Killer Kane Audio Memoir; Chapter 5: Halftime

Chapter 5: Halftime 

After a summer of hard work and Coach Jim Kane’s promise that he would “find a place” for him to play, Sam enters his senior season believing he has finally earned an opportunity. But during the opening game against Bennington, he remains on the sideline while the first half passes without his name being called.

At halftime, something inside him changes. Feeling overlooked and betrayed, Sam makes a quiet decision to stop caring. He continues attending practices and finishes the season, but emotionally, he has already walked away.

Decades later, that moment remains difficult to confront—not only because of what Kane did, but because of how Sam responded. Halftime is the turning point of the story: the moment disappointment becomes defiance, and defiance slowly becomes surrender.

Former Kane players: If you remember these events differently, disagree with Sam’s conclusions, or have your own story about Coach Kane, you are invited to join the conversation.

Transcript

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Welcome to Cowboys Not Eggheads. This is Killer Cain, a special twelve part audio memoir about my nineteen eighty-five senior football season at Mount Michael and the coach whose influence stayed with me for the next forty years. Thanks for listening. Chapter five Halftime. The first game of my senior season did not begin with disappointment. It began with expectation. We were playing Bennington and I dressed believing Cain would find the place he had told me existed. I did not expect to start. I understood who the established offensive linemen were, and I understood Kane's loyalty to the players he trusted. But a role did not have to be to mean starting. It can mean several plays of guard. It could mean special teams play. It can mean Kane calling my name once and telling me where he wanted me. That's what I expected. Not stardom, usefulness. That difference mattered to me. I had entered August believing I'd earned the opportunity to help. Kane's own words had reinforced that belief. I had performed well in practice, received repetitions with the first training offense, and demonstrated that I was stronger and more physical than I'd been the year before. Now the season had begun. All I needed was for the opportunity to move from the practice field into a game. I waited. Football's different from the sideline. A player participating in the game experiences each play through his assignment. He hears the call, finds the formation, identifies the defender, and concentrates on what he has to do. A reserve sees the entire field while also watching the coach. Every substitution has meaning. Every change in personnel creates the possibility that your name will be next. I watched Kane. I listened. I remained ready. The offense went onto the field without me. That wasn't surprising. The starters were the starters. I never expected Kane to redesign his opening lineup because of one strong August practice. I told myself my opportunity would come later. Another series had passed, then another. I continued waiting. Our quarterback, John Noble, played the entire first half on what it turned out to be a broken leg. I don't know exactly what Kane or anyone else understood about the severity of John's injury while the game was being played, and I won't pretend that Kane knowingly ordered a player with a diagnosed broken leg to remain on the field. What I know is that John was hurt and he continued playing. That was consistent with the Kane the world Kane had created. John was the quarterback. Kane trusted him. As long as one of Kane's trusted players could continue, that player was likely to remain in the game. There was something admirable in that toughness. There's also something revealing about Kane's approach to personnel. He depended on his core players. He didn't appear interested in using a game to discover whether the next player could perform. He wanted the players he already trusted. I was still trying to become one of them. During the first half, I continued to believe Kane might call me. The belief didn't disappear after the opening series or after the next one. I had waited years for a real role. I could wait another possession. I don't remember identifying one particular play and thinking this is when I should go in. The disappointment accumulated more quietly. I watched players leave a field and return. I watched Kane manage the game. I remained on the sideline. He didn't call my name. The first half ended. When we went into halftime something became clear to me. Caine had not found a place for me. Perhaps that conclusion was premature. There was still an entire second half to play and most of the season remained ahead of us. A mature mutt player might have reminded himself of those facts. I was a teenager. I had spent the summer preparing for the season. I had changed positions. I'd worked in the hayfield, trained with my brother Will, gained weight, and entered camp confident. During the first senior practice I had responded by a failed tackling attempt by getting up and delivering the hit properly. I'd helped drive a defensive lineman five or six yards downfield and into the ground. Cain had watched it, and he told me they'd find me a place to play. Then the first half of the game arrived, and I remained exactly where I'd been before he said before he'd said that, waiting. At halftime, I decided the opportunity was gone. Kane didn't tell me that. He didn't approach me and announce that he'd reconsider. He didn't explain that I was not good enough or another player had beaten me out. He said nothing. I interpreted the silence. That's what reserves do in Kane's program. Often had to do. A starter knew Kane trusted him when because he played. A reserve looking for meaning in temporary repetitions, brief comments, movement in a photograph, and the absence of his game of his name called during a game. Before Bennington, I had interpreted the evidence optimistically. At halftime I interpreted it differently. The open door I believe I had seen was closed. That was when I emotionally gave up. The wording is important. I didn't quit the team, I didn't remove my uniform, I didn't confront Coach Kane, I didn't leave Mount Michael or refuse to practice. I returned to the sideline for the second half. I continued attending practice. I completed the drills and remained with the team through the end of the season. Externally I stayed. Internally I stopped believing. That distinction became the central argument that I carried for the next four decades. Caine had made the first decision. He had chosen not to use me during the first half against Bennington. My emotional withdrawal could not have caused that decision because it had not yet happened. The order matters. Caine didn't leave me on the sideline because I had given up. He gave up because he left me on the sideline. But the sequence didn't involve or didn't absolve me of everything that followed. Once I dep decided the game was once I decided the opportunity was gone, I stopped fighting for whatever opportunities still might have existed. I went through the motions. I remained obedient enough to finish the season, but obedience and full effort are not always the same thing. I completed what Cain required without continuing to push myself toward the role I had wanted. That may have affected how he evaluated me afterwards. It may have cost me later opportunities. I cannot know. That uncertainty is part of what made the season remain alive in my memory. It would be easier if one person were completely responsible. If Cain never encouraged me, I might not have concluded that he simply did not believe I could play. If I had continued working with the same intensity throughout the season and never received a role, I could place the outcome entirely on him. Neither version is true. Cain encouraged me, then he didn't use me. I became discouraged, then I stopped pressing for the case through my effort. He failed to find a role for a player who might have helped him. I failed to follow his most important instruction. Never quit. Both facts belonged in the story. At seventeen years old, however, I did not possess that balanced understanding. I felt passed over. The emotional response was immediate and personal. I had not been asking Kane to flatter me. I had not expected him to hold a meeting and explain how much he appreciated my dedication. I wanted to play. I wanted him to look down the sideline, decide he decide he needed me, and send me onto the field. When that did not happen, I did not interpret the decision of a technical evaluation of personnel. I interpreted it as a judgment of me. That is one of the dangers of placing so much authority in another person's evaluation. Kane may have been deciding which eleven players gave him the best chance to win a football game. I was deciding what his choice said about my worth as a player. Those were not necessarily the same question. They felt like the same question. Caine's personnel decisions were rarely explained. That allowed every reserve to construct his own explanation. Perhaps I was too slow, perhaps I wasn't strong enough, perhaps I was unreliable, perhaps the good practices had not mattered as much as I believed. Perhaps Kane had never met a statement the way I heard it. Or perhaps he saw me as useful, but never found the right situation to prove it. I had no access to his reasoning. I had only the result. The players he trusted played. I did not. Years later, if it forced me to estimate where I stood on that asked roster, I'd place myself around fifteenth. The estimate is subjective and I have no desire to defend it by ranking myself against individual teammates. It is simply where I believe I may have belonged. Close enough to help, not close enough for Kane to use. That distance between approximately eleventh and approximately fifteenth, became enormous inside a program that relied so heavily on the same core players. Four places on a roster could separate a player who accumulated nearly every meaningful snap from one who stood on the sideline waiting for a name that rarely came. Kane could have narrowed that distance but by using reserves on special teams or creating limited packages for them. He did not. I could have responded by making myself impossible to ignore. I did not. That was a failure I eventually carried to his grave, but I did not understand it in that way at Bennington. At Bennington I had believed Caine had broken the connection between effort and opportunity. He had told me continued performance would lead to a place. I had performed. No place appeared. The lesson I took from that was not the lesson he had intended to teach. Instead of working harder, I concluded that the work no longer mattered. That conclusion was wrong. It was also understandable. Teenagers can hold contradictory beliefs without recognizing the contradiction. I still respected Cain, I still feared disappointing him, I still wanted his approval. At the same time I had begun withdrawing from the very process through which his approval might have earned had been earned. I wanted him to recognize me while protecting myself from the possibility of further rejection. The safest way to avoid being disappointed again was to stop expecting anything. That was what I did. I lowered the expectation. I completed the practice the practices. I remained on the roster. I stopped imagining that Cain would call my name. My friend and fellow senior, Matt Jamber, would quit the team. His reasons were his own and I will not assign motives to him. I didn't make that choice. Physical departure would have violated something too deeply established in me. My parents had taught me to finish what I'd started. Cain had reinforced the same standard. Even after I had an emotionally withdrawn, I could not bring myself to walk away. That's why the senior season cannot be reduced to a simple story of quitting. I quit in one sense and I refused to quit in another. I surrendered the expectation that I'd earn a meaningful role. I did not surrender my place on the team. I kept attending, I kept dressing, I kept standing on the sideline, I finished. Years later, I would think of completing three seasons under Kane as earning a trident. No one could take away the fact that I'd stayed through the program. But the trident contained a flaw that only I could see. I had completed the ordeal without giving everything I had through the final whistle. That was the contradiction waiting for me long after the Bennington game ended. At halftime, none of that future reflection existed. There was only a teenager in a football locker room realizing that his the role he had imagined had not arrived. The season was not over. My football career was not over. Caine had not formally closed any door. But in my mind the decision had been made. I returned to the sideline for the second half. I remained a member of the team. I no longer believe Jim Kane was going to call my name. Thanks for listening. Follow Cowboys Not Eggheads on Instagram and follow or and visit cowboysnot eggheads.com to join the conversation. If you played for Coach Cain, I'm sure you have your own stories. You may even think I've gone too far, that I've gotten some of this wrong. Weigh in, I'm open, and I'm all ears.