Pete Unleashed: Line Play, the Thankless Profession
Pete Porcelli
Saturday April 22, 2000
Being big and having a high percentage of muscle and bulk does have its drawbacks. When I played, my wife and I had to go to the big men shops to get clothes. I would walk through the mall and see regular sized guys shopping in the clothing stores and envy them. Forget trying to wear "mall" clothes. I would wonder what it was like to wear a medium or large dress shirt. Then I would come back down to reality and think of some of my favorite expressions: "Bury me big or don’t bury me at all." And the infamous: "Life is too short to be small".
It`s funny how people would stare at us in airports and say, "Wow, you guys are big. You must be unstoppable.” The funny thing was, as big as we were there were linemen in our arrival city who were just as big, strong, and nasty as we were, just waiting to hammer us.
Game day is usually a tough day for the big guys. I used to tell people that just putting on my uniform was a workout in itself. It took me at least an hour to get dressed for a game. I was usually the last one out for introductions. I was never a First Team All-Arena selection but on game day I was definitely first team all-uncomfortable. Imagine 6 feet, 280 pounds wearing tight pads and a jersey. In my uniform I looked like 3 pounds of bologna stuffed in a one pound bag.
Then there`s the smoke from the introduction fireworks. The smoke really sucks if you’re a player. Try sucking on sulfur the first ten minutes of a game running up and down the field.
It`s funny. Out of the 70 some odd games I played, I only got hurt seriously one time. Players have their own secret union, sort of. We play to kick each others’ butts; but make no mistake about it, we never try to intentionally hurt each other. If you are a lineman in this league and are a dirty player, trust me, you will not be healthy much longer. It is an unspoken rule in Arenaball that you do not cheapshot anyone. Players know we have families and things like that and will not do foolish things. I remember one time I beat one of the Cleveland Thunderbolts linemen for a sack and he didn’t like that too much. So the next play, he purposely let me go free to quarterback only to cut me from the side. After the play was over I said some words that couldn`t be repeated in this column. Let`s just say I let him know I did not appreciate it and told him he better watch his back the rest of the game. Trust me, he didn’t try to cheap shot me again; I can play dirty with the best of them.
You see, a lineman’s job is a thankless one. We don’t score touchdowns; we aren`t the so-called glory boys like the quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs. We just do our job night after night trying to make our team look good. I want to end this article with the lineman’s creed.
It’s a small saying that typifies a lineman’s job. I’d say it to my football teams every season and the lineman would all repeat it back to me:
“WE’RE KNOWN THE LEAST, AND WE WORK THE HARDEST, BUT WHO CARES CAUSE WE ARE THE REASON!”
And that’s it for this week. See you at the games!
Pete Porcelli was a writer for ArenaFan Online during the 2000 season.
