Bonding for life
My dear friend Todd Neilsen sent me an article that appeared in the Canton Repository about the great 1984 North Canton Hoover High School Vikings football team I played on and have referenced numerous times in these posts.
40 years ago, I was a schoolboy playing in the game of my life in Ohio State’s stadium in Columbus, OH. I wistfully read the article, posted below, and a flood of good memories came rushing in.
Well, mostly good. And yes, I’m mentioned several times in the article although not always in the most flattering way!
Seems like yesterday.
Much time has passed, but the bonds remain. In our heads, we are still those 15-17 year-old boys. And so many relationships remain also. Perhaps not always with daily contact, but if one of us needs something, we know we have a brotherhood to call who will still gladly come by our side and be our teammates.
I've seen it happen through personal triumphs and tragedies among my teammates over the years.
Teammates for life.
Football creates those kinds of bonds because of its nature. All sports do to a degree of sorts, but football is just a little different because of its nature. I don’t love comparing football to war, because it isn’t.
But some of the same factors (lite) exist. Striving through physical danger and pain together tends to do that. Working toward a common cause completely reliant on the guy next to you doing his job while you do yours. In football, one man cannot win the game.
Complementary football it’s called.
The job as a prosecutor working with law enforcement agents tends to bond us also. We deal with people who are lawbreakers. People who have refused in some sense to abide by societal norms. People who can be dangerous and put others at risk. And we work side by side to incapacitate them. To keep people safe. Sometimes at great personal risk, as I’ve also written about.
Sometimes, as Football and Forensics has hopefully revealed, there is significant intersection between football and the courtroom.
I’m an AUSA today because of football. My close friend Jeff Blanton, who was an FBI agent in Chattanooga at the time, emailed me and told me the USAO was hiring two new prosecutors for the gun/violent crime unit.
So I applied.
Jeff was my college football teammate at Davidson College. He became my teammate again first by using his significant professional credibility to recommend me to the office and then working together again making cases after I got hired.
“Don’t play because you love the game; play because you love the people.”
Enjoy the article. Especially you, Mike Braucher!
