FOOTBALL KARAOKE: WHY WE
WORK FOR NO REWARD

Feature Article by Truman Forehand

There were 35 or 40 Union students. All of them wore Union University football uniforms purchased for this very occasion, gathered around the locker room, taking a knee or sitting down on a stool or a bench or a bucket as they listened to this pregame speech from professor, Buster Bowl player and coach Ted Kluck:

“I want us to be nasty. I want us to play hard, and I want us to hit hard.” 

The varying uniforms and accessories around the room betrayed the different levels of experience with football. Of the men who gathered together in this circle, some wore pads and helmets and cleats and gloves from high school while others wore borrowed gear or accessories purchased brand new just for this event. Some were All-State or All-District players in high school, and some had never worn pads before; some had never even thrown a football before this.  

Everyone there was ready to play nasty but also prepared to follow Kluck’s next words. 

“Hey,” Kluck said. “We're going to play through the whistle, but we're not going to play after it. We're going to do Christ proud. We're going to do Union proud. It's a nasty game for nasty people, but we aren't nasty after it. We play hard, and that's it.”

The Buster Bowl is a unique event in college sports. The game isn’t easy to categorize—it’s not an official university sport, a club sport or an intramural, but rather a separate, fourth thing. There’s no division to win, no title to chase, and nothing really happens after the game. It is a hard sport, exhausting and sometimes violent, which poses the question: why do we do something so hard for what seems like no reward? After all, when the clock runs out, the experience simply ends. 

Jay Hardison, senior computer science major, Buster Bowl wide receiver and former Union basketball player, sees two reasons behind the game: one for the school as a whole and one for the players. 

“I think it's a good way to get the students a little bit rallied together around one game and sort of hype built up,” Hardison said. “But mainly for the players, it's just either another chance to play, or for someone like me, the first chance to play football because I never played before.” 

Hardison is right that the community is a vital ingredient in the experience. The November morning air, with tailgaters by the stadium entrance and just enough of a chill for everyone in the stands to need a light jacket, red leaves barely hanging on to their branches as they dangle over the fence by the sideline—all of these are feelings of fall and football that, if they could be bottled, would sell out in minutes. Even a light rain last year could not put a damper on the collective high spirits. 

America loves football, there is no doubt about that. Tristan Kluck, junior business management major and oldest son of Ted Kluck, shares his dad’s lifelong obsession with the game. He collects merch from seemingly every NFL team, stepping out in a Seahawks windbreaker one day and a Texans practice tee the next day, all of which masks his die hard but split loyalty to both the Detroit Lions and the New England Patriots. 

Love for football is not what makes the Buster Bowl unique, though. There are reasons for doing this—reasons why we care about it that make sense on paper—but to really understand, you have to get a feel for the game and its aftermath. For the past two years, I have called the plays on offense for the game. Preparation was a collaborative effort. Coach Kluck decided what plays we would run and simplified the language for the guys who had never played before. I distilled the plays onto a laminated sheet, color coded by type: pass plays in yellow, run plays in blue, plays for those “absolutely gotta have it” moments in red. 

“21 zone right sift.” I yelled the play at Tristan so I could be heard over the din of the game, and he jogged into the huddle to relay the call to the other 10 guys on offense. Tristan lined up at running back, the ball was snapped and he took the handoff toward the corner. An opposing player tried to make the tackle. Tried. Tristan lowered his shoulder, went straight through the guy. You could hear the hit, shoulder pads against shoulder pads, all the way up in the stands. The sky was blue and beautiful right then, and the hapless defender got a good look at it as he lay on his back. It was the first quarter and some poor guy had just gotten his “welcome to football” moment. 

Tristan remembers that moment vividly, as he does every moment of every game he plays. 

“There's a couple of us every year that understand the thrill and the adrenaline of running at a guy and just putting all your strength and all your force into knocking him over. There's no other feeling like it,” he said. “Don't take cheap shots, don't try to hurt people, but it's a violent game. People are going to feel it. You need to make them feel it.”

Hardison prepared for those moments differently. Having never played football before, there were nerves. There had to be nerves.

No one just wakes up one day excited to get hit. 

“I was super nervous because I had always seen these big hits on TV and stuff, and I was like, ‘I'm about to get my head snapped off right here,’” Hardison said. “Well, the first time wasn't actually too terrible. I got hit and I was like, ‘oh, okay, that's not as bad as I thought it was going to be.’” 

As the hits go on and the game gets harder, you keep getting up and you keep brushing yourself off. Any player would tell you, though, that this is not just something you do for yourself—mainly you do it for the guy next to you. The game builds a group—the guys—that is different from just the guys you typically hang out with. For us at Union, it may even be the guys you typically play sports against. 

“So there are guys that I never talked to, but when I see them in the hallway, I wave because we both are like, ‘oh, we went through something together,’” Tristan said. “We went out there and played football. And so I know that you're willing to put it out there on the line for me and you know that I'm willing to do the same thing for you.”

The game creates a sort of momentary community, a brotherhood for 60 minutes of game clock. That bond creates memories, and a mutual understanding that it takes all of you. You root for each other.

“I really, really enjoyed that first touchdown that Jay had,” Tristan said. 

Hardison scored three touchdowns — not bad for a guy who strapped on the pads and the helmet for the first time that morning. 

“We had a run play called,” Hardison said, recounting the most improbable of his touchdowns. “Called” is the critical word there because there was a world of difference between the call and what happened. 

“I was blocking, and Hunter tried to run it,” Hardison continued his story. “He gets wrapped up, and so I see him, and I just decided to get behind him and start screaming his name. So I screamed his name. He saw me and he flipped it back. And I outran everyone to the other side of the field.”

Union lost that game, though. I remember vividly the moment I knew we were not going to pull off the comeback. And I remember wondering why we did all this. 

“If we win, great. If we lose, tough,” Tristan said. “But after that, it's just over. There's no ice baths afterwards. There's no going to practice on Monday. It's just over.”

You feel a football game for the entire week after. Yes, you feel it in the obvious places — if you took a big hit to the ribs on Saturday, your ribs will remind you every time you take a deep breath until at least the next Saturday. Football players compare it to being in dozens of small car crashes. You learn a lot about yourself in the week after. Mainly you learn that you can feel bruises in places you did not know you could even be bruised. 

I remember tossing my jersey into a box after the game. The uniform belongs to the school and will be used next year. The black Union letters on the red fabric, sitting on top of a few dozen other identical jerseys. These shirts held the sweat and rain and dirt stains from the efforts of men who were best friends and men who had never met before. The guy who played quarterback for us in that game is an acquaintance of mine at most. I see him from time to time but not often. We drew up plays in the dirt together, though, when we were down two touchdowns and just trying to claw back into the game. That counts for something, I think.

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