For the Love of Football

Every summer, across the country, high school boys line up in the heat in cleats and clothes made for muddying.

They run countless drills, endure merciless barking from coaches and find themselves nightly nursing sore muscles and bones.

They eagerly subject themselves to abuses called two-a-days and hell week.

It’s no different in Orange County. Before practicing in full pads, the boys run plays in shorts, T-shirts, and helmets, resembling sweaty, panting, life-size bobble-head dolls.

And for what? Why would anyone in his right mind endure the sort of torture that’s guaranteed with summer football practices when he could be surfing at the beach, or enjoying the creature comforts of XBox 360 and central air-conditioning?

High school football players will give you a range of reasons: their brothers played. Their fathers played. They want to be with their friends. It’s fun.

Some fancy themselves as nylon-and-polyester clad warriors; others enjoy the incomparable glory that comes with a Friday night win or a game-saving touchdown.

But those reasons only scratch the surface, said Professor Steve Walk, chair of the kinesiology department at Cal State Fullerton and past president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport.

“We don’t consider strongly enough the important role that sport plays in constructing masculinity,” Walk said.

Most sociologists agree that gender is something people construct, and something that people enact in various ways — such as girls liking the color pink and boys flocking toward blue.

“If you accept that as a premise, then you start looking for places in the culture where we enact gender, and I would think that football would be one of those places where gender divisions are very clear,” Walk said. “This is what men do, and this is what women do. Just watch a college football game and you see men bashing each other’s heads in and making big hi-tech decisions about what goes on the field, and then cheerleaders being frilly and feminine and not central decision makers.”

So when Estancia senior lineman Connor McKendry says that he likes playing football because he gets to “beat people up and tackle them,” it doesn’t mean he’s uncivilized, or particularly violent, or likely to become a serial killer.

Football is one of many ways McKendry connects with his masculinity.

“It’s so cemented in our consciousness that we don’t even think about it,” Walk said. “We don’t think about how strong these messages are and how often we encounter them.”

The 6-4, 255-pound McKendry had to wait until his freshman year of high school to play football, because before, he was always too big to play with his age group, he said. But the power that comes from being able to knock someone to the ground, to stop someone in his tracks, is part of the innate “maleness” of football.

“I remember the first time I put on a football uniform, and how powerful I felt,” Walk said. “You put on those pads, and the shoulder pads and the helmet and you feel like you can just take on a truck, if you want.”

Still, the incentive to embrace aggression and masculinity isn’t the only reason why boys play football. In fact, Estancia quarterback Mike Morley said the draw for him is the pressure of leading a team down the field on a scoring drive.

“My favorite part is the energy on the field,” he said, beaming. “When you’re out there, and the crowd’s going crazy and you’re all fired up, and time’s ticking off and you’ve got to score a touchdown, that’s my favorite part. You get all pumped up inside, and everyone’s going crazy.”

There’s nothing else that provides the same sort of rush?

Morley answered with an emphatic, decisive “no.”

“It’s like always being on a roller coaster,” he said. “The excited feeling when you’re about to go on a roller coaster — it’s like that all the time. It’s the best feeling. That’s what keeps me going.”

Costa Mesa lineman Juan Garces was enchanted with the images of NFL players on television from an early age. They were his heroes. He wanted to be a part of it, the sacks, interceptions, and touchdown celebrations.

“You want to try to do everything they do,” Garces said. For him, it was a big reason for playing football. Garces is a guy who rides with the highs and lows of the NFL, and when something bad happens, he’s not oblivious to it.

When Shawne Merriman of the San Diego Chargers was suspended last season for steroid use, it affected Garces.

“It bothers you because everything he’s doing is not from hard work,” Garces said. “It’s not like he worked for something if he cheated. You see him as fake or something.”

The huge number of players on a football team also facilitates friendship and bonding between high school boys.

Both Newport Harbor and Estancia boast 59-player rosters, while Costa Mesa and Estancia each have at least 40 players.

“You meet a lot of people playing football,” said Costa Mesa wide receiver Brian Waldron. “You’ve got a much bigger team than all the other sports, baseball and basketball teams. You’ve got a lot more people out there to meet. You grow a better relationship because you’ve got each other’s back. You guys are together. You have to be united on a football team. It’s not like tennis or some other sport where you’re an individual.”

The parallels between football and war could not be more plain. Every game is a battle, and the generals line up on the sidelines with their clipboards, making decisions about which soldiers to use and how to attack. Players with the most experience are referred to as veterans.

Kickoffs are toned-down, 22-man reenactments of the battle scene from Braveheart, with opposing sides clad in their official colors and hurtling into each other at full speed in a 60-minute campaign for territory.

“I think it’s the closest thing you can get to war,” said Costa Mesa wide receiver John Salyer. “I’m not saying I like war, but I mean, you have an army, and the coaches are like the generals. It’s like chess, too. It’s just mind, everything, most of it’s mental. It’s whoever’s smarter. Being able to outsmart the other team and just get that victory, it’s fun.”

But what about when something bad happens, and it’s football-related, such as the concussion dilemma the NFL faces, or the recent heat-related death of Beckman High offensive guard Kenny Wilson? Wilson died on the way to the hospital, after collapsing three hours into an all-day practice in 90-degree heat.

“Risk, risk-taking, pain and injury are very accepted parts of athletic identity and certainly the culture of football,” Walk said. “They’re part of the excitement. The risk kind of for foregrounds the excitement.”

Last season, Estancia quarterback Alek Kirshner shattered his collarbone during a football game. But this year, he was back at football practice, with no hesitation or sqeamishness. He seemed strangely proud of his battle wounds.

“I had two reconstructive surgeries and a pin put in,” Kirshner said. “I have three scars from that. But that’s part of the game. That’s why you sign up. It comes with the package. You just get through that and start playing again, start conditioning. That’s what football’s all about.”

Even when the occupational hazards of football are great enough to cause permanent paralysis, or even death, football players are loath to acknowledge them. Waldron sounded like a professional race car driver who refuses to watch replays of his own crash, for fear of psyching himself out of ever competing in another race.

“I guess you just have to take a risk when you’re playing out there, but I think it’s worth it,” Waldron said. “All the stuff you get out of it, all the hard work. You definitely get into shape. But you’ve just got to not think about what the risks are and what’s going to happen to you and stay positive.”

According to Walk, football was almost outlawed by U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt at the turn of the century.

“He was going outlaw football because ... there were dozens of deaths in college football, in one year, and he ordered that a study be undertaken of the risks of football,” Walk said. “The result of those inquiries was the establishment of what we now call the NCAA.”

Most boys don’t realize there are larger sociological forces at work when it comes to thinking about why they play football. When football players at Newport Harbor shave their heads, it’s a celebrated Sailors ritual, but they don’t think about how their buzz cuts identify them as part of a subculture. But there is an inescapable romance associated with football that consumes nearly all of its devotees.

“It’s the feeling you get after you’ve worked your butt off out there,” Waldron said. His explanation was succinct, but heartfelt. “Just leaving everything out on the field to get a victory and go home and just feel really good about yourself. And it’s also good to hit people.”