9102130067
DETROIT FREE PRESS
911118
Monday, November 18, 1991
METRO FINAL
1C
MITCH ALBOM
SEE ALSO METRO EDITION, Page 1C
Copyright (c) 1991, Detroit Free Press
THIS GAME CAN BE MAGIC AND TRAGIC
The crazy thing about football is that it can take you to places you never
dreamed of. One minute you're dancing in the end zone; the next, you're
surrounded by doctors asking whether you have any feeling in your legs.
There were two touchdowns scored within two minutes of Sunday's game at
the Silverdome. Both were pass plays. Both were worth six points to the Lions.
Both involved guys named Mike.
The similarity ends there. For Mike Farr, it was a play he'd been waiting
for his whole life, the beginning, he hopes, of great things to come.
Mike Utley can only hope it's not the end.
Let us begin with the happier moment. Farr had been dreaming of an NFL
touchdown since the days when his father, Mel, was scoring them for this same
Detroit franchise back in the '60s. Being the son of a famous running back is
not the easiest of childhoods. Everyone says the same stupid things. "I hope
you're as good a player as your father." "Maybe one day you'll score
touchdowns, too?"
Young Farr had hoped so, but his prospects looked thin. He had played
receiver for UCLA, but was overlooked in the NFL draft. Nobody wanted him. Not
big, not particularly fast, his only professional opportunity came in a
free-agent tryout with his father's old team, the Lions. You do strange things
when it's your only shot. Sometimes great things. By sheer toughness and
desire, Farr made the squad. That was last year.
"Ever since, I've wondered about catching a touchdown pass," he would say
after the Lions' 21-10 victory Sunday over the Los Angeles Rams. "I guess once
you make the team, you worry that you'll leave the game without ever getting
one."
He had gone a year and half with such bad fortune, until the fourth quarter
Sunday, when the Rams came after quarterback Erik Kramer with a blitz and
Kramer, having called an out-and- up pattern, knew that if he could get the
ball there, Farr should be open. Man, was he open! Nobody within 10 yards. All
Farr had to do was gather the ball, make like an antelope and gallop across
the goal line.
Touchdown. Finally.
"I was so excited I lost track of the ball," Farr said. "Then when I was
coming off the field, I realized I wanted to give it to my mother. Every week
she's been saying, 'This is the week you get one, this week, this week . . .'
So I ran to one of the equipment guys and said, 'I got to have that ball.' "
He smiled. "Everything happened so quick. It was like, wow! And it's over
. . ."
A touchdown, an injury
"Everything happened so quick, and then, whoa, he was down," mumbled Roman
Fortin, the offensive lineman. His voice was quiet. His tone was somber. He
was 30 feet from Farr in the locker room, but he was talking about a whole
different world. His best friend on the team, Mike Utley, the massive guard,
the guy who rode the motorcycles, the guy who loved heavy-metal music, the guy
who went out with Fortin's family to Pizza Hut and, afterward, grabbed his
friend and said, "Thanks," and Fortin said, "Why?" and Utley said, "For
proving to me that I'm not ready for kids yet." That guy, his buddy, had gone
down in that same fourth quarter, someone had snapped his head back and he was
flat on the field, not moving, a slab of flesh.
"I ran out there when I saw him," Fortin said. "I tried to tell him
everything was OK. But I saw all the doctors around him. He wasn't able to
move his legs. And they said spinal injury. . . ."
No one is quite sure how it happened. Utley, as usual, had been pounding
his body against the defensive linemen, trying to open holes and protect his
quarterback. Feisty and wild -- one of his teammates calls him "a raw guy" --
he had already had a few swinging sessions with defensive tackle Alvin Wright.
It was a good, hard afternoon of football. Then, on the first play of the
final period, Kramer found Robert Clark in the end zone for a touchdown and
the Lions leaped in celebration. All except Utley, who couldn't move. The
officials surrounded him. Coach Wayne Fontes ran out. Soon the doctors were
taping him to a stretcher and rolling him away.
"When they carried him off on that stretcher," said center Kevin Glover, "I
saw him move his hand. He gave me the thumbs- up sign, like he wanted us to
win. Can you imagine thinking about the team at a moment like that? I'm not
sure I could . . ."
A brutal way to live
The idea that football and war are nearly the same is really not
farfetched. Not at all. When you're victorious in war, you cannot get any
higher, your heart pounds, your blood rushes. And when you go down in war, it
happens swiftly and without warning. You never see the bullet. Isn't that
what they say?
So it was that Farr, 24, was surrounded by reporters long after the
Sunday's victory, smiling and telling stories. And he was still talking as
Fortin tied his shoes and asked which hospital his friend was at. "It's
probably Henry Ford, right? One of those Henry Fords?"
His teammates shrugged. No one knew.
You hope Utley, 25, will be OK. What else can you do? You hear a lot
about football, and sometimes you figure everyone is feeling the same thing,
happy with the wins, sad with the losses. But for all the team talk, this
sport is still brutal, violent and played by human beings, so that one man's
glorious afternoon can be another's tragic moment. It's a hell of a scary game
that way. It really is.
COLUMN; FOOTBALL; MIKE UTLEY; INJURY; HEALTH