Hail Mary, Queen of Scots

There aren’t many places where a weak, lanky Jew boy whose defining athletic trait is the difficulty he has lifting his arms over his head can live out dreams of football stardom he never even imagined he had. But in the topsy-turvy world of Scottish-American football, anything can happen (that’s American football--—where there are quarterbacks, not goalies-—played in Scotland).

Nine months ago, in a desperate and poorly conceived attempt to get as far away from Harvard as possible, I left for a semester abroad at the University of Glasgow. Ever the optimist, I was half-hoping to be the first person to thoroughly despise his study abroad  experience. And  I was definitely headed in that direction. That is, until I joined the University of Glasgow American football team at the behest of its outgoing and rather portly president. Over the next nine months I would play for both my university team and the city’s summer senior team (18 years+) both of which went by the name “The Tigers.”

With no experience whatsoever, I got to live the gridiron experience, catching a big touchdown against the first team we played, then costing our team the division championship after dropping two easy touchdown passes in the first quarter of our match with archrival Stirling. But I sprung back over the summer, when I finally found my ultimate personal and professional success. During the senior league season— the second-tier adult league—I set a new record for British single season receiving yards and making it to the Division 2 playoffs. But it wasn’t the stats or the results that made my nine months in Scotland the proverbial “time of my life.” No, it was the dope collection of guys I played with and the absolute insanity of Scottish football.

Words can’t describe how out of shape many of our players were. It was always a struggle to compete the pre-practice half lap, and for many of our lineman, the calisthenics that involved jumping failed to inspire them to put even an inch of separation between their feet and the ground.  A few players would get “pissed” the night before big games, claiming it increased their level of play. Half the guys participated in full contact hitting practices without the necessary pads. At college practices, our coach walked around with lit cigarettes and stuck them in our players mouths (through their helmets) during the frequent breaks their tarred lungs demanded. The head coach of our college team-—a thirty two-year-old college dropout who spent all his time at  parties thrown by kids half his age and slept on our fullback’s couch—was often interrupted during his “inspirational speeches” (which involved little more than the word “fuck” repeated in varying heavy Glaswegian intonations) by players making fun of him for being on the dole. The team even had its groupies, but unlike the gorgeous blonde cheerleaders of American lore, this was a hodgepodge assembly of four or five socially dysfunctional girls who, unless one had knocked quite a few back, slightly resembled our linemen.

The hodgepodge of characters I played with had more true diversity than Harvard’s exemplary student body. Incredibly talented, experienced players played shoulder to shoulder with uncoordinated rookies who made catching a slant look like rocket science. I took the field with middle-aged men who had children and regular jobs, a crazy eighteen-year-old linebacker who’d already suffered six concussions (apparently he once broke his helmet, got knocked out, was carted off the field in a stretcher, and then ran back on the field, strapped on his badly broken helmet, and kept playing, again suffering another concussion and losing the ability to walk for six months) and a 5’8”, 320-pound center who brought his gorgeous blond boyfriend to every team social event. There was a former Iowan schoolboy football star whose penchant for career ending hits was equaled only by his pathological desire for sex (which he sought from the lovely ladies of certain Glasgow neighborhoods), an NFL Europe veteran who’d played for the Chicago bears,  a British sprinting champion and the best quarterback in Britain, whose 22-stone (308 pound) frame could not mask his awesome physical talent and acumen for the game.

These guys all became family. And as different as they were from each other, their love for this sport in a world where their football is the other football, united them. After years of scoffing at my Harvard roommate’s stories of the bond he shared with his high school teammates, I had to eat my words in Scotland. I was out with my football boyz every day and night,  and my American roommates got annoyed when I announced that I was “chilling with my football buddies” or when I got my Tigers team sweatshirt personalized with my “Tigers nickname,” Daniel Son (coined by my good buddy Kenny in honor of my perceived resemblance to Ralph Machcio), less than two weeks after joining the team.

But after twenty-one years of searching, I had finally found my calling, and even though I only got to live it for nine months, I’ll go to my grave talking about my American football experience in Glasgow. My only regret is that life now pales in comparison to my days of gridiron glory, and I often find myself dreaming about making one more diving touchdown catch or gazing one final time upon that groupie who looked sort of like the second-string linebacker.