who really does put helping kids above his own ego. You never know if the player you save could go on to change the world.
McKinzie got a player to whom he didn't owe a darned thing back in school and with his financial aid intact.
Yet, midway through his sophomore season, the guard STILL wasn't playing -- had started the year fifth string.
And it was killing him.
Finally, one day in practice, McKinzie installed a running play that called for the right guard to pull, get out on the perimeter and put a defensive back on his bottom.
In practice, they were using an assistant coach as the "defender" to be blocked; problem was, even against a coach, nobody on the team could get out there in time to make the block.
At long last, the head coach turned to one of his scrubs, essentially said, let's see what you've got.
Nothing improves a football player's mobility -- nor his hostility -- like desperation combined with unexpected opportunity.
At 'Hut!' the lowly scrub roared around end and delivered a block so ferocious, the poor assistant coach/defender "ascended as if he'd been hurled by a shot-putter and seemed to dangle in mid-air for several seconds."
Next game, there was a new starter at right guard.
Funny thing. It was such a long struggle for him to win the job he coveted; but when he did, he was bullet-proof. For the rest of his college term, nobody could beat him out.
Of course, in the Hollywood ending, the blooming of his football career would've awakened an equal passion in the new starter for his schoolwork.
Instead, by his own account, the right guard worked just hard enough to stay above the 2.0 it took to keep him eligible for sports.
Give him this: In doing that, at least he remained in school and got an Economics degree. Many, many college football players don't even do that, of course.
Then, college -- football -- was over.
He took a job out of state. Moved way out west, got married, had kids, got divorced, re-married, had more kids, switched careers three different times, moved back east and then -- where does the time go? -- it had been 50 years.
And they were planning a celebration for his graduating class back at the old campus.
All his buddies wondered if the old right guard would show.
He did.
Stood up in front of every body, and delivered a mea culpa to satisfy even the most snooty academician.
He recalled that the graph of his college academic performance tracked much closer to the 2.0 needed to stay eligible for football than the 4.0 that represented genuine scholastic excellence.
Looking everyone in the eye, he said, "Even now I wonder if I had made better grades, what more in life I might have been able to accomplish?"
Which was when every soul in the place burst out laughing.
Now, it may help you to know the college in question was Eureka College.
And on May 9, 1982, when the old football player stood at his alma mater, tongue planted firmly in cheek, to lament his indifferent academic record and the opportunities it must surely have cost him ...
... Ronald Reagan was in the second year of his first term ...
... as President of the United States.
Rest in Peace, Dutch, Rest in Peace.
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