5th year senior : an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

Abstract

Many pieces have been written detailing the ins and outs of a college football team, but none have ever been written from a perspective that will encompass much more than just the horrors of two-a-days, the drudgery of meetings, and the glory of Saturdays. None have ever detailed the actual off-field lives of the young men who sweat and bleed for the glory of their respective institutions. Much more happens than just winning and losing and the preparation that takes place before those outcomes. Furthermore, one would think that a book about college football would only be interesting if it detailed a storied program such as Notre Dame or Oklahoma. True, those programs may command national respect and intrigue, but are the lives of the individuals who play on a smaller scale any less respectable and intriguing in their own right? The Ball State Cardinals may not be on the college football map, but the men who wear the red and white carry with them the same emotions and same desire as those who wear the maize and blue in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Written from within and encompassing aspects of life that supersede those of college football, this is a story that must be told. There are many years that have gone by up to this point, twenty-two and a half to be exact. Also, many years are still to come. But in one's life, there are time frames when the decisions he or she makes determine much of the rest of what happens in life. It's hard to say when these times will come, but for me. the prospect for the next six months of my life create feelings inside of me that cause me to believe that this is one of those time frames. I must tell you that I am not writing this story after the fact but rather in the present. I will only use a few memories from the past to create settings, characters, and emotional states, but the things that occur will be real. Furthermore, this will not be a simple autobiographical account of where I have been and where I am going, but rather a journey, which many people could put themselves into because the issues that I face are not necessarily unlike those that everyone else faces every day. I, as a writer, a college student, and a football player am not in anyway different than the man down the street. The relationships made and lost, the friendships forged, the battles won and lost, and the lessons learned shape who we are and what we do regardless of where we are at in our particular lives. These are the reasons why I have chosen to write about this time in my life because never before have so many things been staring me in the face and deserving of my attention. Every story needs a beginning, middle, and end. It needs characters, drama, action, emotion, and humor. No one wants to hear a story that has no penultimate climax or one that lacks a purpose. This is why it is difficult to tell personal stories that some may find to have no intricate plot or be simply part of life. Life itself is a story and telling its tale may be the hardest thing of all to do.