Initiation

What is seen is spectacle:

The roar of the crowd beneath the towering lights.
Voices singing along to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”
Overturned trash can lids pounded like drums.
Painted faces. Painted chests.
Senior posters zip-tied to the chain-link fence.

It is Anytown, USA.
In the fall.
On a Friday night.

But beneath the spectacle—beneath the anthem, the raucous band, the scent of popcorn in the air—something ancient stirs.

An urge.
A need.
A deeper truth lies beneath.

But to reach it we must dig.

Beneath the cheers and chants, we find the rhythm of the game:

The back and forth.
The give and take.
Twenty-two bodies battling for inches of grass.
The whistle. The snap.
The countdown of the forty-second play clock.

And beneath the rhythm of the game lie the plays that take your breath away:

Crucial first downs.
Game-ending three-and-outs.
Hail Marys launched with desperation and hope.
Two-minute drills that stretch your experience of time.
Pick-sixes that send the game into overtime.

And beneath the plays, the choice:

In the gasping, trying-to-catch-your-breath moments before the snap,
when your body begs for rest and your mind pleads for relief,
something deeper must decide:

Will you rise?

And beneath the choice, the labor:

The bear crawls.
The hill sprints.
The weight room after practice.
The playbook committed to memory.
The hours of film.
The sharpening of your situational awareness.
The building of your football IQ.

And beneath the labor, the discipline:

To show up. Day after day.
On time. Ready to go. Locked in.
To give all you’ve got from start to finish.
Every drill. Every rep. Every sprint.
Touch the line. Every time. No shortcuts.
Then sit in the ice bath.
Refuel. Rehydrate.
Finish your homework.
Rest your aching body.
So you can do it again the next day.

And beneath the discipline, the primordial hunger:

Something only humans seek—
and boys are wired to need.

A rite of passage into manhood.

For millennia, when boys reached a certain unruly age, the men of the community would come for them. Wearing harrowing masks, arriving in the dead of night, they would tear the boys from their mothers’ arms.The mothers would hold on tight and wail, “Don’t take my boy!”—but they were playing along. They knew.

It had to be.
It was time.

Time for their sons to leave the warmth of their embrace and begin the journey into manhood.

Unlike their younger selves—and unlike their daughters, whose bodies signaled when it was time to become women—boys receive no such sign.

For boys, the transition into manhood must be orchestrated.
Planned.
Amplified.

Enacted by the community.
Guided by older men who had walked the same path.

They must be initiated.

Initiation isn’t just a test of strength, toughness, or endurance.
It is a crucible for learning responsibility.
For sacrifice.
For belonging.
For taking one’s place among the community.

But modernity has abandoned all this. And in its absence, boys drift—emotionally and spiritually unprepared for the atomizing impact of our hyper-connected world.

Untethered, they are left to navigate a consumerist culture engineered for distraction—a culture relentlessly selling them comfort, convenience, and the musings of muscled misogynists offering hollow, counterfeit versions of manhood.

And they feel it.

They may not know how to name it.
But they know something is missing.

There is a hunger no energy drink or dopamine hit of a video game can satiate.

The primal hunger for rite.
For passage.
For transformation.

Some try to initiate themselves.
But there is no such thing as self-initiation.

Some gather with friends, hoping to initiate one another.
But boys cannot initiate boys.

So some find their way to a football field.

Yes, some show up because they love the game. Some come seeking approval—of fathers, mothers, or someone else who may be watching from the stands.

Some come because they don’t know what else to do with their anger, shame, or bravado. Some come for one or more or all of these reasons.

But beneath every surface motivation, there’s an ancient instinct pulling them to the edge of a football field.

They crave a test.
An ordeal.
A proving ground.

They are looking for guides.

Not peers.
Not friends.
Not influencers.

Mentors.

Men who will say “Yes” to their singular significance.
Men who will say “No” to their diminishment of others.
Men who will say “Do it again!”when they don’t hold the standard.

Men who will unmoor them from boyhood.
Men who will stand beside them to begin the work of becoming who they might be.

And that work happens in the space between plays.

In those breathless moments—when muscles burn and lungs heave, when the body pleads for rest but something deeper resists—there is more than physical struggle.

In those breathless pauses, they enter liminal spaces—spaces of convergence, pressure, tension, paradox, two things meeting.

They are in-between, standing in the overlap of “no longer” and “not yet.”

They are no longer boys—
not yet men—
but must choose which to become.

Within these inner battles, there are hidden movements.
Movements the crowd cannot see.
Movements not against an opponent, but away—
away from the boy they were before they stepped onto the field.

And in the fleeting seconds of a play,
and in every quiet, courageous choice to rise from the turf,
football becomes a doorway to a mytho-poetic, heroic place.

Football offers what modern life so often lacks:
A structured path from boyhood to manhood.
A crucible.

It takes boys on the epic adventure of their inner world—
Beyond themselves.
To the edges of their maps.

Where sea-serpents breach the ocean waves,
Where the great unknown is about to begin.

And when their senior season ends—
The final season for most of them—
Football sends them home.
Back to their loved ones.
As if from the underworld.

Transformed.
Not just older.
Initiated.
Not just changed.
Boys no longer.

+++

This post is part of my latest book project titled: “Football is _______”

Every two weeks, I’ll fill in the above blank with a word or phrase and tell a story. I’ll do that for 52 weeks and then compile the posts into a book of essays.

I’d love for you to join me on this journey and share your thoughts or stories along the way. If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with others who might appreciate it as well.

Read previous posts in this series.

Thanks for reading! – shawn