It’s been a busy couple of weeks at Muscle&Fitness and Men’s Fitness. The February issue of M&F hits newsstands everywhere on January 30. There’s a ton of great content in there, including the start of 2012 Rock Hard Challenge designed by Dr. Jim Stoppani. I had the great pleasure of writing M&F’s first story on newly-minted Mr. Olympia Phil Heath. We get inside how he turned his back, which was one of his biggest weaknesses early in his career, into one of his greatest strengths. I also interviewed the always lovely Jessa Hinton, who gets a pictorial I’m sure every guy will appreciate. Jessa’s currently up for Playmate of the Year honors. You can vote for her here: http://www.playboy.com/magazine/vote-for-the-2012-playmate-of-the-year

On the Men’s Fitness side, I interviewed the amazing Ron Perlman to talk Sons of Anarchy, how he chooses a role, and his battle with obesity as a teenager. You can check it out here: http://www.mensfitness.com/leisure/entertainment/ron-perlmans-perls-of-wisdom

As always, feel free to give me feedback through this site, or hit me up on Twitter: @MCTuthill

Stay tuned. There are a lot of great surprises in the pipeline for both magazines.

- Matt

http://www.mensfitness.com/sports/athletes/brandon-jacobs-people-can-say-what-the-hell-they-want-to-say

Reaction stories can be found here:

http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/giants/giant_issues_for_unhappy_jacobs_97W4fkBHQg2foywwM5DVbO

And here:

http://www.nydailynews.com/search-results/search-results-7.113?kw=&tfq=&afq=&sortOrder=&selecturl=site&q=jacobs&sfq=&dtfq=seven_days

There’s plenty more, but that’s the jist of it. While Jacobs is likely gone at the end of this season, there’s no reason he can’t be a big part of the Giants’ second half. The schedule gets brutal after Miami, and Ahmad Bradshaw will need fresh legs to spell him from time to time. One way or another, I think we’re going to see what he has left in the tank.

When life and death hang in the balance every day – as it does for our fighting men and women – training takes on a whole new meaning. This issue will help you capture some of that intensity. Highlights include:

- Cover story on Green Beret sniper and Strikeforce figther Tim Kennedy

- The Frontline Workout: Train with the same methods used by soldiers deployed overseas

- A profile of injured Iraq war veteran turned bodybuilder Dan Eslinger

- A profile of decorated Marine and UFC fighter Brian Stann (penned by yours truly)

Bonus content here: www.muscleandfitness.com

http://www.mensfitness.com/lifestyle/entertainment/thomas-jane-the-independent-a-lister

There’s also this bonus Q&A:

http://www.mensfitness.com/blogs/entertainment/qa-with-thomas-jane

I’ve been following Jane’s career since Deep Blue Sea and 61* and believe  The Punisher is a rare gem in a decade-long avalanche of comic book movies, most of which start to look the same after a while. If you haven’t read it, his Bad Planet comic series is a thoughtful sci-fi journey with some incredible artwork. I actually brought a copy of Bad Planet No. 1 with me to his table and had him sign it before I introduced myself as the guy from Men’s Fitness who would be doing the interview.

“Oh, right, we’ve got a thing later,” he said, then looked down puzzled at the comic. “Wait, you’re into this shit, too?”

Yeah, I’m into this shit. If you didn’t know about the other side of Thomas Jane, take a look at my story for Men’s Fitness, and check out the home site of RAW Entertainment, Jane’s independent comic and film studio which he co-founded with Tim Bradstreet: http://rawstudios.typepad.com/

Have a look around, search through the archives and feel free to contact the author with your feedback. We appreciate your visit and hope you come back soon to read his latest work.

NEW RABBI HAS FDR’s, ELEANOR’S DNA

BENNINGTON – For anyone else, the legend might have loomed too large. The footsteps would have been too massive. But for Rabbi Joshua Boettiger, being the great-grandson of Franklin D. Roosevelt is something he hasn’t allowed to overshadow his life.

Hailing from a presidential background and choosing to become a rabbi has made Boettiger, 32, somewhat of an anomaly. And yet Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt would likely be proud of their trail-blazing great-grandson, who became Congregation Beth El’s new rabbi on August 1.

Just as the history books have described his great-grandparents, Boettiger is confident and decisive. His speech is powerful, yet warm and he has a great love for his country. Like Eleanor, Boettiger says he feels a deep calling to public service. And in meeting with him, it’s easy to imagine that his leadership quality might be genetic.

Media Attention

In a 2005 New York Times article about FDR’s descendants and the myriad life paths they’ve chosen, Boettiger’s unique path to Judaism and becoming a rabbi served as the focal point.

“I have ambivalence around talking about it,” Boettiger said Tuesday. “It’s an interesting story for sure, but the media attention in the New York Times… it was interesting, but I guess it was surreal because it’s never been that big of a part of my life. It was something we were only dimly aware of growing up.”

Boettiger’s path to becoming a rabbi is made more unique by the fact that he grew up in an interfaith household, the son of an Episcopalian father and a Jewish mother. The traditions of both faiths, he said, were given equal time. Rather than a Bar Mitvah, he had what his parents called a “Josh Mitzvah,” a coming-of-age ceremony that incorporated traditions from both faiths. When it came time to choose a single faith, Boettiger said, it wasn’t really a choice at all.

“Growing up I got a minimal dose of both traditions,” Boettiger said.  “Both of my
parents were really respectful of the other’s tradition and said that I could choose whatever path felt right for me… [Judaism] was the tradition that most spoke to me as far as what I imagined my path being.”

Bennington Community

Boettiger, who took over for Rabbi Howard Cohen on August 1, was born in Maine, grew up in Northampton, Mass. and was introduced to the Bennington area during his internship under Cohen from 2001 to 2002. When Cohen gave up his post to become a Rabbi Emeritus, Boettiger said the choice of coming back to the area to take up his ministry was a simple one.

“This is a homecoming of sorts for me,” Boettiger said. In addition to the appeal of the simple New England lifestyle, Boettiger said the strength of the Beth El community played a big part in drawing him back.

“I think some people are stepping into rabbinic situations where they’re starting something from scratch,” he said. In Bennington, Boettiger said he been blessed with a situation where the congregation is loyal and involved, and he credits Beth El’s board of directors and Rabbi Cohen for laying the groundwork of a successful ministry.

Historical Shadow

Boettiger realizes how it must have been difficult for the first generation of FDR’s descendants, who may have felt pressure to live up to legacy left by the late president. But Boettiger has suffered no such pressure. If anything, he said he feels a distant connection to Eleanor and shares a deep respect for her call to public service.

As a Jew and FDR’s great-grandson, Boettiger is asked often, and perhaps unfairly, if FDR did all he could to save Jews during the holocaust. He has acknowledged that his great-grandfather did not do all he could to stop the genocide, but has also called FDR a great friend of the Jews. His apparently conflicting answers, he said, are representative of an incredibly difficult historical question.

“It’s a complex issue,” Boettiger said. “Historians have a raging debate about it and since I’m not a historian I try to stay out of that and just welcome the discussion and to say that it’s not a simple answer.”

Israel

The ongoing conflict in Israel and recent fighting with Lebanon is something that has hit particularly close to home for Boettiger, who lived for about three years in Israel. Much of that time was spent studying in Jerusalem.

“My time in Israel has had a big impact on my decision to become a rabbi,” he said. “I feel a lot of sadness at the trouble and the bloodshed that has become all too commonplace over the years. It is my abiding hope that in the future it can really be a safe homeland for the Jewish people and all people in that region.

In Jerusalem Boettiger met his girlfriend Vanessa who is currently a rabbinical student herself. “It added to the hold that Jerusalem has on my heart,” Boettiger said.

New Experiences

Boettiger promises to build on the strong interfaith ties that were a staple of Cohen’s ministry. When St. Peter’s Episcopal Church hosts an interfaith forum and prayer service on Sept. 13, Boettiger will be there just as Cohen was in years past.

In the fall, Boettiger plans on introducing the congregation and interested members of the community to Jewish meditation. Despite the name, Boettiger says Jewish meditation is really a non-denominational experience and is something he welcomes the non-Jewish community to enjoy.

“Meditation is meditation,” he said. “There’s nothing Jewish or Christian about breathing. What Jewish meditation is really about is using Jewish language to explore the practice of meditation.”

Meditation, Boettiger says, is just one of the things he’ll try to get his new congregation involved in. Shabbat morning services, family services and musical services are all in the works for his reconstructionist synagogue, a denomination of Judaism that welcomes all parts of the community.

Bridging a gap between Judaism and the community is something that holds deep appeal for Boettiger, whose Christian father never questioned his gravitation to the Jewish faith.

“You can define the rules and then build fences,” Boettiger said. “You can say ‘okay, this is the community.’ Or you can build a fire and see who comes.”

Twenty years ago, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger shed the shackles of suburban Philadelphia, uprooted his family and moved to Odessa, Texas, the dream of spinning a spectacular narrative about the power of sports in our culture burning bright in his mind. He had envisioned a football story in the Hoosiers vein, about a team serving as a rallying point for a tight-knit community, and made the commitment to immerse himself in Permian High School for a full year.

What he uncovered was a culture virtually obsessed not only with football, but with winning, and – to an extent – living vicariously through the young athletes that took to the field in Panther black and white. The town was divided by the same colors, which became evident when the team’s star running back Boobie Miles, who was black, was injured and immediately met the scorn of a community that now deemed him worthless.

When Friday Night Lights was published two years later, it wound up as a less-than-flattering look at America’s overemphasis on sport through the complex and heartbreaking prism of Odessa. Bissinger then faced the wrath of the same community that had turned on Boobie, and the book was dismissed by the Permian faithful as a slam job. The rest of the country, however, couldn’t get enough of Bissinger’s critically-acclaimed work, and it became a runaway bestseller. Friday Night Lights is still in print today, and has sold nearly two million copies, spawning a major motion picture of the same name in 2004, and a drama series currently running on NBC.

The movie, directed by Bissinger’s cousin Peter Berg, focused less on the racial divisions of Odessa and more on the athletes’ ability to rise above the astounding pressure the community placed on them. The TV series, meanwhile, has made an even more drastic departure from Bissinger’s original heartrending tale.

In a recent interview with Blitz Magazine, Bissinger reflected on Permian’s 1988 season, the backlash he faced in Odessa, his complicated relationship with Boobie, and how the cottage industry that has been constructed around Friday Night Lights creeps further and further away from his central themes.

He also reiterated an apology for his tirade on HBO’s Costas Now in April 2008, in which he derided sports blogging as immature and a depressing look at the future of writing. (He regrets all the profanity, but not his message.) He also talks about the cautionary message of Friday Night Lights, and how the heart of the book, and what he sees as one of America’s biggest problems, has been almost entirely ignored. In the end, Bissinger says, the future generations of the country will be made to pay the price for our misplaced priorities.

BLITZ: In the intro to Friday Night Lights, you explain the desire to get out there and find a team that meant everything to its town and said that it might have been the acute awareness of being thirty-something, or maybe the fact that you were living in suburban Philly where all the houses look the same. So you put out a few ideas there – now, 20 years later, can you put your finger on any singular thing that made you go or one reason that was more powerful than the others?

Bissinger: I think there’s a point that comes when you’re in your mid-thirties. I had had a good career in journalism. I had won a Pulitzer Prize. I was working at a wonderful newspaper, but you reach a point where you’re either going to take a risk and do something completely different and try to fulfill a dream or you’re going to kind of continue on the same track – which can be a good track, but a very safe track. I had had this idea for a book for about a year. I had always dreamed of writing a book and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. And so once I found the town of Odessa and they gave me permission to be there, I just sort of said, ‘Let’s do this. Now is the time to do it.’ Because I knew if I continued at the Inquirer, I would just stay there. I was on the editing track. So the goal would’ve been to become editor of the paper. Whether or not I would’ve reached it, I don’t know. So it was kind of almost a do-or-die situation. Either I was going to do it then or never do it. I felt like my kids then, were five, were young enough that they could easily handle it and really see it as an adventure. The same for me: It was an adventure, and I’m a great believer in getting out of the routine of your life.

BLITZ: Right. Were you tempted to go to other towns? What other ones were out there?

Bissinger: I thought a little bit about Western Pennsylvania. Quarterback Valley was famous because of Joe Namath and Joe Montana and Tony Dorsett – who of course isn’t a quarterback … Aliquippa – towns like that. But I spoke to a recruiter from Penn State who said that it just didn’t have the same intensity that it once had. I thought a little bit about Massillon, Ohio, where they still put a little plastic football in the crib of every boy who is born in the hopes that he’ll grow up to be a great high school football player. But I just realized if you’re going to do a book like this, you have to do it in Texas, because Texas is just synonymous with high school football.

BLITZ: The book winds up being a very unflattering look at Odessa. At any point in your time down there, did it give you pause? Did you start to realize, ‘Okay, this really isn’t a story like Hoosiers anymore, and these people think it is.’ Did you ever feel like you were preying on their naiveté?

Bissinger: No. I didn’t feel that. You know, I presented my credentials, they knew who I was. They knew I had won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. They knew that I worked for a good newspaper. This was a very media-savvy team because at that point they were the winningest team in Texas State history. They had a ton of media all over the state. A book had been written about them previously – it was really a history of the team – so they weren’t that naïve. They could’ve said, ‘No.’ There was no question that I thought this would be a Hoosiers-type story, but the minute within the book when the black running back Boobie Miles got hurt, the whole dimension of the book changed. And I was there as reporter. I’m not there as a moralist. So I kept quiet, I kept my head down, and did the reporting I felt I had to do to tell a fair and accurate story.

And I don’t think it’d necessarily an unflattering portrait. I think it’s an honest portrait. I think love comes through for the independent people of Odessa. Love comes through, certainly for the kids that play on the football team. But I wasn’t going to shy away from the issues of racism and misplaced academic priorities and things like that because it would’ve been a complete dereliction of my duty as a journalist. Did I let on what I was coming up with? Absolutely not. Any journalist who would let on to that would be crazy, because people would no longer act themselves, and that’s why I was down there for a year.

BLITZ: Were you expecting then the backlash from the town?

Bissinger: Well, I wasn’t expecting the intensity where I would get threats of real bodily harm at book stores and would have to cancel book signings. … I was supposed to go back down to Odessa when the book came out to do a series of book signings at book stores. I called my publisher and they said, ‘We’re cancelling book signings. We’ve had a lot of calls from people who say we’re just going to beat the crap out of this guy.’ And I took those threats seriously, because commensurate with the book coming out, Permian had just been banned from the playoffs. They had been turned in by the rival high school in town [for holding early supervised practices in violation of rules] so the place was going crazy. And a lot of blame was directed at the book. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew that people who liked me, and I liked, would be very upset by the book. That certainly turned out to be the case with the head coach. It was not the case with the kids, who I made contact with and all of them defended the book as being true and accurate.

BLITZ: Is it hurtful at all to pour all your efforts into something like that and have it rejected by so many people that it was written about?

Bissinger: Well, it’s an interesting question. It’s hurtful in the sense that it’s inevitable when you do this kind of immersion journalism you’re going to establish relationships with people. You’re going to like people and they’re going to like you. So it was hurtful when the head coach, Gary Gaines, just completely rejected me out of hand. Now I did go back 14 years later and make amends with him on my own. I went and visited him when he was then coaching at Abilene Christian [University]. … I just showed up unannounced at his office. He saw me pass by his window and he looked like he had just seen a ghost. But I wanted to say to him, ‘Look Gary, I don’t take back a word of what I said, but there was no intent to hurt you and I tried very hard to portray you in a very positive light, which I think I did.’ And we had a very private, hour-long conversation that did not have a lot to do with the book – although he’s never read the book. He’s condemned it, but he’s never read it. He did tell me that, but it was a very wonderful conversation about our kids, our lives and our families. So it was of great meaning to me. And it also proved to me that, if I thought that book was a real slam job, I never, ever would have made that trip to Abilene.

In 2004, Sports Illustrated asked me to go down to Odessa to sort of go back and revisit. Now, I had been there before, but this is the first time I was down there publicly. I went back to all the people that had yelled and screamed the loudest – not all, but some of them – just to look them in the eye and say, ‘Look, I didn’t mean to harm you, but I don’t take back a word of what I said.’ That was important to me as a journalist and a man.

BLITZ: In that piece for SI, you mentioned that Boobie Miles – you guys had kept in touch through the years and that you had even sent him money a few times. Do you still keep in touch with him?

Bissinger: Yeah, I do. I just saw him about a month ago. We did a speaking engagement together in Mansfield, Texas, which is a suburb of Fort Worth. I talk to Boobie a lot. I love Boobie. His life has been a train wreck. It’s been very up and down. Obviously, I didn’t give him a dime during the book, but after the book came out, I felt a sense of responsibility to Boobie, particularly when his uncle died. He really had no father figure in his life. Not that I necessarily am, but he’s fallen on some very hard times from time-to-time. I just feel an obligation as a human being to try to get him through those times as well as try to get him to understand that he’s not a kid anymore, and he’s not a celebrity – although he’s bizarrely treated as one in Odessa. He needs to work, and get a career and take care of his family. … I had seen what he had been through. I had never seen a kid treated that way in my life and I hope I never will. The way he was treated by the school was horrifying, just absolutely horrifying. Like he was a nobody. More than a nobody – it was like he had done something horrible, terrible and all he had done was hurt his knee, which wasn’t his fault. But they turned on him with racism, and cruelty, and acted as if he no longer existed.

BLITZ: Was it at that point, then, that your relationship with him evolved into something that much closer?

Bissinger: It began to evolve. It really evolved [when] I went back to Odessa a few years later and I saw Boobie and I could really tell that he was floundering and I was always very, very close to L.V. (Boobie’s uncle). He’s one of the kindest and loveliest men I’ve ever met. And I sort of instinctively knew that when L.V. died, Boobie was going to be a lost soul. He didn’t have someone to help him in his life. It’s difficult when you’re living about 2,000 miles away – there’s only so much I can do, and ultimately, the responsibility is up to Boobie. He’s a man of great heart. He’s great with kids. When we did these speaking engagements, they flocked to him. He’s very honest about his story, about the real need to get an education. He’s a wonderful guy in many respects, but he’s got to learn also to assume responsibility for himself. … I do love him.

(And I’m about to see Brian Chavez next month at the College World Series. Brian Chavez and his Dad – those are the two that I’m really closest to.)

BLITZ: So with all the other players, there’s really no ill will about anything in the book?

Bissinger: Not that I’ve heard. There may be a nitpick here and there. When the book came out, I think [Mike] Winchell may have been upset by some of the indications of racism, but no, when the book came out, the kids defended it to a T, to my best recollection, that this book, this is the way it really happened. This is the way it really is. And that got me through the hard times of an entire town that was now routinely condemning me. Their support of the book meant a tremendous amount to me – that I wasn’t taking cheap shots and I wasn’t sensationalizing. And I can tell you this, after thinking about the book for 20 years, there isn’t a single cheap shot in that book.

BLITZ: So there really is no better defense if so many of the main characters say you’re telling it like it is.

Bissinger: Right. And then when I went back in 2004, people who had condemned the book – a lot of public officials, school board officials and school administrators – said, ‘Look, we hated the book when it came out, we hated you, but it was accurate. It was a look in the mirror that we really needed to take to see the way we really were. … This book actually did us a lot of good.’ … I give Odessa lot of credit for making some changes. In the meantime, their football program went to hell. It was much better last year – and that will be the real test – if Mojo comes back to anywhere close to the degree that it was when I was there, will they revert back to kind of the insanity that was there once before? But I’ve also learned that what happens in Odessa now routinely happens in hundreds of places across the country. If anything, the emphasis on high school sports has gotten much worse. So Friday Night Lights was a cautionary tale, people love talking about it as a cautionary tale, coaches love talking about it as a cautionary tale, and so do educators, but they don’t seem to do anything about it.

BLITZ: Does immersion journalism sort of demand that you erase some of these boundaries that would typically exist between a reporter and a subject? Did you go down there with your guard down so that you could get closer to these people?

Bissinger: Yeah. You go down because you want to see it first-hand. You don’t want to rely on reconstructions and you want people to trust you. I’m a journalist. I want people to open up, and the only way they’re going to do that is by your being there every day. It’s easy for someone to lie for a day. If they’re really good, maybe they can lie for a week. But beyond a week, it’s really hard to lie, and if you’re a smart reporter, you just sort of lay in the shadows as much as you can. That doesn’t mean that I’m hiding behind some bush taking notes. You just conduct your business quietly. And that’s why I wanted to be there, because I wanted to soak up as much of the team and the town as I possibly could, so that when I wrote the book, I felt I was writing with real authority as opposed to guessing or just taking some sensationalist shot as many reporters do.

BLITZ: You’ve written about so many sports, what is your favorite to cover? Is it football?

Bissinger: No. My favorite sport is actually baseball. I don’t watch football that much anymore. The thing about Friday Night Lights that made it interesting – that it was both wonderful and spectacular and an incredible spectacle when it came to those football games – and then it also had a very, very dark side to it. And that makes for great drama, and when you have great drama, you have the opportunity of writing a book that will resonate with people. You know, the games were fun to write because I sort of treated them almost like war. They weren’t just football games, they were sort of these gladiatorial spectacles that were beautiful and exciting and visceral, and a little bit nuts and a little bit crazy. They were the most exciting sporting events that I’ve ever seen.

BLITZ: And what is it about football that makes it so different than other sports – especially when you’re writing about it? Is it just that there’s so much more riding on the outcome of each game?

Bissinger: Well, I think it’s particularly different at the high school level, because especially once you got to know them, I realized these are not kids that are playing for big Division I scholarships. The year that I wrote about, there was one kid that got a Division I scholarship – Ivory Christian. These were kids who were really playing for the pride and honor of their team and of their town. That made their sense of sacrifice all the more poignant, all the more beautiful and all the more devastating in a way. That’s what I think is cool about high school sports, so I think it’s a shame that it seems to be becoming increasingly professionalized. That’s what made those games so fantastic. Pro athletes – I don’t know what pro athletes are playing for. Sometimes they’re playing for their team. Sometimes they’re playing for their salaries. Sometimes they’re playing for who the hell knows what? As we know in professional sports, there’s not much team loyalty. There certainly is very little town loyalty. In high school sports in Odessa, Texas, at that time, that’s all it was about. … They really are carrying the hopes and dreams of the town on their shoulders. They really, really are. That’s not made up. That’s not the entire town – Odessa’s not a small town in terms of population – it’s 100,000. But it’s so isolated, it has the feel of a small town. And people had come to depend on the success of Permian High School to feel good about themselves. That’s really true of sports. We do that all the time. We do it on the professional level. We do it on the college level. We do it on the high school level. And these kids had such an incredible tradition to uphold – I think the worst season in the past 25 years when I got there had been 7-2 – they were expected, obviously, to get in the playoffs. If they got into the semifinals, that was considered a good year, not a great year. If they got into the state championship, that was considered a very good year, but still, it was really considered every year that they should win. And that’s a lot of pressure.

BLITZ: The NFL was not the biggest sport in America when you wrote the book. Now, it certainly is. What factors do you think contributed to its rise?

Bissinger: I just think the NFL has done a remarkably good job of marketing itself [using] television to sort of emphasize – in a tacit and subtle, but effective way – the inherent violence of the game. Then you have all the cheerleaders who look like they’re from the pages of Penthouse. You know, they’re just very effective at marketing themselves. And America’s a pretty violent country and America revels in violence. No western country has as many killings as we do, as many murders. We have no gun control. And I think football plays into this sort of mythic sense that we have of ourselves as being independent, tough and strong – and vicious in a sense. Sort of our last vestiges of the Wild West – boys and men getting on a football field and hitting the living snot out of each other. Which is why I don’t really watch it much anymore, because I find it really unremittingly violent – and not particularly beautiful. You know, I love the Super Bowl, but I don’t watch it routinely.

I find the whole spectacle of it in college level to be the both fascinating and bizarre and the most wrong-headed thing I’ve ever seen in terms of what a university should be. There is so much energy poured into those football games that goes way beyond the number of people who fill the stands and way beyond the number of scholarships that are given. I don’t really understand it and I think there’s no western country in the world that gives out as many scholarships as we give in the United States, because we give them all to sports. And then we shake our heads and wonder why we’re sinking as a country. Well, it’s pretty obvious: our priorities are wrong, and I don’t think they’ll be righted because sports occupy such a tremendous part of our lives. Although, we get out of thinking that by reverting to this kind of Grantland Rice, rose-colored view that it’s all about teamwork and discipline and manhood and girlhood and a lot of stuff that it can be, but it no longer is. It’s only about winning. And behind winning, it’s also about greed.

BLITZ: The book is now a staple of sports-writing courses. Did you ever think that it would become so popular or be so well-received critically that future generations of sportswriters would be studying it?

Bissinger: All I knew was that I had a great story on my hands. I had been a journalist for 15 years, so I knew enough to know when you have a great story and when you don’t. And when you have a great story, you have the hope that it will be successful, and I had the hope that it would be successful. I had absolutely no idea that this book would still be in print today or that it sell close to two million copies or that the term “Friday Night Lights” which I invented, would become part of the vernacular. I had no idea about any of that that – that it would inspire a generation of sportswriters – or at least it did until I criticized their blogs. But I’ve heard stories – a guy from Brooklyn read the book and moved down to Texas and became a high school football coach – people making pilgrimages in their cars from Massachusetts just to see the stadium. The whole phenomenon of Friday Night Lights has been remarkable to me, flattering, bizarre, almost hard to believe. But I’ll take it.

BLITZ: I feel like the movie really got away from a central theme of the book which was that Odessa had this sickness – it was down on its luck, it was racist in a lot of ways, the town lived vicariously through the team – and football was a symptom of that sickness. The movie touched on some of that, but was really more about how the kids succeeded in the face of all that pressure. How do you feel about the decision to go in that direction? Certainly you had some say. (Friday Night Lights director Peter Berg is Bissinger’s cousin)

Bissinger: I understood that, and I actually did like the movie. I actually liked the movie for the reason that you cited. There’s no question that it focused on the kids and their ability to sort of rise above this monumental pressure that was being placed on their shoulders. I’m different from other authors; you know, authors bitch and moan when they sell something to Hollywood and then they don’t like how it turns out. My response to that is, ‘Then don’t sell the rights. Come on, you’re not an idiot. You’re taking the money for a reason and you’re really taking the money to shut up. And if you’re really worried about it, then don’t sell the rights.’ I had a little bit of an advantage in that the director was my cousin. So we talked a lot and he said, ‘Look, I’m not making a documentary. I’m making a Hollywood movie and there are certain themes that just don’t play well with audiences. And if I make a movie about racism, it’s just not going to sell. And I understood that. It was touched upon very, very lightly. But I felt he did get to one of the key hearts of the book, which was the monumental pressure being placed on these kids because football was at the center of life in this town, and the ability of these kids to rise above it. … There were changes that bothered me, particularly – they had Boobie coming back to the team at the end and that was obviously very different from the book. And they really terribly embellished the character of Tim McGraw, who was Don Billingsley’s father. Charlie had had his problems, but Charlie was not anywhere close to how he was portrayed and that bothered me greatly. I tried to call Charlie and he hung up on me, and he was right to do that. Not that I had anything to do with it, because I did not write the script. But I did admire the film. I thought it had a grittiness to it, and a texture to it that made it more than just your ordinary sports film.

BLITZ: And what do you think when you take into account where the TV series has gone with it, and we’re now even further away from what the book was all about?

Bissinger: I’m not a real watcher of the TV series. It may be that I’m Friday Night Light-ed out. And also, the TV series is really very, very vastly different from the book. It shares similar thematic material, but as you know, it’s set in the present day, it’s not set in Odessa, the characters are very, very different. What I’ve seen, I’ve enjoyed immensely. I think the acting is fantastic, and I think it’s really a quality show. I give NBC a lot of credit for trying to figure out a way to keep it on the air. I’m very, very proud of it, although I don’t routinely watch it.

BLITZ: The sports journalism that you read growing up – it hasn’t disappeared entirely – but certainly with the emergence of new media formats and blogs, that landscape is changing drastically. Where do you see the landscape going?

Bissinger: Well, I touched upon this on Costas, and I touched upon it in probably the most in-artful way you could touch upon it. I was too angry, which only subsumed the valid points I thought I was trying to make. The use of profanity directed at Will Leitch was just uncalled for and unnecessary, and embarrassing to him and to me. As you know, I’ve apologized for that publicly, and it’s an apology from the heart, as was my performance that night. I’m a man of passion and obviously – it’s not because I’m bitter, it’s not because I’m some old fart – it’s because I see writing going in a terrible direction. Because to me, it’s not really writing. A lot of these blogs – some of them are very good information-based blogs – but most of them are too long, most of them need editing. And in the blogs that seem to be the most successful, the writing is very glib, it’s very tongue-in-cheek, it’s very wink-and-a-nod, it’s very malicious. And I’m tired of hearing that I don’t know the difference between a post and a comment, because it’s the post that guides the comments. And I think many people read these blogs because they like to see the comments to see who can top who in terms of being the most sexist or the most racist or come up with the most ridiculous, sophomoric sexual joke. So I don’t think writing is headed in a good direction because I don’t think you can find much artful writing on blogs, outside of the mainstream blogs that exist. I’m not talking about someone like Joe Posnanski who writes a very, very good blog and is obviously a professional reporter with the Kansas City papers, or the guys who write for ESPN.

And I don’t know how many people read these blogs. Someone told me that the average readership of a blog in this country is one, and that there are 175,000 new blogs created daily, so I don’t know who reads them. I know Deadspin gets read, and it’s very, very popular. And Will Leitch seemed like a nice guy, but you’re never going to get me to say that I like Deadspin, because I don’t. I think it represents the kind of snarkiness and maliciousness and a kind of surface cruelty that I don’t like. I don’t think those types of blogs are ever going to produce an Arthur Daley or a Red Smith or a W.C. Heinz.

The danger of what’s happening now, and there’s a perfect example… You know, newspapers are fighting for their lives and don’t really know what to do. And what’s happening because of blogs, newspapers are now just printing rumor and innuendo simply because it’s on a blog. And last weekend, a blog called the Badger Blogger reported that Ned Yost was about to be fired as the manager of the Milwaukee Brewers. He cited sources close to him – no one knows who these sources are. The lead writer for the Milwaukee Brewers writes a blog, and yet, he reports this information on his blog. So now it’s running like wildfire that Ned Yost is about to get fired. Well, the question is, why would he even report that? But he’s doing it because this is the power of blogs: A rumor appears, maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, and mainstream newspapers are picking it up and now you have a story where you don’t really have a story. Well, that’s not journalism, that’s bullshit. That’s carelessness.

BLITZ: Well, certainly, traditional newspapers have made that mistake. The Boston Herald just issued an apology on the front page (for failing to verify the Super Bowl XXXVI walk-through spying story).

Bissinger: There’s no question that mainstream journalism is not perfect. I’ve written a lot about that. If you look at my work in Vanity Fair, I wrote the story “Shattered Glass” which became the movie of the same name – it was about Stephen Glass, who made up most of the stories he wrote for the New Republic. I’ve written extensively about the possible use of fabrication in the book Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, so I’m not naïve to the mistakes that mainstream reporters make. But I think blogs do trade in rumors much, much more because blogs basically trade in disinformation. There are a few blogs where I think the bloggers are going out and trying to report information, but that’s a small handful and most bloggers would admit that. And most bloggers would say, ‘That’s not what we do. We look at the game differently than you mainstream guys do and you mainstream guys are co-opted anyway. You’ve been corrupted. We look at it with fresh eyes, we look at it from a distance, we look at it the way a fan would look at it.’ And I think that’s fine. I don’t know why you have to write a blog, though. I think it’s all the American Idol syndrome of someone wanting 15 minutes of fame in the hope of discovery.

Because all these bloggers can do what I did – move to Odessa, Texas, find a story and go out and report it and write it. That’s what journalism is. People say, ‘How’d you write Friday Night Lights?’ Well I had an idea, and I seized upon it, and I found a publisher and the publisher liked the idea. You know … your credentials as a writer are not very important to publishers. What they’re really looking for are great ideas. And if you have a great idea, you’ll get a book contract. And that’s what many bloggers could do if they want. They’re not going to do it if they spend 18 pages on the latest signing by the Kansas City Royals of some backup shortstop. I mean, that’s not writing. That’s just endless blathering.

I also do want to emphasize – Profootballtalk.com is a good blog. There’s something called the Beer Leaguer which writes about the Phillies and I feel writes about the Phillies with honor and integrity and that’s a good blog. The blogs that are narrowly defined in scope and they cover one team, I find to be very good, if you like that team. But I’ve also heard of blogs that are nasty, unremittingly nasty, not just about college athletes, but about high school athletes. And I would also like to point out that everyone said I acted like the worst kind of blogger on the Costas show, which is true, with one huge difference: I didn’t hide behind some anonymous handle. I used my name, and my name is out there – my e-mail is public. One of the things all these blogs could insist upon is that everyone has to use their real names, and it has to be verified. But they won’t do that, because if people have to use their real names, they won’t say the vile things that they say. So at least I had some guts, even if it was woefully misplaced. Because I do feel badly about launching in at Mr. Leitch like that. That was simply not right.

BLITZ: Do you still believe then, that there’s room for thoughtful examination of sports and culture within that medium?

Bissinger: Well, I don’t know. It’s a new medium and it’s exponentially gaining in popularity, and normally what happens is that the bad get weeded out and the good remain. And sure, you look at the blogs that the New York Times does, and they’re really good and they’re very well reported. So there are good models out there. As I said, Joe Posnanski writes a wonderful blog filled with good narrative and he’s a really, really good writer. And you hope that’s the direction in which these blogs will go, and that, bit by bit, these blogs dedicated to who can top who in terms of the most nasty and the most vile and the most despicable and the most disgusting will weed themselves out. But it just may be we’ve become a nation of people who don’t want information, but just want to spout off their opinion about something. And that’s the danger, so it doesn’t really matter what’s right or what’s wrong, as long as someone has an opinion about it. But it’s here, and I better get used to it. I’ve gotten used to it much more in the past two weeks. I’ve looked at a lot of blogs, and as I say, there are some really good ones that really do try to get the facts right.

And rumors are going to pop up in any form of journalism and I’m not here to say that print journalism is perfect. It’s not. But if you want to find great writing, if you want to learn how to write, if you want to emulate, then go to Vanity Fair, go to The New Yorker, go The New Republic, go to The Atlantic. There are places that still try to do it right, and there are newspapers that still try to do it right. Look at Selena Roberts in Sports Illustrated. She’s fantastic.

BLITZ: Friday Night Lights really brought to the public’s attention a lot of serious issues surrounding athletics such as the role of boosters and academics. As you see it, what is a serious issue that’s out there that hasn’t gotten much attention? When you pick up a newspaper or a sports magazine, what do you feel that the conversation is missing?

Bissinger: What I think is missing in the conversation is that every now and then you’ll read some story somewhere condemning the overemphasis of sports in high school, college, or even in grade school. But for every one of those stories, there are about a thousand that endlessly extol and prop up sports. I think sports has reached a crisis point in our society. It is vastly overemphasized. And I think too many kids, men and women are going to school simply so they can play a sport in the hopes of getting a scholarship. I think it’s ridiculously overemphasized at the college level. You know, I used the example of the University of Chicago. It dropped out of the Big 10 when really it was at its peak. Jay Berwanger had won a Heisman trophy three or four years earlier, and that school has more professors who have won the Nobel Prize than any school in the country. So they didn’t suffer from dropping football, and the reason football was dropped because the president … felt that it was simply not compatible with the academic experience. I mean we are just becoming drenched in sports. We’re forcing kids to specialize at the ages of five and six. Anyone who’s experienced a travel team knows the horror of that. You know the number of horrible incidents in Little League that stretch around the world, and we’re not paying attention to it. And we better pay attention to it because life is different now. There’s China. There’s India. The world is global in the sense of countries that we never heard about when I was growing up – and made fun of – are not only catching up to us, they’re surpassing us. And unless we realize that the purpose of life in school is to focus academically, we’re going to be left behind in the dust, because we are a country that makes nothing, that produces nothing. We are dependent on our consumerism, and that’s not a good place to be in.

BLITZ: So really, the cautionary tale of Friday Night Lights – how do you feel that the central theme of this overemphasis has only gotten much worse?

Bissinger: Well, it’s a book that people read and it momentarily makes them think, and pause, and say, ‘Wow, maybe sports is overemphasized.’ Maybe they think that for 10 minutes, maybe they think that for an hour, or maybe think about it for a couple of weeks. But I think in the end they revert to continuing to simply overemphasize sports.

LIKE THE REST OF HIS TEAM, TYREE STILL FIGHTS FOR RESPECT

ALBANY, N.Y. — No player epitomizes the New York Giants’ current predicament more perfectly than David Tyree.

At this point in a career like his, the fear and doubt surrounding status in training camp should have dissipated, his accomplishments allowed to stand alone. But even after a Super Bowl performance for the ages, the one-time Pro Bowler can’t seem to shake the “hustler” and “gamer” tags that were hung around his neck when he entered the league as a sixth-round draft pick out of Syracuse in 2003. As a team, the Giants find themselves in similar territory; the reigning Super Bowl champs are widely regarded as a team that simply got hot at the right time, and aren’t even favored to win the NFC East, much less repeat.

Whether any of that’s really true is immaterial, according to Tyree.

“I think it’s a great thing,” Tyree said Wednesday after practice at SUNY Albany. “I think it’s a great predicament to be in. You’ve got a lot of teams that feel like they got robbed last year. But the main thing when you line up against a team, you (try to) win the football game, and that’s all we’re about. It doesn’t matter how many games you won during the regular season. We want to put ourselves in a position to win the championship.”

It’s unlikely the Giants would have become NFL champions without him, and yet all signs point to the fact that Tyree – who in April underwent arthroscopic surgery on his right knee – will enter his sixth season with no starting job, left to make his mark as he has every year – in the stuntman trenches of special teams.

He realizes that every season for the rest of his career may be marked by deep uncertainty in late summer, and the plain truth remains that even if Tyree were completely healthy, his previous contributions wouldn’t have given him any kind of advantage heading into camp. While he has become an overnight celebrity, twice grabbing the cover of Sports Illustrated this year – both times for his now-legendary “helmet catch” – he is once again starting from scratch within the only organization he’s ever played for.

He has just one request as you consider all the details: Don’t dare feel sorry for David Tyree.

“God has done mighty things in my life, and I’d be a fool to overlook it,” he said.

Tyree is as eager to talk theology as he is about the minutiae of evading blocks on the kickoff unit to get downfield for a tackle. Down time in his dorm room at Albany is usually spent reading the Bible. The instant recognition he now enjoys for his three-catch, one-touchdown performance in the Giants’ 17-14 upset of the Patriots has him smiling even wider these days, only not for the reasons you might expect.

“It’s given me a great opportunity to share my faith, ministry, and the things I do off the field,” Tyree said. “Those are the things that have more impact and more prestige in my eyes than anything.”

A devout Christian, Tyree founded a ministry project called Next in Line in 2006 with his wife, Leilah. Next in Line organizes field trips for New Jersey teenagers, helping to provide the direction Tyree himself lacked as a youth. He battled drugs and alcohol throughout his life and said his wakeup call came in a jail cell in 2004 when he was busted for possessing a half-pound of marijuana.

Tyree’s message isn’t bombastic, but seeks a way to make Jesus somewhat cooler for the younger generation. At a Christian rally called the Greater New York Battle Cry, held shortly after the Super Bowl, Tyree was greeted with thunderous applause when he walked on stage wearing a baseball cap that said “Jesus” and a custom hockey jersey bearing the same name scrawled across the front.

When talking about the Super Bowl, Tyree told the crowd, “It wasn’t about me. I deflect every moment. … Only by the grace of God. I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

Patriot fans might agree. Tyree caught only four passes during the regular season, and wasn’t known for much besides his ability to down punts inside the five-yard line. A late-season injury to wide receiver Sinorice Moss gave Tyree some extra reps, and a chance to show his mettle on the grandest stage of all.

Tyree now hopes to be physically ready for the team’s first regular-season contest on Sept. 4, and possibly the final preseason game. But until he can get on the field to prove to coaches that he hasn’t lost a step, his job remains up in the air. Giants head coach Tom Coughlin seemed careful to show gratitude for all that Tyree has done, but didn’t dispute that with the exception of Plaxico Burress and Amani Toomer, there’s uncertainty surrounding the wide receiver position.

“Every time we’ve asked him to play and perform, he’s done the job,” Coughlin said of Tyree on Wednesday. “The sooner he gets back on the field, the sooner he gets evaluated and everything. His role has always been there to be taken.”

This, of course, wasn’t news to Tyree.

“Unfortunately, I would love to say that (the Super Bowl) made even more of a statement,” he said. “Most of the coaches know that I can go out there and compete. I think more of the issue is they have interest in other players and want to see other players there.”

Perhaps part of Tyree’s deferential attitude when talking about his own situation comes from the fact that even in college, he was willing to do whatever was necessary to get on the field. As a two-year starter for the Orangemen, Tyree finished with 1,214 receiving yards and six touchdowns, marks easily overshadowed by his uncanny ability as a special teams player. In two years, the six-foot, 206-pound native of Montclair, N.J. racked up 50 special teams tackles, including 36 solo, with a forced fumble, a punt return for a touchdown and five blocked kicks.

That proficiency carried over to the NFL, and in 2005 he was named to the Pro Bowl as the NFC’s special teams player with 21 tackles. The Super Bowl aside, his main value to the team hasn’t been as a wide receiver, a fact he seems perfectly comfortable with.

“My aim when I came into the league wasn’t to say I was the greatest receiver of all time,” Tyree said. “I just want to be a great football player.”

Proving he’s still a great football player will have to wait at least another two weeks, until team doctors give him the go-ahead. When he returns, competition will be fierce as receivers including Moss, Steve Smith and third-round pick Mario Manningham will have had close to a month of evaluation under their belts. In the meantime, Tyree stands aside, observes practice and chats with Burress, who has remained sidelined throughout camp with a sore ankle that has bothered him since 2007.

Burress will undoubtedly reclaim his mantle as the Giants’ go-to offensive weapon. Tyree will try to get on the field in any capacity that he can manage.

“I’m not really a wide receiver,” Tyree said. “I’m a football player, and that just happens to be the position I play. I felt like if you give me a little bit of time and tell me to go play safety … I’d get that down, too.”

For the Giants as a whole, Tyree says the lessons of 2007 – in which an inconsistent team gelled just in time to overcome a seemingly unstoppable Goliath – provide all the guidance they need to overcome any doubts about 2008.

“That’s the beauty of the game of football,” he said. “It’s about selflessness and it’s about team to the point where if you can lay aside your agenda just that much for the good of this team, then you’ll find more beauty in it.”

Appeared in the Bennington Banner, Saturday, August 2, 2008

DIESEL-POWERED: McVAY’s DRIVE DOESN’T STOP AT THE EDGE OF THE WRESTLING MAT

RUTLAND — By the time you’ve figured out where he’s coming from, it’s too late. Matt McVay just killed you, plastering your goggles all shades of red, blue and green – a cruel death in the world of competitive paintball. Don’t feel bad. He’s a master sneak, crawling on his belly for as long he needs to, never making a sound as he gets into position.

Fun and games, it would seem, to anyone who doesn’t know the senior at Mount Anthony Union High School very well. Those that do know that paintball is no mere hobby for him. He plays out each scenario as if it really were a life or death situation, and when he gets you in his sights, you’re a terrorist about to take your last breath.

Parents take heart: McVay is the antithesis of the socially ostracized problem teens that have been known to play out such fantasies in their lunch rooms. He is a picture of well-adjusted youth – a dynamo in the classroom who is on the cusp of claiming his second-straight Vermont state wrestling championship in the 189 pound weight-class for the Patriots. He and his teammates form an historic group poised to win the program’s 20th-straight state title, which would set a new national record.

It is an impressive resume, and has turned McVay into a wrestling recruit at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where he has every intention of being accepted and spending four fruitful years.

Physically, he is an unusual specimen for a high school senior, even by super-jock standards. Thick, round veins wander his shoulders and biceps like tree roots searching for water, and every one of his opponents at this weekend’s state meet in Rutland will be greeted by an understated confidence that would seem light years away from his true destructive potential on the mat, which is evidenced by a career varsity record of 144-32. Eighteen of those losses came in his sophomore year, which was his first on varsity. He went on to lose just seven times in both his junior and senior seasons, and if all goes according to his plan, he won’t be losing again.

As for his obsession with paintball – it’s simply the safest career training he could think of. He has known since the fifth grade that he would one day be a Navy SEAL. Shockingly, it is a desire that has never wavered. Not once in the last eight years did he consider the odds of becoming a SEAL (so named for their combat skills in Sea, Air and Land) to be too long. Likewise, the chances of getting into the ultra-competitive Naval Academy never struck him as too far-fetched.

It makes a bit more sense, however, when you realize that McVay has never been deterred by much of anything, and any setbacks in his life have only served to galvanize his focus.

His interest in guns and guerilla tactics coincided with the birth of his passion for the gym. It started when McVay saw the Rambo movies, and, being a fifth grade boy at the time, he didn’t dismiss them as preposterous. He started thinking career.

“As soon as I heard about it and knew what it was, I knew it was what I wanted to do,” McVay said of being a SEAL, the closest real-life equivalent of Stallone’s invincible war machine.

Around the same time, McVay started gaining weight. They were useful pounds for a lineman-type – McVay was a center for Mount Anthony Union Middle School – but he had already begun reading a memoir by a Navy SEAL and started to realize that peak physical conditioning was the precursor to all his daydreams about hunting the enemy.

It’s hard to imagine that the senior who is announced at home meets as “Diesel” was ever soft around the middle, but like every failing that has come since, he vowed to make it temporary, a stepping stone to self-improvement.

“I was always the kid who finished everything on his plate,” McVay said, explaining how an infomercial for Jackie Chan’s Cable Flex piqued his interest in fitness, and after he convinced his father Kirke to order it, a new love for training was born. By the time he hit seventh grade, the Jackie Chan contraption was replaced by Chuck Norris’ Total Gym. As an eighth-grader, no semblance of the formerly heavy-set boy existed.

“He was tall and gangly with no muscle,” said MAU varsity wrestling head coach Scott Legacy, explaining that the McVay opponents now fear was built over long hours in the gym with free weights. “It wasn’t just because it happened. He made it happen.”

Because he is also a linebacker and defensive end for the varsity football team, McVay’s off-season stretches from March to August. Five days of each of those weeks are spent in the gym. Nearly every waking moment is dedicated to being a better wrestler – and someday a better soldier. Coach Legacy has several times happened upon McVay during these off-season workouts.

“In the summer, he’s always out on the track, running and doing pushups,” Coach Legacy said. “He’s a health freak.”

While personal fitness became a major priority for McVay in junior high, he knew little of wrestling outside of the two years he spent with a youth program in Kindergarten and first grade – which he only joined because his close friend Scott Legacy II, Coach Legacy’s son, was part of the team.

It wasn’t an experience that stuck with McVay. Coach Legacy fondly recalls that his son’s friend was nowhere to be found at the start of some matches when his name was called. (McVay could invariably be tracked down on the playground outside.)

As it has been with everything in his life, his return to wrestling and the start of his successful high school career began with a small failure.

“I went to Sacred Heart my whole life, and I was usually the biggest kid there, so there wasn’t too much competition,” McVay said of his dominance in schoolyard arm-wrestling matches. “I started working out in sixth grade, so the gap grew even further.”

At least until he met Ben D’Agostino in a summer camp at Lake Shaftsbury. The name became branded into McVay’s memory – he would never forget the boy who dealt him his first arm-wrestling loss.

“He said he got real strong from wrestling,” said McVay, recalling that he later asked D’Agostino for his secret.

That was enough for McVay. He joined the MAUMS eighth grade team and hasn’t looked back since, drinking in every moment of pain in the wrestling room as if he were studying for the unprecedented trials that await him in SEAL training.

Navy wrestling and SEAL qualification will likely make McVay look back fondly on his days under Legacy, though the coach’s reputation is anything but soft.

Before those dreams of hunting down terrorists can come to fruition (McVay hasn’t been accepted at the Academy yet) there are the small matters of wrapping up another individual state championship, taking his place in national high school sports history with the rest of his teammates and avenging his 2007 showing at New Englands, where he lost to the eventual champion by a single point.

Just one of those accomplishments would be a major milestone for most, but there is no doubt in McVay’s mind that all of it will happen. When asked if MAU stood any chance of failing in its quest for the record-setting championship, McVay flatly replied, “No.”

That sort of certainty – some would call it naïveté – is something that continues to endear McVay to his teammates and coaches. It also makes for a few good inside jokes amongst friends. After all, what high school kid would pass up a chance to take a crack at the guy whose life was changed by Rambo and infomercials, who considers paintball an art form and who does homework before practice to keep his grades up for Annapolis?

“Even if he gets picked on for it a little, it doesn’t bother him,” Coach Legacy said. “He’s got a stick-to-itiveness, athletically and academically. Setbacks don’t hurt him at all.”

For any jokes there have been, there is quiet admiration, too. Each of his accomplishments is a testimony to his own willpower and his mantra that if someone else has done something, there’s no reason that he can’t do it, too.

“I’m not willing to admit that anyone is that much better than [me],” McVay said.

The persistence that has defined his wrestling career and much of his life will very likely end up getting Matt McVay everything he’s ever wanted in the world – right down to the country house in Vermont where he plans to settle one day, provided he finds enough property to stage large-scale paintball battles.

Coach Legacy chuckled to himself and considered the idea for a moment before saying, “He will.”

From the Bennington Banner, Saturday, February 23, 2008

ON THE MEND, AND LEARNING TO NEVER SAY NEVER

The nurse seemed confused, so she asked me again.

“Are you sure you don’t have to go to the bathroom?”

“No,” I said, my head falling left and right in a drug-induced haze.

“Really? Because it’s been about six hours.”

I was defiant.

“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

At that very moment, I tried to sit up, steadied my hands on the mattress and found myself wrapped in warm, wet sheets. The same drugs that had reduced my cognitive functions to that of a two-year old had done the same to my bladder control.

I began babbling like a drunk.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “So, so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“I’m so embarrassed,” I muttered, the shame literally rolling off my tongue with a small bit of drool. “And I’m so, so sorry.”

The nurse steadied my feet and helped me into the wheelchair. Once settled, she looked me square in the eye as I continued to apologize.

“I work in a hospital,” she said. “This doesn’t faze me.”

A couple hours later, I was shipped home; my soiled underwear wrapped in a plastic bag, my surgically repaired knee set in an immobilizer, the pain blocked by a cocktail of drugs strong enough to paralyze a bull. In my case, they left me blissfully unaware of the surgeon’s handiwork – a freshly drilled hole in my femur through which he attached my new ACL.

The week that followed was worse than the surgery itself, and far worse than the hit that finished my season. A nerve block left me only vaguely aware of the reconstructed knee, and a spinal dose of morphine had numbed everything below the waist, which, incidentally, was responsible for my post-op incontinence. On top of that, my doctor kept my bloodstream flooded with Vicodin and Oxycontin, leaving each brain cell with that fresh, just-scrubbed-with-bleach feeling.

Two days out of the hospital and I couldn’t decide which I’d rather deal with – the throbbing pain in my knee when I didn’t take my pills or the blathering imbecile they created when I did. By the time I woke up on the fourth day, I could only see a series of odd shapes, and I clutched the sides of my skull, certain that someone had driven a railroad spike through my brain. I rolled out of bed and crawled into the bathroom, threw back the porcelain lid and heaved my guts into the toilet. I spent the rest of the day staring at the ceiling, a base drum raging in the back of my head, keeping perfect rhythm with my heartbeat.

Through process of elimination, Oxycontin found the trash and I stopped puking.

It’s been a few weeks since surgery. Major pain has subsided and my follow-up appointments have gone well. Physical therapy is a new challenge with barely perceptible progress. My “Russian stim” sessions are particularly nauseating; an electronic pulse is delivered through a pair of electrodes attached to my quadriceps and shocks me intermittently over the course of 10 minutes in the hopes of waking up the dormant muscle, which, after surgery, deteriorated from healthy and hard to something more akin to a bowl of Jello.

You can save your sympathies for someone who deserves them. What I’m going through right now is painful and disgusting, but I chose this, knowing full well the potential for serious injury. None of that foresight stopped me from joining the Storm and giving tackle football one more go. As I told my teammates in a short speech I delivered at our year-end banquet last weekend, there’s a good reason most football players stop after their high school and college years have passed, and I was living proof standing before them, hunched over a pair of crutches.

But semi-pro football players, myself included, lack the ability to say when. The desire to reclaim former abilities and re-ignite the associated feelings of accomplishment often overwhelms our better judgment, though one could argue that many football players have deficient reasoning centers to begin with. That’s not a knock. I actually mean it as a compliment, and it’s likely one of the reasons I never made it far as a player. To be truly great, you can’t care about what happens when you’re running full speed into what often feels like a car crash, and I’ve only ever been able to suspend my obsession with physical consequence for short periods of time. You’re talking about someone whose fear of heights forces him to crouch low to the ground when he gets near a window in a tall building, someone who once got a case of vertigo so severe when he stared up at the Bennington Monument that he began hyperventilating and had to go wait out in the car, the stationary obelisk safely at his back.

Can a guy like that become a good football player? Maybe if he works his butt off. But a great football player? Never.

Then again, I never set out to be a great football player. I only set out to see what makes them tick. I set out to see why men far past their physical prime couldn’t give up this game. My columns throughout the year allowed me to play out a fantasy as a very poor-man’s George Plimpton, gave me a chance to think out loud, and to highlight some of these men. In the end, all I learned was that there is no definitive answer to our own self-destructive nature.

Bob Kurtzner, the team’s strength and conditioning coach and a former college wide receiver was similarly fascinated by this question. One night after practice, he shrugged his shoulders and offered an open-ended theory.

“There’s a lot going on between the ears of someone who would do this,” he told me. “Either they never got to take it as far as they wanted to, or they want to prove that they can still do it. There are a lot of guys on this team, so there are a lot of different reasons.”

While the answer to that question didn’t offer that neat tie-up to all the loose ends that every writer looks for, I only thought coming into this that there was the potential to find one great story. It turns out I found more than 50 great stories, a lucky turn of events, but one that broke my heart because I only got to touch on a few of them.

I owe a lot to the friends I made on this team, particularly Bill Hay, who found he had a new shadow after the first day of tryouts who forced him to explain the ins and outs of our offense and defense. I’m a lousy study partner, but Bill and tight end Tim Smith were gracious, and acted as walking cheat sheets for me throughout the year. The thanks could go on for another 1,000 words, and would eventually name every player on the team. Those not named still know who they are, and are owed a debt of gratitude.

Playing with the Storm was more fun than I ever thought possible, but my future in semi-pro football is very much in question. Few can afford to limp around injured for six months at a time, and my new – and thankfully temporary – handicap has been a burden to a lot of people in my life. I owe it to them to think this through for a long while before jumping back in.

Either way, I hereby declare whatever decision I make to be subject to change for the rest of my life. Many of my teammates said long ago they would never play again, only to find that the game had stalked them for the rest of their adult lives, and dragged them out of warm, cozy living rooms right in front of their children.

The only real lesson in any of this is that you never say never, and the only thing worse than getting seriously hurt is admitting that you were too scared to throw yourself into the eye of the storm.

“I, of the Storm” from the Bennington Banner, Saturday, December 15, 2007

Note: Assistant Sports Editor Matt Tuthill recently underwent ACL reconstruction on his left knee for an injury sustained in his third game with the Southern Vermont Storm. His cleat stuck in a clump of grass and he was blocked to the turf, tearing the ligament and medial meniscus. The season has been finished for more than two months, but the lingering effects have turned out to be more than he bargained for. In his final “I, of the Storm” column, he explains why.