The Huddle

Music The football huddle is a metaphor for our culture, imperfect In that huddle is a bunch of folks that are black, brown, white, red, yellow, liberal, conservative, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu. We are slim, fat, short, tall, fast and slow. We are analytical people and we're impulsive people. We have some of the finest men on earth and heaven knows we got a few rounders. Music We have been through the fires of Bear Bryant and Bo Schembeckler or some such coach that knows exactly how to extract every ounce of our energy. Americans see all that and they resonate with it. They crave it. They take it and us into their hearts. The men who are in a place in the huddle have experienced the miracle of team. The training camp experience is unbelievable. It is day after day, week after week, two a day, three a day practices in the heat, often in 14 pounds of equipment. Many drop out, n Trust me, everybody. For those who do stay, there is the opportunity to participate in the greatest team sport ever devised. It is the only sport in which every player needs every teammate on every play just to survive. We learn ever so slowly that our differences do not matter in the huddle. When we trudge in after each interminable workout, we know that sweat smells about the same on everybody's body. When we get busted in the mouth, that blood that trickles is the same color. Everybody's tired. Everybody's hurt. It is in this process that the miracle occurs. Men who have been raised to hate each other's guts become brothers. I've seen racists reformed. I've seen the most un I've seen inner city kids invite country boys from the mountains to go home with them for Thanksgiving dinner. And I've seen those invitations accepted and reciprocated, thus changing parents' lives. Our players become brothers for life. It is what America is supposed to be, could be, might be in our best dreams.