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Chris Spielman
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Among the first words out of his mouth when I met him 13 years ago were, "I’m
from Massillon, Ohio, home of the Tigers. Heard of Chris Spielman? Went to Washington High
School in Massillon. He was on the cover of a Wheaties box."
I was an 18-year-old freshman at Southwest Texas State University. I had never heard of
Spielman or Massillon, and I didn’t eat Wheaties. But within five minutes of meeting
Kevin Sherrard, he’d given me a little education.
I didn’t think much of Kevin that day. I thought he was a little strange for
taking so much pride in the accomplishments of another person. Ironically, he became one
of my best friends and now lives four miles from me in Denver.
He’d talk about Spielman with the same reverence and pride that you ordinarily
find in the voices of parents talking about their children. It was odd that he’d feel
so compelled to tell everyone he met about the young linebacker from Ohio. At first,
Kevin’s pride seemed misplaced, and it put me off, but after a while it made me
curious about the man who could evoke such feelings.
Who was this Chris Spielman?
I began looking for Spielman. I saw him play a couple of games at Ohio State, and I
followed his professional career in Detroit, Buffalo and Cleveland.
What I learned was that Spielman was an All-American in every sense of the word. You
could look at his body, his eyes, his demeanor, the aplomb with which he handled his
success, the passion he maintained for the game, the level at which he played and see that
he was meant to play the game of football. It was his purpose in life.
He was a worker, a player who showed up every day intending to get a little bit better,
a player who would hit you in the mouth during the play and help you to your feet
afterward. He was a football player who personified the game and the way that it was
supposed to be played.
For most players in the NFL, football is a job. It’s a great job with great
rewards and benefits, but it’s a job nonetheless; the honest truth is that most
players in the NFL would not play for free. Most wouldn’t play in the Canadian
league, the Arena league or NFL Europe unless they thought doing so would give them a shot
to return to the big money of the NFL. Most players like the game, love to compete and
enjoy their work, but ultimately, the NFL is a job for them. They simply would not do it
for free.
Whether Spielman actually would have or not was never tested, but you always had the
feeling that he would have played for free. He never seemed to lose that innocent,
youthful exuberance about the game.
I remember my rookie year with the Broncos in 1991, sitting around a table at
Bennigan’s with the other running backs on the team. Gaston Green, Robert Perryman,
Bobby Humphrey, Steve Sewell, Greg Lewis and I were sitting around, talking about life.
The older players started talking about love of the game.
I think it was Green who said it first. He said, "Man, the last time football was
truly fun was in high school. Back then, it was just hanging out with your friends,
playing because you liked it, and none of all this other stuff mattered."
Everyone nodded and chimed in their agreement. The consensus was that as soon as
external pressure to perform was attached, much of the fun was leeched away. Scholarships
in college were great, but they brought pressure, too. If you played well, you could stay
in school. If you played well, your coach would keep his job. If you played well, alumni
would donate money to the school. If you played well, everything was OK. If you
didn’t play well, there were serious adult consequences.
For most players, once financing for school and people’s jobs were at stake, the
game turned into a job, a reality that’s even more pronounced in the NFL.
But Spielman never seemed to lose the innocent love of the game. He seemed genuinely
enamored of football, and I think fans like Kevin Sherrard raved about Spielman because
they could see in him the same excitement that they felt when they played in high school.
Where other players let the game become a job, Spielman stayed connected to the ideals and
desires that landed him on the cover of a Wheaties box when he was a kid.
Now, Spielman is a dislocated worker.
For many, it’s technology that makes their skills obsolete. For Spielman, it was a
lifetime of collisions. With a bad neck, he can no longer do the job he was trained to do.
He can no longer make use of the expert-level talent he possesses, and the passion he has
for playing is no longer relevant.
The good news is that he had the opportunity to play and we had the opportunity to
watch him perform. Although we’ll miss him, we’ll never forget him.
Good luck, Chris. Kevin still has your Wheaties box on his desk.
Reggie Rivers played for the Denver Broncos from 1991 to ’96. His Web site is
located at: http://www.reggierivers.com. |
