I didn’t play football growing up for a simple reason. I was a late bloomer. I was too small and weak to compete at the sport until I was about 18 years old. In any case, I excelled at baseball, basketball, soccer and tennis, and that was enough for me. My brother Andrew was 10 years older and also undersized for his age, but he didn’t care. He was crazy for football. When it became clear he wouldn’t play much, he became a kicker and punter just so he could be around the sport and get on the field. After I graduated from college, he convinced me to play flag football with him, and I did that until he retired at forty. So, I spent a good part of my twenties getting up on Saturday mornings and driving to some field or another in New Jersey to bang on other adults with no helmets or pads to absorb the contact. Some of those cats played Division I football, and here I was going at it with them. Sometimes it would be Thursday before the pain went away and I could walk normally, but it was fun as hell. The best part about it beside from the time spent with my brother and the general camaraderie of the teams was the rush of trying to physically dominate other people. I don’t expect everyone to understand the appeal of this, but if you know, you know.
In this sense, American football is one of the ultimate alpha male sports. And if Donald Trump were a true alpha male, his feelings about playing football would be different. He claims that he was once on a team and played tight end. I suppose this should be verified since he lies about everything. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that he’s being truthful here. He says he could catch the football well enough, but he didn’t like playing against people from bad neighborhoods who lifted weights all day and tackled really hard.
This is probably Trumpese for he didn’t like being dominated by black people. Why couldn’t he just leave it at that he didn’t like the physical aspect to the game? Why does he always have to make it about bad people from bad neighborhoods or shithole countries?
There’s really nothing wrong with not wanting to get hit by people bigger and stronger than you. It’s actually totally normal. What’s kind of deranged is what my brother and I did, which is invite this kind of pain, and do it for no money or acclaim. In fact, we paid a small fee for this abuse. But I can tell you that it was a thrill to sack a quarterback who was being protected by an offensive tackle who went to Auburn and outweighed me by a hundred pounds. I even perversely enjoyed it when he crushed me on running plays.
I don’t consider myself an Alpha male, and I don’t act like one. But I know when I see a coward pretending to be brave. That describes Trump, and I don’t understand why he fools anyone.