Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy, Nathan Whitaker Read Free Book Online Page B

drugs and alcohol. Throughout high school I had never known anyone—anyone, that is, who was an athlete or serious about taking care of his body—who drank, smoked, or took drugs. No one I respected, anyway.
    That changed at the University of Minnesota. There, guys who were performing at very high levels athletically also drank, smoked, and used various illegal drugs. Some coaches from other sports knew about it and even encouraged players to take their recruits to area bars.
    At that point, I was forced to rethink my stance on drinking and drugs and make a decision that wasn’t necessarily performance based. Up until then, my primary reason for not drinking and doing drugs was that it would hurt my performance—my dad’s slides of those cigarette-smoking lab rats had never left my mind. Once the decision moved to a moral ground, however, I still came out at the same place.
    What would my mom and dad think? always went through my mind whenever I had the opportunity to take a drink or smoke a cigarette. I had been taught that smoking and drinking were not right for us as a family, and illegal drugs—well, they were illegal. Therefore, they were not for me. But this was a test, because I saw that great athletes could drink and do drugs and get away with it—for a while.
    I still hung out with all the guys and went to parties, but I never did smoke, drink, or take any drugs. And the more I was around those things, the more I understood why my decision was a smart one.
     
    Wisconsin is a big rival for Minnesota. Even today, Big Ten alums in our Colts locker room laugh about the rivalry games in the conference. It seems that each week, the teams are playing for something: the Old Oaken Bucket (Purdue–Indiana), the Little Brown Jug (Minnesota–Michigan), the Illibuck (Illinois–Ohio State), the Governor’s Victory Bell (Minnesota–Penn State), the Heartland Trophy (Iowa–Wisconsin), the Paul Bunyan Governor’s Trophy (Michigan–Michigan State), or a bronze pig called the Floyd of Rosedale (Minnesota–Iowa). If somebody’s not handing something over after a game, it just doesn’t seem like a Big Ten game. The Minnesota–Wisconsin game is the longest-running rivalry game, dating back to 1890. The winner gets Paul Bunyan’s Axe.
    My junior year, we were playing Wisconsin at home in Minneapolis. The weather all week had been awful, with heavy snow in the middle of the week. I told my folks not to bother trying to make the trip, but by Saturday the weather was perfect, with clear blue skies and the bracing Minnesota cold of late November. It was around thirty degrees, and the snow that had been cleared off the field was piled four feet high along the benches. Wisconsin had trounced us the year before in Madison, and we had some guys from Madison on our team who badly wanted to win. In addition, this was our last game of the year, and we wanted to send our seniors out with a victory. It was an emotional game for us.
    As we got into the game, we found we could run at will against them. From the opening kickoff, we could just feel that we were going to win. On the opening drive, we took the ball and gashed their defense all the way down the field with our running game. But I knew I only needed one touchdown pass to set the Big Ten record. So on first down and goal from their seven yard line, I changed the play at the line of scrimmage from a run to a pass. As I was releasing the ball, my arm got hit, and my pass was intercepted in the end zone. When I came off the field, our offensive line coach, Roger French, was there to meet me. “I am so mad,” he shouted at me. “If I had a gun, I would shoot you right now!”
    I was glad he was unarmed.
    Coach French later went to Brigham Young University and coordinated some explosive passing offenses, but that day—understandably—he wanted to run the ball. Thankfully, our running backs stayed hot, the offensive line controlled the line of scrimmage, and we dominated