Fields Of Dreams

When the final week of August arrives, I can always catch a subtle, but wonderful waft of the weeks and the season to come. The air hints at the aroma of crisp dried leaves, a rampant and humid chill that bites noses and cheeks, the smell of brats roasting on an old travel grill, and rivalries that heat our cold blood till it boils. For a Michigander like me, it isn’t fall until the renowned melody of The Victors is the most overwhelmingly common reverberation in town, and clapping hands and raised fists are so customary that it becomes a sign of kindness to “hail” back to another. Even while the sun still shines in late August, the green leaves rustle and remind me of that magical time when the leaves fall and nature sleeps, but the crowds awaken, enacting many to opt into a memorable migration to the stadiums we devout ourselves to. 

To me, college football is not just the epitome of fall, nor simply the blood that courses through a midwesterner’s veins. College football is a tradition—a lifestyle that blends highs and lows into three hours whose pain and joy resonate far beyond the field and into our hearts. For three months of the year we champion the misfortunes transformed into good fortune, the hardships turned into hard wins, and when the insurmountable is ever present, hovering in persistent palpitation over a fanbase, the journey from the bottom to the top is what makes the sport as sweet as it is. 

For someone like myself, the emotional climax of upsets and Cinderella stories, erasing the “im” from impossible, while maintaining pure joy, is what connects me to this sport we find so quintessential to this country and culture. As an autistic individual, I’m no stranger to winning against the odds. Like my favorite teams, when I push and persist, even through trials and tribulation and against the roar of naysaying and pressure, and I succeed, my victory feels as special as the team wearing the iconic colors on the field. 

Having autism is both a gift and a curse, a challenge, but one that comes ripe with plentiful gratitude. Isolation appears as dominant as Ohio State’s pass rush, but like this year’s edition of “The Game,”-the title bestowed upon the blood-boiling Ohio State Michigan rivalry, it’s not impossible to conquer. As I have gone through life feeling as though I’m either incompetent to all that others know, feel, experience, or comprehend I feel more alone than I actually am. That has been far more difficult to come to terms with, the sense of perpetual solitary confinement amidst the masses, when crowds couldn’t be more opposite than a small prison cell. 

For many years my autism has made me feel as though I’m on the outside looking in, experiencing everything deeply when others only penetrate barely beyond the first layer. I’m blunt in how I view the world. I see falsity and cannot pretend, therefore, I don’t. I see what gains attention, therefore, it’s not the thing I wish to gain. For all too long, I sensed and grasped bullsh*t to where I saw how much our world functioned on bullsh*t. Yet, I felt like a hypocrite. I sensed, and therefore, judged bullsh*t, all the while wanting to bullsh*t myself to get by and to eradicate the mountainous sensation that autism seemed to infinitely bestow upon me. That was until I became obsessively enveloped in the sport that would change the way I perceived my disability and all that it offered me. 

A love for college football was a family tradition that was Midwest iconography. College football meant cheers, fight songs, rivalries, brats, burgers, chips, and a mouth that temporarily evolved to that of a sailor. My grandfather became my reason for investing in the sport which began to change my outlook on my autism. I had been a college football fan since I was a small child but evolved in high school. Saturdays were spent quickly finishing up homework and relocating to the couch in my favorite ratty sweatshirt, texting my grandfather as we cheered on our beloved team the University of Michigan Wolverines.

Quickly, the Wolverines became synonymous with a certain intimacy that transgressed, positively, the limitations of brewskies and fight songs, and ventured into a territory that was personal and private. I began to foster a relationship that I didn’t feel was something fit to express in a traditionally egregiously rowdy environment. My love for college football surpassed the emotional intent behind 40-degree days, rush-rejected frat-wannabees, and their chest painting. 

For me, the field was a place where tribulations shone as a mark of character, achievement, and most of all, potential. I had spent far too long attributing the event of loss and the label of inability or limitation to my autism. Deeply instilled in me was the sense that I had lost normalcy and all I had to do was search a little bit longer to find it, take hold of it, and restore it. Instead, college football assimilated its greatest moments through the hardest of obstacles and the most tragic of circumstances to amount to a priceless kind of joy that couldn’t be attained through the least trial-stricken life. 

On the field, the players who had learning disabilities, but made the team as walk-ons, had beaten cancer or another illness, recovered from homelessness, or a parent dying, were looked up to as the ones who had overcome the worst and at their fingertips, at the present, lay the best of themselves. The very tragedies that could be viewed as nothing more than pain, were transformed into initiative and by extension success and achievement. Surmounting the odds was legendary, an act more philosophical, but far more prestigious than any Heisman trophy or Biletnikoff award. My autism was just that—something that for far too long I had seen as negative, something I could not surmount. 

I desperately wanted to climb over the hurdle and venture away from the realm of filling out forms as “disabled,” automatically inflicting upon myself a dangerous kind of difference. I found a masochistic joy in labeling my autism as insurmountable. It was as if I derived a perverse enjoyment from convincing myself that I could never garner love or acceptance for the quirkiest, but most intimate parts of myself. It was easier to provide myself with a narrative that instilled in me a belief that I would not have to accept my autism, but rather accept its macabre gravitas, reveling in self-destructive pessimism. 

Yet, through lessons learned through rivalries fought on the field and players preserving, I slowly, but surely began to see my autism as potential, an agony that didn’t end in demise or impossibility of resurrection. Rather, the hardships I experienced made me as qualified as my favorite college players, holding the potential to push through and do something remarkable. Perhaps I talked a bit too loudly and at times struggled to understand and interpret social cues, a realm of understandings comically alien to me. Perhaps I learned and worked in different ways than others, but I achieved almost anything that I put my mind to. College football helped me understand that the rigorous and often painful journey is what sets me on the path to my dreams and ultimately achievement. I was autistic for a reason and had been born with a brain that was set on never bending to conventionality. I was bold, not broken and the field taught me how to reinforce that matra, even on the hard days.

If I were to have an alternate life where tribulation was not something that had struck my life and left its mark, I would, like my favorite players on my favorite team, not be the heroine of my own story. To make something of that ineffable weight that my autism seemed to bestow upon me would be to transform my perception of weight as a barrier, into weight as the door to a greater place. 

The stadium was where it all happened–-the heart-wrenching losses, the ecstasy of shocking upsets, rivalries gone dominant or lop-sided, and field rushes that instilled a rush in the heart. It was so much more. As I walked into college football stadiums, I entered my place of worship, both to the game and to myself. The stadium and the crowd that occupied every seat, was the ultimate mass, for all that entered the stadium and dared to endure the unknown that rested itself in four quarters, were the most pious of people. A sense of true belonging was a rarity for someone like me, growing out of uncontrollable tics, big emotions, yet had an old soul, kindness, and curiosity. 

I felt that I was too untrained to ever be integrated into socializing, even though it was a training that I felt I had no consciousness of understanding how to get better at, and what I was doing wrong in the first place. I questioned why it was that I felt people saw me and defined me by my worst moments, rather than by how I held myself—with joy and passion, happiness and embracing the weird. Yet, in a stadium, we all shared one common goal. It didn’t matter what town you came from, nor what family, nor what body; if you gave a damn about college football, then everyone around you appreciated you. I’ve never felt more seen, than in a crowd of strangers for an electric and irreplaceable three hours. 

Every fall was a season of reverence, where my god was the NCAA and Jesus and his disciples were my favorite head coach and the ensuing beloved team. Clenched hands and silent chants of “please” at the television, were my prayers. Fight songs were my hymns, and I sang them poorly, my voice cracking ever so slightly, but my voice echoed with as much love as some had for Christ and an evangelical God. I saw myself, and continue to see myself, in the players who are unforgettable for all the complicated beings that they are. There is no joy in college football if there are no stories where perseverance is the climax. To see one who has fought the ultimate battles is to put an emotion to the scoreboard and the events conspiring on the field. 

College football will always mean something special to me. It is a realm like no other, and an environment unmatchable in energy and energetic aesthetic. To cheer amongst the crowd, amidst differences, for three hours while we reconcile inside our chosen place of sports worship, the wind whipping against our faces, our gloves hot and sticky, but our hearts happy and healthy. For three hours, I was the girl who was kicked, bullied, nearly pushed, and forced down a steep hill, the subject of condescension, and yet rose above it all to find something I cherished despite the hardship. As I have battled self-belittlement and a sensation of despondency I thought incurable, the world of college football has provided me with joy, and a field where the trials and tribulations of the players inspire me always to take a moment to think of my tribulations as the potential for unparalleled greatness, whatever that may mean to me. 

I’m proud to be a midwesterner, inflecting my As as I speak, with a fervent passion for the sport we call our own and the stadiums we call home. As I’ve transitioned to college, football has helped me feel at ease amidst the overwhelming crowds of loud students, and at home in my differences that may feel at times isolating. The crowds at my college games feel like a singular entity, for it is one cause that we are so momentarily dedicated to, not a thousand different motivations colliding in a frenzy. 

I always thought that the Michigan Wolverines would be my singular team and support of another was the worst kind of infidelity, but Coach Deion Sanders and the University of Colorado, Boulder have made me simultaneously feel elation and pride in my place in Buff Nation, and by extension, in myself. To see a man who cares so little about a cacophony of external unsubstantiated, but emotionally charged criticism, singularly concentrating on the achievement and bettering of unique young men, is as inspiring as it comes. Deion epitomizes the athletic empathy that makes my autism feel uplifting rather than restricting as if it has a home, a place of appreciated residence in the crowd of jerseys and cheers. I resonate deeply with Coach Prime’s squad, for I, like them, have had social attitudes directed at me that define the odds of my achievement to be different or lower than others. Yet here I am, successfully,like the Buffs, 9-3, more wins than losses, yet still acknowledging there are moments of defeat. To be a Buff football enthusiast, is to support a man who champions and amplifies the hard-fought wins, journeys, and successes like my own, imperfect, scars to be shown, but tough as hell. To love the men of Folsom Field, is to embrace achieving one’s dreams and desire regardless of the odds.

 As I put on my team shirt again, I adjust the Buff logo so it’s situated as close to my heart as possible. While the logo is synonymous with the decorum of jerseys and helmets, it will always feel more appropriate being placed next to my heart, right where football made my autism metamorphose from punishment to potential.

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