For the Right Reasons (4 page)

“What are you doing for the Fourth of July?” I asked him one afternoon as I was preparing to go home.

“More of this,” Andrew said, motioning to the downtown gym designated for our training.

“Why don’t you come with me to Dallas?” I asked. “My family always gets together for holidays.” I wasn’t exaggerating. We get together with aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, you-name-it for almost every imaginable holiday.

To my surprise, he took me up on it. He threw some stuff in a bag and drove all the way to my hometown.

“I was bored,” he told me as he got out of his car and unloaded his bags onto our driveway.

This, to me, was what was cool about being a part of a collegiate football team—spontaneous friendships, new adventures. One of my buddies threw a Fourth of July party at his ranch, so I took Andrew to show him a good Texas time. We shot fireworks and basically acted like teenagers. It was a great weekend.

Kansas State University is located east of the junction of the Kansas River and the Big Blue River, and we were getting close.

“This is about as far away from New York City as you can get,” I said, noticing the town’s laid-back, Western feel. A young couple slowly walked their dog in front of us at a red light, and Dad consulted the map. The closer we got to the university, the more things began looking purple. Grocery stores advertised back-to-school deals for K-State students, gigantic purple balloons flew high above car dealerships, and some of the old cars on the road were seemingly held together with purple pride bumper stickers.

When we finally drove up on the campus, I found the dorm I’d be living in for the next few weeks. It was August, and the football team was arriving three weeks before the regular students. As much as I hated giving up my summer, I was relieved to get settled before everyone else. Being part of a team made the transition to college a little easier. By the time all the other nervous freshmen arrived, hopefully I’d already feel like I belonged.

“Mom, you really outdid yourself,” I said, my arms full of Target bags.

“Gotta take care of my baby boy.”

I groaned at those two words. “I’m
eighteen
, Mom.”

She smiled and shoved a bag in my chest. “Well, make yourself useful, then, and carry this up to your new room.”

After a long day of moving, we said a tearful good-bye. As I watched my family drive away, I was glad to have some breathing room—five hundred miles of it, to be precise. I was the youngest in the family, so it’s natural Mom doted on me. By the time I was towering over her, I resented that she treated me like a kid.

I was responsible enough to earn a free ride to college, after all. And not to just any college. I was a Kansas State University athlete, which meant I had the honor of playing under one of the best college football coaches of all time, Bill Snyder. When he came to Kansas State in 1988, he inherited a program that easily had the most losses of any team in Division I-A at the time.
Sports Illustrated
called K-State “America’s most hapless team.”
¹
In ten years under Coach Snyder’s leadership, Kansas State had an undefeated regular 1998 season and earned its first-ever number one ranking in the national polls.

That’s why the entire community was so supportive of the Wildcats. After years of having an abysmal program, they didn’t take Coach Snyder’s success for granted. Most of the locals were somehow connected to the university—either through employment or attendance—so it was hard to go anywhere in town without being reminded of our team. Wildcat gear could be found everywhere. Preachers wore Wildcat ties, girls wore purple bows, guys wore K-State jackets, and I even saw a baby wearing a onesie that read “I Drool Purple.” Plus, as a part of the Big 12 Conference, the games would be broadcast nationally every week.

Every time I felt this excitement, I remembered: I was a part of the team. It was a little heady.

The players were required to stay together as a team before school started, even the upperclassmen who had the privilege of living off campus during
the school year. Before we put on the pads, before we started training, and before we could take one step onto the gridiron, we met together in the dorms. Everyone laughed and joked about their misadventures in New York that summer. It was great to see everyone—including Andrew.

“If you need any help finding anything on campus,” he offered, “just let me know.”

The next day, the team’s intense practices began. These would help determine who’d start and in what position. I was redshirted my first year, which meant I practiced, lifted weights, and watched films with the team, but I didn’t play in games. That gave me a year to grow without losing a year of eligibility. The coaches hoped I’d eventually be a starting linebacker, so they were willing to wait to let me become more seasoned.

The summer training session was the first time I got to see Coach Snyder in action. During the season, he ate one meal a day to save time, slept only four or five hours per night, and always wore Nike Cortez tennis shoes. (He wore the same type of tennis shoes for two decades and hoarded dozens of pairs when Nike stopped making them.) That meant his shoes—as well as his work ethic—were a blast from the past. He made us wipe our feet before we walked into the athletic complex, wouldn’t tolerate earrings, made sure everyone’s facial hair was neatly trimmed, and always had a mug of hot coffee during our intensely long practices. They lasted three hours—Monday through Wednesday—and we did them in full pads.

Old school.

Every morning, my alarm went off at five thirty to lift weights at six. (Pretty soon, I was as strong as an ox and no longer intimidated by my teammates.) My business classes started at eight o’clock, but it was sometimes hard to pay attention to my professor after such an intense morning workout. In high school, I made all As and was in the National Honor Society. But in college, I could tell I’d really have to buckle down and study. At two thirty in the afternoon, I’d head back to the football complex and work out until four. That’s when Coach Snyder would walk in, pop in the tape of our most recent game, and settle in to his chair with remote control in hand. He’d evaluate a single toss from our previous game for five
minutes. After we watched ourselves and learned from our mistakes, we moved on to watching films of our upcoming opponents.

Then we ate at the training table until seven o’clock. Because the university had so much invested in us eating the right balance of carbs and protein, they provided us with a smorgasbord of options. They told us what we ate was as important as how much we could lift. But that didn’t stop me from eating just about everything in sight. I’m not built to be a huge guy, so I had to eat all the time to bulk up for the season. My teammates with big frames were naturally formidable on the field. Since I was smaller, I set my goal weight at 240 pounds. Our coaches didn’t monitor our diets, so I’d pile my plate full of chicken fried steak and pizza. Sometimes I’d eat pasta five times a day. After dinner, we had a mandatory study hall from eight to ten. Every second of my life was scheduled from five thirty in the morning until ten o’clock at night.

I loved football and everything that came with it. Anytime I was introduced by people, they’d say, “This is Sean. He plays football at K-State.” It was flattering, but I wanted to be more than a jock. I always envisioned myself as a businessman or some sort of entrepreneur.

The only problem was that I couldn’t quite make myself go to bed after my mandatory study halls. There were so many fun things to do. If guys weren’t knocking on my door or blaring music in the rooms next to mine, I’d come up with other distractions. Frequently I’d flip on the television and get interested in whatever was on.
Seinfeld
reruns were always good, but it didn’t even have to be interesting to seem better than sleep. Something like a PBS program about African wildebeests would ensnare me until late into the night. What would happen when the wildebeest got locked in an epic battle against the lions? I had to find out.

I rolled out of bed for my six o’clock weightlifting session after going to sleep at three. With Coach Synder, skipping anything football related was not an option. But after an intense lifting session on so little sleep, it was hard to prioritize that eight o’clock class.

Thankfully, Andrew was always a great influence on me. The guy was really competitive on the football field, and one of the most disciplined
people I’ve ever met. He was a great example of taking advantage of every opportunity that came his way, doing well on the field and in the classroom.

Even though I was redshirted and wouldn’t be playing my freshman year, my family drove the eight hours to see the first game of my college career—K-State versus Western Kentucky. I loved that my big sister was excited that her little brother was a part of something as big as KSU football.

At about the sixth hour on the road, though, I think she lost her enthusiasm. Apparently, that’s when she leaned up from the backseat and told our parents, “I’m just letting you know this now: the odds of me going back for any of Sean’s other games are slim to none!”

That was before she bumped into Andrew after the game. They’d met earlier when he spontaneously came to visit us in Texas over the summer, and I could tell she was happy to see him again.

“Andrew seems like a nice guy,” my mom, the matchmaker, said to me on the phone a few days later. “What do you think of getting him to ask out Shay?”

Andrew
was
great. He was outspoken about his faith, treated people with respect, and was one of the only guys who reached out to help me adjust to college life. He created a sense of brotherhood on the team by pulling pranks and giving nicknames. He also rode on a tiny yellow scooter all over campus because he wanted to save his energy for practices. I always laughed when I saw the big six-foot-five guy on that microscopic scooter.

Come to think of it, he was exactly the type of guy I’d want my sister to date. And evidently, Shay was just the type of girl he wanted to date.

He proposed to Shay five months later. I was thrilled for both of them. Shay is awesome—even though I’ve spent most of my life aggravating her—and I knew they’d be happy together. Plus, I’d always get credit for introducing them.