Monday, November 12, 2007 | by nathan

Death and Football

I’d been looking forward to Saturday for awhile now. Nothing special, really; Brian and I had tickets to the OU-Baylor game, and it had been a really rough week; I just wanted to relax at the game and have some fun.

In the middle of the second quarter, someone near us shouted "Doctor!" Soon there was an uproar around us, everyone in eyesight was turned around, focused not on the field or the players but on a point just above where Brian and I were sitting. Our seats are in Section 9, and everyone in our section was shouting at the Highway Patrol officers that line the field during a game. Murmurs seemed to emanate like ripples on a pond through the crowd; someone had collapsed.

"Does anyone know CPR?"

"Where’s a doctor?"

"He’s collapsed. He’s not breathing."

After what seemed like forever a crowd of highway patrol, police and paramedics rose up through the ramp and started moving people aside. Everyone immediately near the scene was cleared out completely. We were allowed to stay, but were moved away from the aisle. Standing on a seat, I could see what was happening.

An old man, probably in his 70’s, had had a heart attack, right there at the game. Paramedics did CPR for 4-5 minutes while waiting for a stretcher to make its way up to us. He wasn’t breathing on his own, and when they finally got him on the stretcher and took him past us, he was a deep shade of purple, and he still wasn’t breathing.

The game rolled on, no one in the press box or on the sidelines any wiser as to what had happened. I turned around, my head spinning with fears and possibilities, and suddenly it seemed almost impossible to cheer when we got a first down. I looked back to where the man had been sitting only moments before, with his family, enjoying himself. Everyone in our section was in tears. It was almost the end of the second quarter.

"Let’s go," I said to Brian. "I don’t really feel like being here anymore."

He felt the same, and we stood to leave. As we walked down the ramp a roar like an explosion erupted above us; DeMarco Murray was running 91 yards on a kickoff return for a touchdown. We got to the bottom of the ramp in time to watch the replay on the screen above the snack stand.

I felt a little bummed that we’d missed it, and bummed that that old man hadn’t gotten to see it either. It’s an age-old question, isn’t it? Death is inevitable, and so what do we do when it happens? It felt dirty and wrong to be up there cheering loudly when this man’s life was changing forever - possibly ending. But then I thought, "You know, if it was me, I’d be okay with dying at a Sooners football game." But that didn’t make me want to go back to our seats any more. Instead, we went back to my mom’s house and watched the game with her. She made spaghetti, and we drank wine and talked about how much we hated George W. Bush.

Still, I can’t get that old man out of my mind. I’m not sure if he died or what, but I’d love to know. I’ve been scouring press reports of the game and the Norman newspapers, but I can’t find anything. In lieu of information, I’ll send up a prayer.

Sports, This I Believe