Freshman year I took a class in college called “Rocks for Jocks.” It wasn’t actually called that by the University of course, but it didn’t really matter. Everyone called it that. Even the instructor. It was the class the football players took to satisfy their science requirement.
You could spot them a mile away. Giants draped in sweat suits, their bodies spilling over the dollhouse-like desks, behemoths that dwarfed those of us regular folk who had wandered, unwittingly, into the world of the student athlete. Although we didn’t dare say it out loud, the presence of the football players was surely an indication of one thing and one thing only. This must be an easy class.
There was a bar in Cleveland Circle called MaryAnn’s. My prissy freshman roommate hung out there as did many of the other girls in the dorm. Girls who got all gussied up on Saturday night, because Mary Ann’s was the place where the football players hung out. Hanging out at MaryAnn’s just wasn’t my thing. I had nothing against the players as people. They seemed nice enough in class, but it was the football player persona that got to me, that big, moronic, dumb as dirt mentality that I was sure described every one of them. A stereotype? Perhaps. Judgmental? Absolutely, but I was young and rigid and besides, I was sure I was right.
Flash forward 30 years.
About a year ago there were a bunch of college scouts coming to the high school. Several of the boys on the team were being recruited and it was fun to be on the periphery, engaging in conversations about this school and that. One of the boys was a big, teddy bear like lineman with an almost perfect GPA who just happened to be my son’s mentor on the team. He was big and strong and talented both on the field and off and he had caught the eye of some of the best schools in the country. Not just football schools, schools that cranked out NFL players like a factory cranks out cars. Schools where the football players study things like basket weaving and major in Youth and Community Studies. Schools that produced young men who were trained to do nothing else but play football. No, not those kind of schools. These schools were different.
These were academic schools. Schools where players graduated. Where they went to class and studied and were, well, students. Football was a part of the equation, not the equation itself. It was a way to get in the door; a talent, like music or art or creative writing. These schools were about getting an education and playing football while doing it. Their players weren’t big, moronic, dumb as dirt behemoths, these were young men, student athletes.
It was mid-December when we stood in the trophy-lined room looking out the window onto the massive football stadium. We had just been welcomed by the head coach and his staff, a group of 25 or so high school seniors and their parents who had been invited to campus for an official visit, a chance to see if this college was a place they wanted to be for the next four years; to study, to learn, to grow and to play football.
It was so different when I was in his shoes. I remember going into the school counselor’s office, pouring through books that were 5 inches thick, searching page after page, college after college, major after major. There were no websites or virtual tours or 24-hour webcams. Choosing a college was a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack. How would I ever find the place I was meant to be? I applied to the requisite number of places, sent out my SAT scores and recommendations and waited. Waited for the acceptance. Waited for someone to say yes. Waited for someone to want me.
When the acceptances came in, when there was a choice to be made, the family piled into the Country Squire station wagon with the wood side panels and we took a road trip. I had to see each one. I’m a visceral kind of gal. Before I could make a decision, I had to walk the campuses and see what they felt like.
It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I remember driving up the long tree lined drive, seeing the Golden Eagle and the towers of Gasson Hall. I remember walking across the Dustbowl for the very first time. This was where I was meant to be.
We were busy during his visit. There were meetings with head coaches and strength coaches and line coaches. Dinners and lunches and conversations with players. There were deans to meet, courses of study to consider, admissions requirements to fulfill and a campus tour to be had. We wandered, through Harry Potter-esque libraries and stained glass chapels, through crowded cafeterias and state-of-the art weight rooms and at some point it began to snow.
As we wandered over to the bookstore, the fresh white snow blanketing the ground, I posed the question. There had been hardly a moment to catch our breath never mind have a chat. What did he think of the place?
“This is it,” he said with the biggest smile on his face I’d seen in a while. “This is where I want to be.” He knew.
On the long flight home I thought back to those guys that sat next to me all those years ago. The young men I was so quick to dismiss, so quick to judge. Those student athletes.
My son is one of them.
And I couldn’t be prouder.