KEYNOTE: THE GAME CHANGER
Urbanite #48 June 08
By: Michael Anft
Former Colts star Joe Ehrmann on why sports brings out the worst in boys and men, and what to do about it
So, which is it?
Is the world of athletics an oasis where competition instills character, where spectators can take joy in watching the young and strong command their bodies? Or is sports a mirage that lures youth toward a false sense of possibility, turns their parents into foul-mouthed sideline menaces, and belches up such role models as Roger Clemens and Michael Vick?
Joe Ehrmannâ??s answer: Yes, and yes.
The former Colts star agrees that athletics have become intertwined with destructive notions of masculinity, perverting whatever virtues the experience might offer. But the defensive tackle-turned-man-of-God also sees sportsâ??more specifically, the tutelage of enlightened, loving coachesâ??as a potential road to salvation.
Ehrmannâ??s backstory shows why he can have it both ways. In the mid-1970s, when he was an armored, white-and-blue-draped hulk with the number seventy-six on his back, Ehrmann tossed other human beings to the ground for glory. The â??Sack Packâ?â??the beefy quartet of Ehrmann, Mike Barnes, Fred Cook, and John Duttonâ?? led the National Football League in quarterback takedowns in 1975 and was as essential to the rebirth of the post-Unitas franchise as howitzer-armed quarterback Bert Jones. Like all of the Colts teams of the era (and before an implosion engineered a few years later by owner Robert Irsay), Ehrmann and his teammates were revered, and the hard-partying Ehrmann played the role of gridiron hero to the hiltâ??holding court at Leadbetterâ??s bar in Fells Point, and anywhere else he was invited. He owned the town, and acted like it.
Ehrmannâ??s conversion began in the midst of a ten-year NFL career, as he watched his 18-year-old brother, Billy, struggle for five months in a pediatric cancer ward at Johns Hopkins. Billyâ??s death in 1978 was a â??cathartic moment,â? he says. â??A lot of my sense of manhood came into question. I had climbed to the pinnacle as one kind of man, but I found that it was empty and unfulfilling, and had little to do with helping other people. It had been more about me being number seventy-six than being a person.â?
A friend gave him a copy of Viktor Franklâ??s psychoanalytic book on life in a Nazi concentration camp, Manâ??s Search for Meaning, and Ehrmann was transformed. In 1982, he helped build a Ronald McDonald House near Hopkins Hospital for families of children with cancer. In 1985, he was ordained a Lutheran minister, and in 1988 he founded The Door, an outreach charity designed to help needy families in East Baltimore find purpose and work.
Only the red-and-blue tattoo on his left forearm, made indecipherable by time, serves as a fading reminder of Ehrmannâ??s feral past. Now 59, he gives more than a hundred talks and seminars each year to youth coaches, injured Iraq War vets, community groups, and NFL teamsâ??the latter as part of the leagueâ??s move to improve its playersâ?? behavior. In conversation, he tosses around terms like â??self esteemâ? and â??father woundâ?â??a prevalent concept in Christian counseling that has to do with emotionally stunted responses sons receive from fathers, and the toxic aftereffects that linger throughout the sonâ??s adulthoodâ??to explain how too many use sport for ill, depriving young men of the acceptance they need to love and be loved.
Ehrmann also practices what he preaches at the Gilman School, where he serves as a volunteer assistant football coach. One of his star players is his son Joey Ehrmann, who has accepted a scholarship to play football at Wake Forest University this fall.
Over nothing stronger than a few cups of coffee, Ehrmann sat down to chat about whatâ??s wrong with sports and what we can do about it.
Q - Thereâ??s this prevalent belief that sports heroes are worthy role modelsâ??even though thereâ??s little evidence to suggest they possess more character than people in any other walk of life. Why do we persist in saying that sports equals virtue?
A - The greatest myth in America is that sports builds character. It doesnâ??t do that unless a coach teaches it and itâ??s intentional. Weâ??ve reduced sports to winning at all costs, at every level. Most studies show that the longer a child is successful at sports, the greater the ethical corners heâ??ll start cutting.
Q - If holding sports up as a way to develop character is wrong, as you seem to be saying, why bother to lavish educational resources on itâ??especially with fallen heroes like Clemens and Vick in the background?
A - Sports is actually an incredible way to teach character, but itâ??s got nothing to do with role models. Thatâ??s all a Madison-Avenue construct designed to sell more merchandise or tickets. Madison Avenue promotes what I call the three myths of masculinity: that men need to possess athletic ability, that they need to have sexual conquests, and that they have to have economic success. Athletes have all three of those lies embedded within their lives. As a society, we have to start moving against that, because none of those myths has anything to do with masculinity or creating a good person.
Q - Yet, kidsâ??and their parentsâ??eat it up. Given that, how is it possible that playing sports represents a â??teachable momentâ??
A - When I walked away from playing sports, I walked away from it totally. But I eventually came to the conclusion that thereâ??s probably not another venue in America where we can address our deepest social problems. Sports is the secular religion of America. It engages more individuals, families, and communities than any cultural institution we have. And the high priest of that religion is the coach. Football really should be viewed as a tool for teaching. The problem is weâ??ve lost sight of sports as a way to teach. Sports should be the last class of the day. Most schools and school systems have totally lost their balls in the weeds on that. If itâ??s not an educational activity, what good is it? Why do schools even have sports teams? Why should taxpayers be funding it?
Q - If coaches are indeed the â??high priestsâ? of sports, what should they be preaching?
A - The biggest predictor of a childâ??s success is self-esteem. You canâ??t teach kids in this age without teaching about racism, relationships, and other things that make them aware of how people have treated each other, or how they should treat each other. For me, the success you have in being a man or woman comes down to two things: Can you love and be loved? Itâ??s about building relationships. Coaches have an amazing amount of power to teach that because every boy who plays wants to please that coach. Kids are tremendous. They want someone to look them in the eye and tell them they have value. If I realize that I have that kind of platform, I can speak to them about important values and about why many of the cultural messages they receive are wrong.
Q - And do you do that when you deal with the kids at Gilman?
A - During practices and before games, we teach them about poverty, racism, gender inequality, violence. Two of our primary topics are relationships and how to become a good man. How do you define that? We teach them the three lies of masculinity, how to be empathetic and gentle. During Homecoming Week, weâ??ll teach our guys about how to date a girl. Weâ??ll say: â??That girl youâ??re dating isnâ??t there to be disrespected or used by you. Sheâ??s her parentsâ?? prized possession. Treat her like you would your mother or your sister.â?? Iâ??ll teach kids about the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision that said black men werenâ??t constitutionally protected, how racism affects poverty. Thereâ??s no reason why coaches across the country canâ??t do something similar for young people.
Iâ??d like to see coaches be required to develop and turn in lesson plans, like teachers do. They would have to tell administrators what lessons theyâ??ll be teaching, including ones about morality, citizenship, and relationships. When I give seminars for coaches, I have them write down on an index card why theyâ??re a coach, why they coach the way they do, and what they want to get out of it, among other things. I try to get them to locate their core values and think about ways to relate them to their kids. What Iâ??ve learned is that with coaches and any other adult, they can convey those values if theyâ??ve made sense of their own livesâ??created a meaningful narrative from it. My wifeâ?? who is a psychotherapist â??and I call it â??mindsight.â? Itâ??s the capacity to understand yourself and others. Itâ??s not real complicated.
Q - In urban America, pro sports are seen as a ticket out of lives of squalor and danger. But the chances making it are infinitesimal. Doing what youâ??re doing at a school like Gilman might have value, but arenâ??t inner city kids who are susceptible to misleading cultural messages more in need of educational systems that prepare them for careers in things other than sports?
A - Of course. Theyâ??re better off buying lottery tickets than dreaming of a career playing a game. As a coach, you have to teach against the idea that sports is a way out. Kids need critical and social skills. They need to be taught the history of ghettos and about systemic racism. Their lives are dominated by the perpetuation of myths and by a feeling of powerlessness. You have to teach them the role that race and economics have played in their livesâ??and then show them that thatâ??s not their life. Then you have to help them develop self-esteem that can pull them out of that situation, so they can develop relationships that are positive and that they can build a life on. My conclusion is that you canâ??t take care of any crisis in urban America without dealing with the crisis of masculinity.
Q - What do you mean by that?
A - Men are in pain, man. Theyâ??ve denied it and suppressed it and buried it. But when you get them together and they hear you and others talking about it, they open up and it all flows out. I donâ??t care whether itâ??s Gilman kids, inner-city kids, NFL guys, or men in the boardroom. Theyâ??re all dealing with the expectations of masculinity that their fathers put on them. They were told they had to achieve a certain impossible, mythical level of masculinity to be a man, and itâ??s dominated their psyches. To deal with that, theyâ??ve had to medicate with somethingâ?? like I didâ??or become successful without any regard for the price they pay in relationships or health. As theyâ??ve gotten older, that myth has moved from the ball field to the bedroom to the billfold. Thatâ??s the progression. Itâ??s all about power and dominance and control. The communal and national cost we pay for that is just phenomenal. Many coaches perpetuate or reinforce that myth of masculinity.
Q - Youâ??ve paid some of those health costs yourself: Youâ??re hobbled these days by leg injuries that wonâ??t get much better, and youâ??ve watched a lot of your old NFL brethren succumb to Alzheimerâ??s and other diseases at rates much higher than that of the general population. Given the toll your playing career took on you physically, would you do it again?
A - Oh yeah. The high of that locker room, the camaraderie and the relationships you develop that last a lifetime â?¦ The old Colts, including the Sack Pack guys, still get together once a month, not just for nostalgia but to try and see what we can do to help other NFL retirees. The beauty of sports is that itâ??s such a melting pot. In this country, weâ??re segregated by zip code, and that determines what we see, where we go, who we hang out with. But sports ought to make you racism-proof. I know I became much more aware of social ills because I got to meet and work closely with people from a wide range of backgrounds. Even if that were all I got out of sports, it would have made it well worth it.
â??Michael Anft wrote about the death of Zachary Sowers in the May Urbanite.
reaction to Ehrmann's philosophy of life. Our favorite antagonist might be surprised. Samdaman 
I'm fat and sassy! I love to sing & dance & stomp my feet & really rock your world!
That saves the reader the trouble of leaving our website by clicking on the link. The article should be read by all the readers of this forum, not just by the members who support this website.
) Ehrmann's the better man by far.