Profiles In Cowardice

[BrudLee]

Or, Why I'm Not Going to the Bills Game

The last regular season home game I missed was on December 24th, 2005. I have two young sons, and Christmas comes first. So, despite a late season playoff push by an explosive team, I stayed home. I missed Santana Claus coming to town for the tune of 160 yards. I missed Clinton Portis rolling up 108 yards to set the single season team record. I missed Patrick Ramsey throwing his last pass as a Washington Redskin (I wouldn't say I missed it, Bob.). I haven't missed any more.

So why am I home typing this?

I learned a very difficult lesson last year. On September 11, 2006, we hosted the Minnesota Vikings for the first game of the season, the first game of a Monday Night doubleheader. There were lots of reasons the game was supposed to be noteworthy: the Redskins were fresh off a playoff run against a rookie head coach in Brad Childress, Brad Johnson was returning to FedEx Field to face the team who jilted him for Brad George, and it was the fifth anniversary of the terror attack on New York and the nearby Pentagon that galvanized our country, if only for a brief while.

It was also five days after my mother had lost a fight with cancer, and two days after her funeral. Frankly, I needed the distraction that the lowly Vikings were to provide.

To be fair, I started celebrating our inevitable victory on the three hour drive to the stadium. It was a warm evening, but it could have been cold by the time my dad and I arrived, because I wasn't feeling anything. When asked how I was by friends in the parking lot, I answered "I'm looking forward to this beatdown." We were so much better than the Vikings on paper, but as Kenny Mayne is quick to remind us, games aren't played on paper, they're played inside television sets.

Has anyone here ever driven a car that was leaking oil, but you didn't know it? The engine runs fine, then BAM! You've thrown a rod, and nothing works. That's what happened to me that Monday night. When John Hall's kick sailed wide in the closing seconds to keep the Redskins from tying that game, all of the pain and grief that football had insulated me from came crashing into me like a wrecking ball. I felt bad quite a bit that week, understandably, but that moment was the worst of it. I seized up, like a car without oil. My father tells me that I had a moment of absolute clarity, told him (and I quote) "I have invested way too much of my emotional well-being in this game," and shut down in the passenger seat of his car. He helped me into my house three hours later.

My fear is that 92,000 people are going to learn the same lesson I did. None of us are as close to Sean Taylor as they are to their mother, but FedEx Field is going to be full of fans who will be there sharing their grief, looking for distractions, and hoping for something to take them past this senseless death. What if the something they want doesn't come? What if the 53 men on our sideline can't get past their own sense of loss to defeat a depleted Bills team?

That fear hangs over me like a spectre. I hope with all my heart that everyone at that game doesn't have to face what might come, but I'm too damn scared to find out myself. I'm sorry.