By: Bryan Crawford
Running Back, Toronto Argonauts
Coming to the end of a season is a difficult reality. The fact is that every season comes to an end, but it seems that no matter what level of success you have achieved in a given season it is never easy cleaning out your locker and leaving the practice field for the final time that season. Even though the start of a new season may just be a few months away its tough to change into offseason mode.
Part of the problem is that more often than not a season comes to an end rather abruptly. If you’re lucky, it’s after a disappointing defeat in the playoffs or at the conclusion of a season where you fought for a playoff spot until the final game. There are only two ways that you have some warning because no team ever thinks it’s going to lose a playoff game. The first is when you play in the final game of the season, which is the championship. The second way, as is the case this season for the Argonauts, is when the team is eliminated from the playoffs well in advance of the conclusion of the regular season.
Even when your season comes to an end after a championship you never seem to be ready for it. If you lose that game you have a feeling of helplessness and are left wishing that you could play the game all over again. But even when you win and feel great you eventually come down from the high of the win and realize that you’re finished for the year. There is no replacement for finishing a season with a win in a championship, but it is still a shock to the system to be done for the season.
The common denominator when arriving at the conclusion of a season is the shock that comes with being stripped of the routine that you have become accustom to over the months. A football season is all about routine. Whether you finish with that win or miss the playoffs all together, it’s never easy trying to adjust to a new one. Sure, by the end of a football season, especially the marathon season that is a CFL season, the body is sore and tired and in need of some much needed rest and recovery. Spending a week on the couch is great but in short order you find yourself wishing that you could strap on the gear and head back out on the field with your teammates.
For six months you come to the field everyday with the same guys and during that time you form a bond; like a family. Like any family, you have ups and downs but no matter what a season holds you strap up and go to war with them each week. The winter is long and solitary as you spend your time training and preparing for the new season. Some guys train together but it isn’t the same as being with the entire team playing and practicing week in and week out. Eventually, after an adjustment period the routine of the season transforms into the routine of the off-season, but the fact of the matter is that there is no substitute of being in the thick of a football season.
Football is unique among sports. Only a small amount of people get the opportunity to play the game at all. A small number get the opportunity to play high school, even less are fortunate enough to move on and play in university, and a very select few are blessed enough to play the game as a pro. For those who do get to play the game at any level the reality is that once you are done playing, you are done playing forever. It isn’t like Basketball, Hockey or Baseball where you can play a pick-up game, or join a recreational league. There are no recreational tackle football leagues.
The closest thing is touch football which might as well be a different sport all together. Sure, it’s an excellent activity and one which I have participated in every off-season since I began playing football in high school. It’s a great a way to stay in shape and spend time with your buddies in a fun but competitive environment but ‘touch isn’t tackle’. Playing tackle football is special and unique amongst sports for its contact and physicality, its strategy and tactics, and maybe most interestingly the diverse make up of athletes that form a team.
Guys of all different physical make-ups are necessary to form a football team and, like no other sport, the idea of a team is paramount. In sports like hockey or basketball a single individual athlete can impact an entire game and in some cases have a disproportionate impact on the outcome. However, in football a single player alone cannot have the same affect on a game that his counterpart in another sport can. In football, no matter how talented one single player may be, no one part is greater than the whole. Every great team has great players but each has a supporting cast that do their jobs so that the stars may shine.
For these reasons football is unique. These reasons and all the other aspects of being part of a team and playing a game are what make coming to the end of a season difficult. There is nothing like lacing up your cleats, strapping on the pads and pulling on your helmet. Touch is nice but it certainly isn’t tackle. I hope that it’s a short winter.