Life, Time, and Football
Barb and I watched WE ARE MARSHALL last night. I grew up just across the river from Huntington, WV. I remember seeing a couple pages of Herald-Dispatch photographs of the football players who died so young, so tragically. At 15, though, and knowing none of the dead or grieving, it didn’t touch me so much.
We liked the movie, particularly Matthew McConaughey’s engaging performance as Jack Lengyel, the coach from Wooster, OH, who rebuilt MU’s football team. At times, he seemed to be channeling Popeye the Sailor and Gus McCall of “Lonesome Dove” (as played by Robert Duvall), but it worked for me. McConaughey’s coach reminded me of other athletes I’ve known and admired–plain spoken, unaffected, tough, compassionate, hard-working, with a good sense of humor.
Enjoyable as the film was, though, it was still formulaic: football team is lost, new team is found, obstacles, defeat, despair, triumph. We’ve seen the same stuff, or some variation thereon, a dozen times. The ending narration, however, which tells what happened to the major characters afterwards, rather undercuts the triumphant climax. Jack Lengyel moved on within three years–after a less-than-winning tenure at Marshall. The university president, who (in the film at least) was fired from his position, either for not bowing to the sense of impropriety in resuming football so soon or else picking the coach that he did, went to another college. The captain of the team, one of the four surviving players, goaded the Board of Directors into restarting the program (again, in the film). He left Marshall, then returned later as an assistant coach. Then he seemed to fade into obscurity until his untimely death.
All this reminded me that life isn’t much like a movie. “Rising from the ashes” is usually more of a process than an event. People quit and people move on, heroes flare brightly for a moment, then get fired or resign or die or just fade away.
Yet life, like football, goes on.
