Foosball

A creative writing professor I once had suggested that I submit an old piece of writing (maybe I shouldn't say 'old' - I wrote it a few months ago) to a creative writing contest, theme: football. 

I'm new to all this, never having believed that anything I could write could be publishable. Even now I don't suppose that much has changed - I still don't think it's good enough. What I wrote, about my weird worship of a certain football player and how it has impacted my life, is too vague, probably takes too many creative liberties, probably isn't effective at what it does.  

This is all just a preface.

See, I've always had this thing for Ricky Williams. He was probably the first player in whom I ever had any real investment. Of course it helped that he played for Miami, my team. But what truly made him so interesting was that, unlike the rest of the guys mentioned above, his downfall didn't seem like a product of his own dumb vanity.

But let's start at the beginning. Williams, a Heisman winner, was drafted out of Texas by the Saints, who all but sold the farm to get him. He was traded to the Miami Dolphins for only slightly less after three seasons. He was softspoken, even seemed intellectual - the kind of guy who always wore his helmet to interviews. He spent two seasons with the Dolphins busting balls and heads, setting team records, becoming the league rushing champion.

And then, after his fifth season and just one day before training camp began before his sixth, he abruptly retired from football forever.

It soon became clear that Ricky, a lifelong aficionado of weed, had failed one too many league-mandated piss tests. So he embarked on a journey of self-enlightenment, deciding that money, fame, football were too much for any truly conscientious person. After bouncing from a surfer commune in Australia to India to a yoga camp in California, he eventually settled on becoming a holistic medicine man. An ascetic.

From this - Dreadlocked Demon, wreckin ball of defensive lines, corner confounder, dissector of secondaries, hero of my youth:

To this:

And that was that.

I don't want to go into the intricacies of fan anguish, because nobody's interested in hearing about that. Just realize, those of you who are not into sports, that it can make or break a Sunday.  And seeing your favorite player turn into a guy who gets the Sprite catchphrase (commercial sez: "Image is Nothing") all mixed up (Ricky sez: "Image is Everything") and then really takes it to heart, makes it public enemy number one in his own head, is really the sort of thing that makes you reevaluate whatever it was you saw in him in the first place. Is his entire life philosophy built on the tenuous bedrock of a single, misremembered commercial? Takes a little something away, doesn't it?

Anyway he came back a year later and played a half season. Then he got busted again, left again, and played football in Canada. Then he came back to Miami for the third time, near the end of last year, ran six downs, got squished by a linebacker and tore his pectoral muscle. By the time he's ready to play again, it will be September - time for another season and time to see if he can hang with it this time.

Maybe all this that I've been writing about is in line with the thing I've got for Randy Moss (I can still see Moss on the telecast, sitting on the bench before the game, eyes closed, calm as the buddha, the rest of his team hopping around and headbutting each other, as if he just didn't need that sort of adrenaline to help him out there on the high wire). News of Osi Umenyiora's eccentricities (NSFW on account of an arty nude picture) just made me like the guy even more. I am also reminded of the Vikings sex boat scandal from a few years back.

For the same reason that Orson Welles, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain make such compelling figures, there's just something about self-destructive football players that just makes them easier to root for.

Anyway, that's what my piece is about. I'll be submitting my piece within the next month or two. First, I'll have to obsess over it for a little while, and probably edit it until I've wrecked the original spirit.  All in a day's work. Hoho.