Bob Sanders: Water breaks are for sissies, right?

A few weeks ago, there was a story in the news about a couple suing a high school football coach because their son died of a heat stroke on the practice field.
They say the coach wouldn’t let the players drink water during practice and that he made them run laps and sprints and such.

Your heart certainly goes out to the parents, losing a young man, probably 15 to 18 years old.

But what surprises me is that many similar young men don’t die every day on the practice field.

I think that at most places, at least, they have changed the rule about no water during practice, that, in fact, drinking water is encouraged.

Maybe this coach had reverted to the Bear Bryant, Bobby Knight, survival-of-the-fittest philosophy of coaching.

It hasn’t been that long ago.

Understand, I do not speak as a former football star, even of high school.

I freely admit to being the sorriest player to ever wear the black and gold of my school.

I may not have played much, but I suffered through practice just as much as Demps or Bradley or Tom or Ed Cain, our stars.

Run, run, run, get knocked around some and run some more.

And not a drop of water ‘til we staggered off the field.

There was an over-flowing well near the end of the field.

Water bubbled up out of the many holes in the horizontal pipe. We’d latch on too one of those holes and try to suck it dry, and then be thirsty again by the time we’d get to the dressing room.

Oh, I knew Daddy was right by the second day of practice: I should never have gone out for football. I should have done like my friend Willie.

After the first practice,he got off that school bus, snatched a sweet ‘tater out of the warming closet, grabbed a pick-sack, and headed for the cotton patch.

But noooo.

I had to stay and get knocked around some more.

Bill Cosby summed it up pretty well. He said, if a normal person steps out in the street and gets hit by a car and survives, he knows not to do that again. But a football coach expects you to go out there time and time again and get smashed by Tom Taggart or some other human tank.

Not even to mention that after that, you had to make that foot-dragging two-mile walk home, and then walk down in the bottom to drive up the cows. And that was a daily thing during the football season.

Oh, Daddy, you were so right. (But of course, I wouldn’t admit it then.)

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.