example, I couldn’t wear gloves as a receiver, (because no one on the team wore gloves) which is a non-trivial disadvantage in catching footballs. -BUT- the net effect of dedication to our team MORE then made up for it in actual results on the field.

Other weird examples:

- Everyone had to have blacked out cleats. We bought our own, and we couldn’t all get the same cleats, so you took your own cleats and painted over any logos, symbols or any non-black space. You got nice shiny new cleats? You painted them day one, or used a sharpie to hit the white logo.

- Everyone had to wear only the issued white socks and they had to be pulled up under the pants so skin wasn’t exposed. Only way to ensure uniformity of visible sock height.

- Absolutely no extra arm bands, pads, visors etc.

- No unissued shirts under pads. No sleeves. We all wore the same team-issued gray T-shirt, and that’s it. In December playoffs even the kicker is over there cold on the sideline.

- No dancing. You score a TD, you run the ball to the official and hand it to him. Go to the sideline and celebrate with your *team*. One of our receivers gave his chest two small, quick, but self-promoting thumps with his fist after scoring a TD. The next morning at practice he was instructed to run laps thumping his chest until coach told him to stop.

- Run (no walking) from the huddle to the LOS after every huddle break.

- Every player keeps his helmet on the entire game, even on the sideline. After our only loss my senior year, we chose to keep them on for the entire ride home, even as we were sitting in our home locker room waiting for coach to come address us.

- We spent the better part of an hour one day learning how to do just 5 perfect consecutive push-ups *as a team*. I watched (wasn’t personally involved in) an entire practice of newbies trying to learn to just do 10 perfect 3-count jumping jacks in synchronicity as a team. This wasn’t the plan; it was just the first step of stretching together before each practice, but they couldn’t get it right. Two kids threw up and it still wasn’t accomplished through the entire practice time, so it was resumed again at the next practice.

- As Freshmen we all wore a just a plain white T-shirt until we’d been in the program a year and were given a blue practice shirt. My senior year we didn’t perform well enough in our pre-season scrimmage so as a team our varsity practice jerseys were taken away. Didn’t get them back until our fourth game. During one game we were leading at halftime, but not executing very well as a team, so we went to the practice field instead of the locker room and ran drills all through halftime (embarrassingly in clear sight of both stands) and then came right back to the field. Accountability to the team and as a team.

- No question linemen had the hardest life in terms of position drills, but whatever we did as a team, everyone did the same volume. The kicker and starting QB ran just as many 150s as I did in morning conditioning, spent A hour in the weight room with me, spent every lunch in the team room during the season while our friends were going off campus so we could watch film and game plan for the next opponent, practiced from the start of 6th hour until it ended under the lights. Came in Saturday morning at 6:30 to work out and review film. Did 4-a-days for a week at camp (legit started morning conditioning before the sun came up, ended last practice after 10pm and then slept on the floor only to start again before the sun came up).

Everyone. No one was special. Even John freaking Beck wasn’t a full-time starter on Varsity until our senior year because he had a (much-less-skilled) senior ahead of him. Some of the more talented players didn’t like being treated like no one special and left. I remember two in particular. Coach would always say “If you’re special and you don’t want to do what the rest of us are doing, get down the road. And we’ll kick your butt in the playoffs.”

Still, on a team almost entirely made up of middling white kids, our varsity team went 52-2 over those 4 years with 3 state championships (I think we would have won all 4 if John started ahead of the senior all that year). There were teams with much greater innate physical talent who sent 2x-4x as many players to D1 careers, but no one worked as hard and no one was as dedicated to the concept of team over self.

It makes a huge difference, but generally fell out of favor long ago. Even when I was in HS other teams weren’t doing this kind of stuff. So I don’t expect to see it in HS football, much less college (aka semi-pro) but I think players would be much better off if it were around more. After that kind of experience, working hard on a mission or being joyfully dedicated to something bigger than yourself is not nearly as hard as kids are finding it to be.

Football will never be like it used to be, and not everything we did was the right thing, but there’s a happy medium in there somewhere.

Unfortunately we’re in a time when many people think simply being told to get out and change your socks to what you were instructed to wear is some kind of indefensible attack and proof of narcissism.

More’s the pity.