Owen Schmitt - What the NFL was and should be again

Owen Schmitt - What the NFL was and should be again

By Cody Knotts
February 29, 2008

After hours and hours of listening to players attempt to say just the right thing to the same questions, Owen Schmitt walked into the room. Schmitt is justly defined as a throwback, a man that seems out of place in the new business orientated world of the NFL.

But it is Schmitt that truly holds the possiblity of breaking through the vanilla universe that is being created for the sake of avoiding offending anyone. Like most of society, the NFL has become obsessed with not making a mistake rather than being free, honest and forthright.

Schmitt was the star fullback of the West Virginia Mountaineers. He speaks his mind, cracks jokes and talks about blocking and knocking people down. No sappy stories about his family, no focus on the money that he might make, no bling bling in an attempt to pretend he is a movie star. He is a man’s man and more importantly a football player.
Schmitt actually bent 11 facemasks during the last two years. He smashed tacklers and lead the way for one of the nation’s best running offenses. He was never tackled for a loss, never once.

When you talk to Schmitt you don’t worry about the measurables, you don’t need to. You know that this man can and will play football. You don’t worry that whether he will play hurt, you already know the answer to the question.

You don’t worry whether he will give 100%. You know that a man that played Division III football and then traveled to the Morgantown from Wisconsin to hand in a tape without being asked, will always give his all.
The NFL has become dull with the product that matters most, its players. They are too well coached as to what to say, if not how to live their personal lives. No spiking, no celebrating, no fun. It is the greatest single danger to America’s favorite sport.

What is forgotten is that the game was built on the pesronalities and passions of men like Vince Lombardi, Jack Lambert and Dick Butkus. It was Iron Mike Ditka and The Bears that still fascinate us today. The reason is simple, they are not Tom Brady with his supermodel, but instead men that spoke their minds. They would actually talk about how much they wanted to take someone’s head off when tackling or blocking. Imagine the endless sound bites and the league fines if they players today actually said what they thought.

Schmitt is a dinosaur, a relic to a lost era of real men that played the game for the love of it. He is the true hope for a league rocked by a cheating scandal, vanilla comments and Jeff Fisher’s leasure suits. We need real, we need the truth, we need Owen Schmitt.