I've met a grand total of one NFL player in my life.
I'm not a huge NFL fan or anything, so that's hot really a huge surprise. I haven't exactly been hanging out at NFL games or fan gatherings in hopes of adding to that total or anything.
But I've met Ryan Moats, and he's every bit of Jim Bullinger's equal to me because of that.
It was the spring of 2005, and Calen and I were in Dallas for a National Science Teachers Association conference - we were both presenting for the first time. We flew into Dallas on the morning of the day before the conference, Thursday, probably, getting into town in enough time to take the DART (I think, maybe it was a shuttle, who knows?) out to our hotel at
Mockingbird Station and get settled in.
Once we oriented ourselves a bit - figuring out where we were, how we were going to get to the convention center to pick up our conference materials - we headed out to see what there was to see around the area where we were staying. Turns out that we were just a few blocks from Southern Methodist University, home of the only athletic death penalty in major D1 sports.
We checked out fraternity row and a few neat sculptures and eventually ambled our way to SMU's football stadium where we looked for an open gate, eventually heading into the stadium and down toward the field to take a few pictures of Beaker (my
class mascot, don't ask if you aren't already aware).
As we wandered are the stadium, looking for the best angles to pose Beaker, we saw that there was a lone athlete down on the football field working out. He was running wind sprints and line drills alone, simply out for a workout. He even wandered up into the stands to run the stairs later as we headed away from the stadium.
While we were there, however, the athlete stopped up into the stands and asked us what we were doing. No accusation, no worry, just some sort of odd curiosity as to why these odd people were taking pictures of the stadium with this little Muppet in the foreground - no pictures with people in them, of course.
We told him that we were science teachers from Cincinnati in town for a conference and explained that I took my Beaker figure - my doll, as he said - with me on vacations to let the kids see where I'd been. Since we were missing a couple of days of school for the conference, I wanted to make sure the kids knew we weren't just ditching school for a quick trip to the warm south while they wiled away the hours in rainy, dreary Cincinnati.
The athlete introduced himself, saying that he had played college football at Louisana Tech University and was about to be drafted into the NFL in the next few weeks. He was temporarily back in his hometown of Dallas working out to stay in shape. He wished us well - our entire conversation probably lasted two or three minutes - and we wandered onward.
Calen and I have both followed Moats's career since then, mentioning it to each other whenever we'd see his name in the news.
Moats's career hasn't been too much to write home about, really.
- Drafted by the Eagles in the 3rd round
- Headed to the scout team initially but finished the season strong as an injury replacement with 260+ yards and three touchdowns in the last six games of the season
- Not even 70 yards in 2006
- Missed the full 2007 season with a preseason injury
- Moved on to Houston in 2008 but didn't do much - just twenty-six carries all year
- Filled in admirably when Stave Slaton was injured this year - 114 yards and three touchdowns in a single game against Buffalo
- Back to the bench the next game
But I'm always pulling for Ryan Moats.
If ever I'm back into fantasy football, you'd better watch out for my team, the Ryan Moats.
Oh, Moats has also been in the national news for one other, far
sadder incident. In the spring of this year, Moats and his wife were speeding through the streets of Dallas, on their way to the hospital where his mother-in-law was dying. Moats reached the hospital parking lot where he and his wife got out of the car. A police officer who had been trying to pull Moats over for a mile or two pointed his gun at Moats's wife and ordered both back into their car.
Moats's wife went into the hospital, but Moats himself was detained for eighteen minutes while his mother-in-law passed away inside. By the time Moats was able to get inside, she had died.
The incident became national news as a white officer had treated a black man unfairly - or at least unfairly as many people saw the incident. You can view the whole police tape in two
YouTube videos here.
I certainly don't know that I consider the incident racially motivated, but I certainly know that the whole situation was regretable and sad, and I was sorry that Moats's return to the headlines had to be because of it.
Run hard, Ryan Moats. There are at least two midwestern science teachers cheer for your every yard.
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