Although this story begins and ends with football, it’s the stuff in between that matters. The mystery meat in the sandwich you’ve already been warned you won’t be able to swallow, much less digest. Drink milk, it’ll calm your stomach.

It would be a stretch to say that football was my life—but a lot of my life revolved around it. I played since I was little, and was a starter on my high school team—the Tibbetsville Tsunamis. Don’t start. It’s not my fault. The school used to be “the Blue Demons” but years ago a holier-than-thou type on the school board raised a big stink, claiming it was “unwholesome,” and made the school change it. So our mascot went from a grinning blue demon that never hurt anybody to a snarling blue wave that killed 800,000 people in Southeast Asia, and made sushi radioactive in Japan. Somehow that’s less offensive. At least we have cool helmets.

The sport might have been my life if I was a running back, or a wide receiver, or, that dream of dreams, a quarterback. But I’m not fast. I’m not graceful. I’m not “poetry in motion.” I’m more like a poetry slam. You could say I’m sturdy. Not fat, but solid. Like an oak. It’s part of what makes me a fantastic defensive tackle.

Tackles and linebackers—we do the dirty work and get no glory—but we’re always, always the reason for victories and losses. See, the quarterback is like the lead singer of a band whose head swells so big, he goes solo, and demands only blue M&M’s in his dressing room. The running backs and wide receivers, they’re guitar and bass. But the linemen? We’re the rhythm. The drummers who hold the beat, but are always in the background.

That’s okay, though. I was never in it for the attention. I loved the raw energy of it. I loved the way it felt to smash through an offensive line. And I loved the feel and the sound of crashing helmets. Remember that, because it’s going to come back.

I was known for my tackles. My hits. Rarely were there flags on my tackles, and I prided myself on that. I did it right, and I did it well. To the best of my knowledge, I never caused a concussion—but I bruised and got bruised. Sometimes pretty badly, but I never complained. “Walk it off” was our family motto.

“Enjoy it now,” my father once told me. “Because it’s over sooner than you think.”