Louis Roney: Spirit of the game - A true story

Mistakes. We all make them.

A library full of books is, in great part, a repository of mistakes the human race has made.

Smart dogs simply remember not to do things again which hurt them. But how many divorced stoops remarry as soon as they find another stoop who’ll have them?

As a very small boy named Tim Conroy was fascinated with football.

His father, a faculty member at a small university in Georgia, brought him home a used football discarded by the college team, and Tim and a boyhood pal began to toss the ball around.

Footballs were rounder then than they are now, and the boy’s hand was not big enough to get the good grip needed to throw a nice spiral pass.

Tim gathered some neighborhood boys and put a team together. They formed a 100-pound limit football league — games were Saturday mornings in a local park.

His family moved to Florida shortly thereafter, and Tim played football in high school. His coach had been a star player for a nearby college, whose own rough, tough coach often dropped in to Tim’s high school practices and games.

Tim was aware that his scholastic record would have to provide him with any college education he was to receive. He made sure that all — or nearly all — of his grades were A’s. Scholastic scholarships were few and far between at that time, before the advent of WWII and the G.I. Bill.

In those days, Tim saw football as a wonderful game, full of the strivings of youths “giving their all” to win the game for dear old Something-or-other.

Some of the guys in his Scout troop played with him on the football team and sportsmanlike idealism was combined in them all with the desire to win. They often reached down and helped back to his feet a guy they had just blocked hard.

Football was a chess-game of sorts with the desire to outwit the other side as well as out-maneuver them. The intent was to block and to tackle opponents, but not to inflict injury on them.

A particular game with a local high school ended Tim’s own desire to play football any longer.

When halftime came the score was tied. There was a 10-minute stand-up sideline huddle to receive the critical remarks of the coach and to help the boys play better in the second half.

Suddenly the local college football coach — under whom their own coach had played — strode into the middle of the huddle. The man had obviously had a good deal to drink. He walked over to the fullback, steadied his feet and slapped the big country boy hard in the face. “You are a coward!” said the college coach. Tim’s coach and all of the players stood there open-mouthed in astonishment. For 10 seconds they were frozen in disbelief at what they had just witnessed. As one person, the team turned to their coach, waiting for him to do something in defense of his fullback, but their coach just stood there without uttering a word.

The magic spirit of the yearlong football camaraderie had died when the boys returned to the field for the second half.

On the following Monday, Tim turned in his helmet and uniform to the team manager at the high school football office. Tim Conroy, a first string player, never played football again.