Just so you know this is about American football, not the one that most people call "real football." I can't help my upbringing and had no idea the world referred to the sport as anything other than soccer until I was a teenager. Sue me.
When I was young I was encouraged by my amazing parents to get involved in as many sports as possible. I participated in nearly every sport you can imagine and excelled at most of them. The only exception was baseball which was something that I just never got good at and was resigned to playing in left field because that is where all coaches put the worst player on the team because the ball rarely ends up over there.
The two sports that I excelled at the most was soccer and football and I was largely considered to be the best or one of the best players on any team I played on in both sports.
I was a very busy boy because sometimes the seasons for both of these sports overlapped and there were also times that there were games for both sports happening at the same time and I had to make a choice which one I was going to play in. Both coaches really wanted me to be playing for them but they were not allowed to force me to play for one or the other, so it was left up to me. I have to admit that it felt pretty good being so wanted and at times I was a bit arrogant because of it. I'm still searching for one of the soccer coaches that I had in high school to apologize for how I treated him. Teenagers are assholes and I was no exception.
I played many positions in football but the spots I excelled at was wide receiver or tight end and if you don't know what tight end it, it is a running and catching hybrid position where you are sometime lead on a pass route and other times you are pitched the ball for a run. It's a fun position for someone that can do both.
As I got a bit older in my teenage years I kind of tapered out as far as my weight was concerned and I was around 170 to 175 lbs. At nearly 6 feet tall as well this is the perfect size for a soccer player but it is a bit on the small side for a football player. To give you an example the average weight of college wide receiver is 213 lbs and a tight end is about 220-230. I was still able to excel at a lighter weight because I was very fast and could most of the time get ahead of the person who was marking me and sometimes this would be very frustrating for the opposition because sometimes it didn't matter who they put on me, I was just a lot faster than they were and provided the quarterback made a good pass I would catch it almost every time.
Well one day we were playing a team that overall was categorically better than we were and the major problem we were facing was that their defensive line was much better than our offensive line so the QB didn't have enough time for me to get very far down the field so those kind of passes simply weren't working.
While this was normally not something we would do we had no choice but to run shorter pass routes and one of them is a play that is called many things but most commonly referred to as a "slant"
Although that is not where I would generally start out on the line of scrimmage, I would have been the guy who is the "Y" in the picture above and I am the intended receiver in this play. In a game where a team has many good receivers, this can be a very effective play because the defense has to make educated guesses about where the ball is going but with my team, the opposition already knew before the ball was likely going to number 47 (me) on a lot of our passing plays. On a slant play, you are much closer to a lot of people looking to tackle you than you would normally be if you are doing a long play downfield. You are subjected to linebackers as well as the secondary and therefore this is a much riskier play that is intended for small yard gains.
When you are a receiver you have to keep your eyes on the QB to see when he releases the ball so basically you are running blind and you also have to keep in mind that your vision is inhibited by the helmet itself.
I was running my 175 lb ass off to get up some steam, caught the perfect pass right in the numbers and hadn't even fully turned my head to look upfield when I got completely blindsided by a guy that weighed 50 lbs more than I did. I heard my body crunch when he his me and basically I got airborne.
This is well before football had rules about excessive force in tackles and he didn't get penalized for absolutely smashing me, instead he was applauded and even I didn't hold it against him because I would have done exactly the same thing if I played on defense. He didn't KO me, but it took me a minute to get my bearings and I just stayed on the ground not moving for a while. To say I got the wind knocked out of me would be an understatement. I got completely rattled and didn't play the rest of the game out of fear of broken ribs which thankfully was not the case. I did have a nasty bruise on my chest for a while after that though.
We lost that game badly and probably would have even if I hadn't exited early in the first half. However, the damage to our team was far more long-standing that just losing this one game. That hit, and the pain and shock that came along with it was something that stayed in my mind for a very long time after that. I became almost useless on slant plays because I wouldn't keep my eyes on the QB out of fear of getting blindsided again. It really sticks with you man, taking a hit like that, it's not something that most people can just shake off and get up and go at it again. I was basically useless on short yardage plays of that sort from that point forward and there was no amount of practicing that could get "the fear" out of me.
Also keep in mind that I was 15 years old and I am proud of myself for walking off the field after that and not crying.. haha
This would be the last season that I played American football as it was decided between the coaches of both teams that my real future lied in soccer and even though I enjoyed football more than soccer, I am very grateful that the coaches had that conversation with me because it lead to me focusing entirely on soccer and eventually getting a division-1 athletic scholarship to a school that normally costs $30,000 a year. I don't think that it would be very realistic to think that a 175 lb guy would be offered a scholarship to play football at any school, let alone a prestigious Division-1 school like UNC.
But the fact remains that I was shell shocked by that one play and I couldn't shake it. It was in my head every single snap that we did because it was that jarring. I haven't played football in years but I am sure that I would still be very concerned about taking a hit like that again. In football, you expect to get hit but most of the time you have a brief moment to brace yourself for it, but not in the case that I had. I have to imagine that the linebacker saw the route and got a full head of steam towards me for quite a while before I even had the ball.
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while not exactly the same situation, this is now against the rules in the NFL
There is often an argument or poking fun at American football because they wear "all that armor" and people in other sports such as rugby, do not and this somehow makes them tougher. I don't care to engage in that conversation because I would be willing to bet that the good players in both sports are hard as nails. The point in mine and many other people's situation's with taking big hits like this is that I could have been very seriously injured or even have died if I wasn't wearing "all that armor."
I don't often think about my time excelling at American football because these accomplishments are overshadowed by how excellent I became at football of the soccer variety, but that memory of that devastating hit is something that stick with me to this day. I can recall the images inside my head even today 30 years later.