Of big hits and big regrets

Featured writer Steve King was on scene when...

POSTED BY: COUNTY SPORTS NETWORK JANUARY 4, 2023

By STEVE KING

I was sitting in the Rubber Bowl in 1975 when Chris Angeloff, a Berea native and a tight end for the University of Akron football team, collapsed on the field against Marshall – along the Zips sideline — at the annual Acme-Zip game and ended up dying, stunning a nearly full house.

He had a condition unrelated to football that caused his death.

And yes, before you ask, they resumed the game as the ambulance sped out of the stadium. It was the dark ages for a lot of things, including common decency.

A couple years later, while working for the student newspaper at the University of Akron, I did a story on a Zips guard who had signed a rookie free-agent contract with the Browns. I met the player – and his girlfriend — at his apartment just off campus. As we all talked, I came to find out that the woman had been Chris’s girlfriend. Her loving comments about him – and the player’s memories of Chris (they were good friends) — were better than the ones I got for the story.

I was sitting in the bleachers – that was the simple name for the seats in the northeast end zone at old Cleveland Stadium before the Dawg Pound was born – in 1976 when Browns defensive end “Turkey” Jones picked up Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw at that end of the field and drove him head-first into the ground as if he were using a post-hole digger. When Bradshaw’s body quivered, I thought for sure that he had broken his neck.

I was sitting in the Dawg Pound for a 1989 game against the New York Jets when Browns linebacker Eddie “The Assassin” Johnson, who hit like a sledgehammer, jumped to try to stop Roger Vick from vaulting the stack and scoring a touchdown at that end of the field. Johnson met Vick at the apex, popping him so hard that it caused the running back to slump to the ground as if he had run into a brick wall, which, in a relative term, he did.

I used to love those thundering hits. I reveled in them. That was football at its best – at its true essence – or so I thought.

That all started to change when I would see a big hit at a high school football game, only to realize that that player had parents in the stands who were holding their breath, praying that their son would get up and be OK.

Now, I root for the players on both teams at every game at every level everywhere to go home without a scratch.

Big hits? That term should be reserved for popular songs and movies.  

All this flashed through my head as I watched what happened at Cincinnati Monday night to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin.

We pray for his recovery.

And for the fact that the outstanding medical people on the field in Cincinnati knew their game plan inside and out and executed it to perfection.