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Message: [QUOTE="BillSU, post: 4440027, member: 6809"] Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the starters on our football team had the talent, skills and instinct of Andre Cisco? We play a sport that is unforgiving. It is very challenging. It does take prisoners and they get tired of their bodies being damaged for a long time. They give up their bodies for a sport they may make millions from. If they’re lucky they retire whole, still walking with their own knees, or the less fortunate titanium ones. That is what you grew up playing to get to from a kid. Then all the hours in the weight room in high school. On the practice field hitting a sled or a bag or each other over and over and over. Sprinting from one end of a field to another for conditioning. Running the miles for the same. Throwing the ball a thousand times. A scholarship to college, then repeat everything. At camp in August two a days, your shirt and jock strap you can wring your sweat from. Your face is red and hot but the coaches push for every ounce of energy you have that day and damn it, read the play book! Get your blocking assignments right. What was that play? Even if you are not blocking, you are the quarterback, YOU are supposed to know what everyone on the team is doing on that play! Stay after practice and work to get it down, get better. Hit your receivers even if you can’t lift your arm and they can’t run anymore. Sometimes you drop back and get hit with a helmet in the chest when you shouldn’t have because of the red vest you’re wearing and your heart feels like it’s going to break or stop and you become very anxious as though it really is and you wait for it to be OK. And, sometimes when you’ve done all this and you feel like you’re ready and are catching passes in a line full of others who are not as good as you, as good as you or better – HUT, and you run a route straight, ten yards against a DB who’s right on you but you plant, make a quick cut left to the inside across the middle and leave him trying to catch up and suddenly your on the ground and you look up and he’s there looking down at you but you can’t see him or think or feel anything but the pain in one of your knees – but nobody touched you but the sport you signed up for when you were ten. It happens and it doesn’t, if you are lucky, you don’t get hurt and you make that one on one block and push him out of the way and the back breaks free for a long gain or that double team or throw the long go route - you don’t see it but you hear the roar as the receiver catches the ball for a touchdown, or cover the guy coming across the middle and you read the quarterbacks eyes and you just know the ball is coming your way and it hits you right in the chest and you run it back avoiding tackles and run out of bounds and the feeling is amazing. It was all worth it. Then you don’t think about all the reps, all the sprints all the balls you caught till you thought you were going to drop and IT IS wonderful. It is what it is. It’s football. Aren’t you fortunate you got to play? [/QUOTE]

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