Farewell to Flutie

I'm not sure how I'm going to break the news to my wife. The only football player she ever really cared about is retiring from the sport. After twenty-one years of professional football, Doug Flutie is packing it in. I don't expect everybody to have the same feeling that my wife (or I) have about this news, but it is significant for this reason: My wife is an extraordinarily good sport about sports. She has suffered through my fixation on baseball, hockey, the occasional basketball game, and most significantly collegiate and professional football.
At the end of each August, we bid each other a fond adieu, safe in the notion that we will see each other again after the Pro Bowl. She has become profoundly more tolerant of the endless hours of football that is watched in her house. She started to get the rhythm of college Saturdays and pro Sundays. She understood that there would be frequent Monday night contests that required my attention. Then they started sneaking in Thursday evening college games. And Sunday Night Football. The moments in each week that the television was football free became few and far between.
She has always enjoyed the "human side" of the sport. She shared John Elway's pain when she heard the story of the years that he had struggled on the brink of a World Championship, only to be turned away one more time. She understood why I cried when number seven finally got his ring. She will also find some connection to an interesting name - she was intrigued by "Wolfork" and "Klopfenstein" on the University of Colorado team.
Then there was Doug Flutie. She came to the story pretty late. She had no memory of the hail Mary pass he threw to put lead College over Miami or his subsequent Heisman trophy. She didn't know that he played his first pro season for the USFL's New Jersey Generals, owned by Donald Trump, then spent two seasons with the Chicago Bears and three with New England before starting his eight-year CFL career with British Columbia in 1990. He won three CFL Grey Cup championships. He came back to the NFL and played for Buffalo, San Diego, and finally New England. He passed for 14,715 yards and 86 touchdowns in 12 NFL seasons.
Now the story was getting good. I told her that he was the same age as me, and almost the same height (if you can believe the five-foot-ten on the program). That was all good, but the hook was the cereal. Doug Flutie put his face on "Flutie Flakes," frosted corn flakes that generated profits that were donated to the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism, created in honor of Flutie's autistic son. Good dad points there. She started asking me about her "Flutie Cutie" when football season rolled around. When I suggested that we might put together a fantasy football team, she had only one player she wanted to draft.
Last year, a season in which he played only sparingly, he made the first drop-kick for an extra point in the NFL for the first time in sixty-four years. "It's just been a fun run for me," Flutie said. "It's given me the great thrills. It's not a right to play professional football. It's a privilege, and especially in the NFL." Thanks Doug, now I have to start looking for another good story.