My Football Story

Not everyone in this football-crazy city has to have a football story, but I do. And after 41 years here, maybe the time is right to finally tell it. After all, at this time of year, is anyone in Pittsburgh not thinking about football?

My story begins just downriver from Pittsburgh, in a little town called Cincinnati, where, in my family, football was a big deal. My grandfather held the University of Cincinnati Bearcats touchdown and scoring record for 60 years. My great-uncle has the longest touchdown in U.C. history — 104 yards. And his son became a Cincinnati legend one night at a high school game in the 1930s. He was out of commission with a broken leg when an opposing player ran down the sidelines for a break-away touchdown. Dropping his crutches, Uncle Buzzy dove onto the field — cast and all — and tackled him.

Not surprisingly, my first memory, at age 2, is of my Dad rolling a football to me. By age 5, I was on the pee-wee football team. At 6, I was the only first-grader to join the lunchtime recess game. I was the last kid picked and after being ignored the first several games, I realized most of the fourth- and fifth-graders didn’t know who I was or even what team I was on. So I decided to trick the opposing quarterback. When he was getting rushed and had to get rid of the ball, I (a defender) stood on the line of scrimmage, waving my arms frantically, calling, “I’m open!” In desperation, he threw me the ball. I caught it — a stealth interception — and returned it the opposite way for a quick touchdown, getting sudden recognition from my older teammates, who laughed at their fifth-grade classmate for getting tricked by a first-grader. In 16 years of football, it would be one of my best plays.

Football was part of the vernacular of childhood, including the variation, “Kill the Man with the Ball.” Games in the yard were the best — our bones were young, and the ground was soft. Stiff-arms, long bombs, onside kicks and fumbles. Epic controversies spurred the greatest kid legal minds to square off in urgent debate.

Organized football was different: our first unhappy dose of regimentation and the yoke. But it was expected of boys to play, and if you could do it, you did. By fifth grade, I was a little league football veteran. In the one such game I recall, I was playing nose tackle, the center of the defense. My job was to get past the center and attack the ball. After evading the center, I looked up just in time for a head-on collision with the running back. We both fell down. The next play, the same thing. Bewildered, I wasn’t sure what had happened until I heard our roughneck coach yelling on the sideline: “Doug’s decking him every time!” Little league coaches were a varied lot, but they had one thing in common: they made their sons the quarterback.

By high school, you were firmly in the clutches of the football military complex. In my suburb, coaches were hired for sports, not teaching ability. And on the field, they had power. Until freshman year, when Ohio mandated water breaks, anyone asking for water was ridiculed and denied. My Dad once told me there would be people who would make it their business to stop me from getting ahead, and the first time it happened was in football. Sophomore year, I was the second biggest and second fastest guy on the team. I’d wanted to be running back like my grandfather, but the JV coach didn’t like me for some reason, so on offense, I rode the bench. When someone got hurt late in the season, I got into the game and had 45 yards on four carries. “Hey Heuck, what got into you on Saturday?” the coach asked. I replied, “It’s not what got into me — it’s that I got into the game.”

After that, I skipped football junior year but re-entered the fray in my senior year, reporting to two-a-day August practices — by all accounts, more grueling than basic military training. It meant two long weeks of pain, exhaustion, heat and sweat, but by the end, we were in the best shape of our lives, hardened by relentless running and brutal drills. The worst was lining up 10 yards apart and crashing into each other like rams butting heads. Practice was so painful that before we went out, we’d swallow a handful of aspirin and a swig of whiskey.

Because I skipped junior year, the coaches kept me at second string tight end and third string middle linebacker until part-way through the first game (which we lost) when I became first string in both spots — playing both ways, as we called it. Our school was smaller than the others we played, but we won eight in a row by big margins. In my suburb — Mariemont — on home game Friday evenings, the high school band marched through town and by game time, a sellout crowd of adults was in a fever pitch as kids chased each other under the bleachers. As we left the locker room before one game, primed for violence with the bass drums pounding and our metal cleats clacking on the asphalt as we neared the field and the stadium lights, my friend Bob Keyes, a soft-spoken math and science guy, stopped me. “You know, Doug, if we did what we’re about to do anywhere else, we’d be arrested for it.”

We had a great team with a handful of outstanding — by high school standards — players. And I was one. Five of the six coaches in the league stopped me after the games and said I was the best middle linebacker they’d faced. My friend Kenny Fields was Cincinnati’s leading ground gainer that season, thanks in part to an option sweep play, in which I blocked and “sealed” the defensive end. Our quarterback, Todd Bodnar, another great player, carried the ball until a defensive back was about to tackle him — then he pitched it to Kenny, who raced for a 70-yard touchdown.

We were very good, indeed, but one game — and one play — gave me a dose of perspective. We were on our way to killing the Milford Eagles 42–6. I’d yet to get a good shot at their thin, athletic quarterback, until one play. He dropped back to pass, but our defensive line knifed in, forcing him right up the middle: my lair. I sprang to deliver a massive hit. The next thing I knew, I had two handfuls of nothing but grass. He’d been right in front of me and I hadn’t even touched him. The mystery eased four years later when, as an All-American at Navy, he nearly won the Heisman Trophy before going pro with the Raiders. His name was Napoleon McCallum, and the lesson was this: You may think you’re good, but there’s always someone at a completely different level.

Our final game for the league championship was against Sycamore, three times our size. They’d studied our plays — the sweep — and they were ready. They lined up their defensive end five yards outside me, so I couldn’t seal him in. At half-time, our head coach yelled, “Where’s Heuck? Where’s Doug Heuck?” He was a big guy, 6’8″, and he came over and slapped my face, demanding to know why I couldn’t seal the defensive end. “He’s lining up five yards outside me. It’s not possible,” I shot back. “We have to cut the play inside him.” It was close, but we lost the game because of a poor coaching decision at the end. Our coach was a good guy, but young and a bit of a hothead. He went on to have a long, successful career with the district. Five years later, when I was a young Pittsburgh reporter, a local coach got in trouble for a similar incident. I wrote a story putting it in context. People who thought a slap in the face was outrageous had no idea of the violence players endured and inflicted every day. A slap was like a mosquito bite, and I harbored no ill will.

It had been a great season and all that remained was using football to get into college. I’d be a shoo-in for All Conference and All-State was possible. I had no intention of playing college ball, but all these colleges — I only applied to the top four eastern schools — needed football players, and two had flown me up for recruiting visits. But when the Conference and State awards were announced, lots of guys on the team got them, but I didn’t. I couldn’t believe it, given what the opposing coaches had told me, but an older assistant coach shook his head and said the coach hadn’t put me up for awards. He played favorites, and I wasn’t one.

In my somewhat incestuous public high school, I lived between cliques. I didn’t fit the “jock” mold the coaches wanted. Nor did I fit the “nerd” mold teachers wanted. My senior year, the air was thick with toxic animosity. The next year, the teachers launched a bitter strike — at the time, the longest in U.S. public education history — and ultimately, all the strikers were fired. I learned later that the teacher who wrote my college recommendation letters had torpedoed my applications, but on April 15, I was surprised to receive four thin rejection letters.

***

In early May, my mother and I drove up to Kenyon College in central Ohio for a very late interview. Kenyon was used to this kind of thing, but it was awkward. John Kushan, the admissions director, was an old pro, and at one point there was a long pause, while he waited to see what I’d say. I couldn’t think of anything, so I said, “What’s your football program like?”

He brightened and set up a meeting with Coach Tom McHugh. So I had to go down to the fieldhouse, a giant ramshackle Quonset hut with a too-small indoor track and offices on the side. When I knocked at the open door, McHugh turned in his swivel chair and stood up. He was a big guy, 6’3″, weighing probably 220, with wavy brown hair and a noticeable lazy eye (I have a slight lazy eye, too). We chatted for a little while. I feigned interest and told him I’d send him my films, which is what recruits did, and he said he’d be in touch.

I got into Kenyon, and that was that. Except that McHugh sicced next year’s senior captain, John Washko, on me. We talked a few times, and he persuaded me that college football was actually fun, that the team was full of great guys, and if I came out, by the time the other freshmen arrived, I’d already have 45 friends from pre-season practice. And so it was that I ended up in little Gambier, Ohio, in early August for another dose of hellish August two-a-days. But this time, meals were great, and at night I got to know guys from all over the country. The friendships Washko promised soon materialized.

I was second string tight end and the fastest guy on the team, clocking a 4.6 40-yard dash. In the scrimmage before our first game, the senior tight end, Jim Stueber, a receiver with great hands, wiped out his knee, so I started the first game. When I walked onto our home field, it was clear Kenyon football was nothing like my high school. No cheerleaders, which was fine. The stands were far from packed. And there was no band. But as we did pregame warm-ups, I noticed with a chuckle that the song playing on the Public Address system was the theme song from the British comedy series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Maybe I’d found the right place.

One of my two most memorable Kenyon games was an early home game against Oberlin — Ohio’s other elite liberal arts college. Kenyon football had been in Sports Illustrated one time, a decade earlier, when Oberlin came down for a game with only nine players. Kenyon loaned them two guys, but the two loaners were so mad, they told Oberlin all of Kenyon’s plays. Oberlin won.

In this battle of the titans, I was pitted against Oberlin’s All-Conference senior defensive end — a 6’1″, 220-pound rock. Every play, I fired off the line into him, and the two of us did our dance to a stand-off. One play, as we battled, we both noticed something amiss. Whistles blew. Pandemonium reigned. We both looked down toward the center of the line. A huge brawl was underway. We grabbed each other, and at the same instant, we both said, “Take it easy!” And there the two of us stood — one white guy, one black guy — watching as all the other players from Ohio’s two finest liberal arts colleges fought in a massive pile. One of our coaches got a big gash on his cheek before order was restored. The origin was a mystery until we watched Sunday night game films. The play before, someone had sacked our senior quarterback, and the next play he walked up to the Oberlin player and sucker-punched him in the stomach.

My two favorite things about the Ohio Athletic Conference were that all these little colleges had picturesque campuses in quaint Ohio towns. The team bus drove through this beautiful landscape each fall as the leaves turned colors. The other great thing was the team names: The Oberlin Yeomen, the Heidelberg Student Princes, the Battling Bishops of Ohio Wesleyan, the Fighting Scots of the College of Wooster, and not to be outdone, we were the Kenyon Lords. We made our way through that gauntlet of ferocious adversaries, ending that first season 3–6, with a shut-out loss to the league powerhouse, Mt. Union Purple Raiders.

Football is often called a contact sport, but really, it’s a collision sport. You have to be either big or fast to play, but it’s best to be both. Danger is omnipresent, and one play can change your life.

Once on punt team, our punter launched a high, deep punt. I sped down toward the punt returner. I expected him to signal a fair catch, but he didn’t. “Fair catch, you idiot!” I thought as I approached at full speed. But he never did. I didn’t relish it, but I launched out, a 6’1″, 210-pound horizontal missile, hitting him square in the chest after he caught the ball. The crowd gasped, and somehow, he held the ball and got up.

It didn’t always turn out okay. Bob Abbajay was a year younger and played tackle next to me on the offensive line, a gentle giant with huge hands, whose father had played Canadian pro ball. On a kickoff return sophomore year, Bob absorbed an unexpected hit and lay motionless for two minutes. He got up but didn’t play the rest of the season. Nor did he play the next fall, and there were muttered criticisms, until a September morning my junior year when Bob never woke up in his dorm room.


***

Junior year would be my last season, though I didn’t know it. At the beginning, I wanted to switch to running back and made my case. But the coaches said I was too valuable where I was and that anyone could run the ball. I didn’t buy it but decided to be a team player (something I’ve often questioned).

Coach McHugh had played big-time football at Notre Dame and with the Canadian Football League’s Ottawa Rough Riders. But this was small-time football, and his power over us was limited. Once, he said, “Heuck, why are you giving me that look, like I’m full of shit?” Another time, he complained to someone, “Christ! Heuck could be an All-American, but he doesn’t have the intensity!” We all had mixed feelings about him, but things changed after a game midway through junior year. We lost a Homecoming game with an embarrassing school record number of turnovers. Afterwards, McHugh came late into the locker room, weirdly silent and shaking his head. “People say I don’t care about this game,” he muttered. “That’s not true.” He paused, and finally said, “You guys decide if you want to come back to practice on Monday.” Initially, we were disgusted by this seeming display of weakness and apathy. We didn’t know what was behind it.

I ran a campus publication and began hearing from various sources that McHugh had been fired and this would be his last season. He was apparently too rough around the edges to fit the image the president wanted for the new athletic league he was creating. When the news was confirmed, we players, previously ambivalent about McHugh, unified behind him. It was late October, and we were 4–4 with one game left. We wanted McHugh to go out a winner. The problem was, our last game — at home — was against Mt. Union, the league’s best team, which has 13 Division III national championships.

While watching Mt. Union films, one of the offensive coaches, Pete Peterson, had noticed a weakness we might exploit. Coaches were always looking for these things, but they rarely worked. The plan was that I, as tight end, would block down toward the defensive tackle for a three-count. The All-Conference Mt. Union speedster safety would read that as a run play and sprint to the line of scrimmage to tackle the runner. But after the three-count, I would release and run straight down the field, getting behind the safety. The quarterback would throw me the ball, and we’d have a touchdown. We practiced it over and over that first week of November, even after the sun went down; it was the last thing we did before practice ended.

One night after practice, the team gathered on the field without the coaches and discussed the next week’s Fall Sports banquet. It was decided we would boycott the banquet to protest Coach McHugh’s firing. That night, I called my Dad “long distance” and explained the situation. I wanted to persuade the team otherwise but wasn’t sure what to do. Dad suggested that, instead of boycotting, we read a strong statement. Simply not showing up is never the answer, he said. I thought it was a great idea, and the next day, after our last practice finally ended — after we’d run our special play another three times in the near darkness — I told the senior co-captains I wanted to say something. They stopped everyone from going to the locker room, and I made my case. If we boycotted, they won. What did we gain by not showing up? Who would care? If we stood together in a show of force with our captain, Zack Space (later a U.S. congressman), making a strong speech, we would gain power — not lose it. The team debated. A vote was taken. We’d make the speech.

Saturday, November 6, would be that season’s final game. Just before the game, the Rev. Lincoln Stelk prayed for us, invoking for the last time the story of how David slew the giant Philistine, Goliath (he did this every season when we were overmatched). And Mt. Union may have been the superior team, but we pulled off a fake punt that worked, and at half-time, we were still in the game. They scored to go ahead in the fourth quarter, and after the kickoff, we got the ball on our own 20-yard line. Our quarterback looked at me and called the play we’d practiced all week.

My heart pounded as the huddle broke and we trotted to the line of scrimmage. I got in my three-point stance and looked at the position of the defensive end in front of me and the defensive tackle to the left. The spacing seemed tight. The quarterback called the signals, and the play commenced.

I shot down toward the tackle, delivering a tentative block and counting — One — Two. I never got to three. If I stayed any longer, I feared I’d get stuck and never get off the line, so I broke through the gap at Two and ran down the field. Their All-Conference safety was rushing in, and his eyes widened with recognition as I neared and passed him. He turned to chase me. I was just ahead of him, when our quarterback threw the ball.

It was high, and I had to jump for it, losing my stride. But I caught it, and I remember a sudden roar from the crowd and then complete silence as the footrace began to the end zone 70 yards away. It was late afternoon, and the November sun was setting behind me, making it so that ahead of me I could see my shadow running and my pursuer’s shadow right behind. “He just has to dive to clip my legs,” I thought. So I started high-stepping — not allowing my long stride as far behind me as it naturally would go — (a friend would later say she saw that and thought I knew I had it and was showing off — far from it). I don’t remember anything else, except that I regained my natural stride and beat him to the end zone. We took the lead. And we won the game.

We went to the banquet, had our show of force, and the team elected me co-captain for the next year. That summer, I attended the trial in the lawsuit our coach filed against the college. And I wrote a piece in my little publication defending him, and though I liked the college president, I thought the college was wrong in its shabby treatment of McHugh.

Coach McHugh won the suit, and the next fall he took a couple of us to a raccoon dinner in nearby Danville, Ohio — yes, a raccoon dinner. Woody Hayes was the speaker, after he’d lost his coaching job at Ohio State for slugging an opposing player. I remember three things about that night: Hayes saying, “Success comes before work in one place only — the dictionary”; the raccoon tasting like chicken; and at the end of the night, Coach McHugh shaking my hand as we said goodbye, and saying, “You’re gonna make it, Heuck — you got moxie.”

The catch against Mt. Union was a school record — until the first game of the next season. But the game against Mt. Union was the last I ever played. I’d been having vision problems earlier in the season, which the doctor thought were concussions. It turned out they were ocular migraines, but at the time, he advised I not play senior year. And that was okay with me. It was time to consider the future.


***

Fifteen years ago, I stopped to see Coach McHugh at his house. I hadn’t seen him since the raccoon dinner, and we had a good talk. After that, until he died seven years ago, I sent him the magazine and we emailed periodically.

I still dream about Kenyon football. For decades, it was the same dream: I’m watching a game in the stands, and someone comes up at half-time and says, “Doug, Coach McHugh needs you to suit up and play tight end.” I still had a year of eligibility left, so it made sense. In the dream, I’m always surprised but quickly hurry into the old fieldhouse (long since torn down). I start putting on my pads, but it takes forever — frustratingly long. And when I finally get them on and run onto the field, the stadium is empty.

Thankfully, that dream’s long gone. Now, I think about football mostly at this time of year, when I drive by a field and smell the newly mown grass. And I consider how lucky I was to spend three autumns playing small-time football in central Ohio with a bunch of guys when we were young.