Chapter One
The 2001 Gilman football team came together for
its first practice at eight in the morning on a
warm and overcast Monday. It was August 13.
After driving from Capitol Hill to the leafy
Roland Park neighborhood of Baltimore - a
forty-eight-mile trip I would repeat many times
during the next three months - I was greeted by
the familiar sound of cleats on concrete. It was
the same sound that used to fill that tunnel at
Memorial Stadium, only now it was the
click-clacking of boys pounding a paved path en
route to a secluded practice field tucked away
in the woods behind their school. For the boys,
the short walk through the woods opened up to a
rectangular plot of land - striped with fresh
white sidelines and yard markings - on which
they would transform themselves from classmates
into teammates, from friends into family. For
me, the walk yielded an introduction to an
unmistakably unique high school sports program
- and to a season that captured both my mind
and my heart in ways that I never could have
anticipated.
When I arrived, Joe was standing in the near
corner of the field, welcoming everyone back
from summer vacation, sharing hugs and
handshakes as if he were running for mayor.
"Hey, Coach Ehrmann."
"Great to see you, Coach Ehrmann."
It was strange to hear the boys addressing him
that way. I was still working on the transition
from thinking of Joe as an "ex-Colt" to viewing
him as a minister, "the Reverend Joe." Now he
was "Coach Ehrmann" as well. Joe was the
defensive coordinator. He was encircled by a few
of the boys, introducing me around, when the
shrill sound of a whistle violated the serenity
of morning.
"Bring it up, boys." The booming voice prompted
immediate scurrying toward the center of the
nearby end zone. "Let's go. Everyone up."
The shouted instruction emanated from an
oversized teddy bear of a man, big, thick guy
with a buzz cut of brown hair, wearing baggy,
nylon mesh shorts and a Gilman T-shirt with the
sleeves cut away to free his massive upper arms.
He was the head coach, Francis "Biff" Poggi, a
former Gilman football player (class of 1979)
and now a wealthy business owner who devoted
much of his time to philanthropy. Financial
management was his business - his local
investment company, Samuel James Limited, had
been quite successful in a wide range of public
and private equity deals - but working with
children was his passion. Biff was Joe's best
friend and the man with whom he had started
Building Men for Others. Their roles varied
depending on the setting and context in which
they were implementing their program for boys
and men, but at Gilman they generally stuck with
a single formula. Joe was the ecclesiastic
authority who often stood in the shadows but
always provided wisdom and guidance. Biff was
the program's public face and its animated
voice. And now it was time for his opening
remarks to the team.
In a sense, the same scene was unfolding that
very day, or perhaps it would happen in the next
week or so, on high school fields throughout the
nation. Tough guys of all shapes and sizes were
strapping on helmets with the boundless
excitement of youth and the anticipation that
comes with the clean slate of a new year. On
another level, though, what happened that first
day at Gilman was entirely unlike anything
normally associated with high school football.
It started with the signature exchange of the
Gilman football program - this time between
Biff and the gathered throng of eighty boys,
freshmen through seniors, who would spend the
next week practicing together before being split
into varsity and junior varsity teams.
"What is our job?" Biff asked on behalf of
himself, Joe, and the eight other assistant
coaches.
"To love us," most of the boys yelled back. The
older boys had already been through this routine
more than enough times to know the proper
answer. The younger boys, new to Gilman
football, would soon catch on.
"And what is your job?" Biff shot back.
"To love each other," the boys responded.
I would quickly come to realize that this
standard exchange - always initiated by Biff or
Joe - was just as much a part of Gilman
football as running or tackling.
"I don't care if you're big or small, huge
muscles or no muscles, never even played
football or star of the team - I don't care
about any of that stuff," Biff went on to tell
the boys, who sat in the grass while he spoke.
"If you're here, then you're one of us, and we
love you. Simple as that."
Biff paused.
"Look at me, boys," he started again. Most of
them were already staring up in at least the
general direction of his six-foot-three,
300-pound frame. Thanks to the combination of
his physical stature and his never-ending
passion for both football and the overall
well-being of his players - "my boys," he
always called them - Biff never had much of a
problem holding their attention. But he often
used that "look at me" phrase as a rhetorical
device to signal when something really important
was coming.
"Look at me, boys," Biff said. "We're gonna go
through this whole thing as a team. We are the
Gilman football community. A community. This is
the only place probably in your whole life where
you're gonna be together and work together with
a group as diverse as this - racially,
socially, economically, you name it. It's a
beautiful thing to be together like this. You'll
never find anything else like it in the world - simply
won't happen. So enjoy it. Make the most
of this. It's yours."
Biff asked the boys to take a few moments and
look around at one another. With heads
swiveling, what they saw was indeed a melting
pot of black and white, rich and poor, city and
suburb. Though an elite private school for boys
only, Gilman had long prided itself on
diversity, and thanks to the effect of
recruiting and a powerful equalizer known as
financial aid, the football team offered an even
better cross section of society than the overall
student population.
Heads were still turning when Biff broke the
silence with slowly spoken words strung together
into chunks for emphasis: "The relationships you
make here . you will always have them . for the
rest of your life . the rest of your life."
Biff was speaking just above a whisper now.
There was something magical about the spell of
such a big, powerful man turning down the volume
like that. His players were totally locked in.
"Cherish this, boys," Biff said. "Cherish this."
So what if the Associated Press had recently
anointed Gilman as the top-ranked team in
Maryland and USA Today had picked the Greyhounds
for the pre-season Top Ten of the entire East?
Gilman football did not exist for anyone on the
outside looking in. It was not about public
accolades. It was about living in community. It
was about fostering relationships. It was about
learning the importance of serving others. Oh,
sure, Biff allowed that he was definitely in
favor of beating archrival McDonogh - the same
McDonogh at which I had spent that fateful
summer of 1974 with the Colts. In fact, winning
that one game and successfully defending the
league championship (Conference A of the
Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association)
were the only performance-related goals he
announced to the boys. But such accomplishments
would only be by-products of a much broader
agenda. The only thing that really mattered to
Biff and Joe was offering a solid foundation on
which the boys could later construct lives of
meaning and value.
I watched a variety of football drills and
conditioning exercises during that first day on
the field in the woods. I also listened in on
offensive and defensive strategy sessions in the
team meeting room on the second floor of the
school's field house. At one point, I even heard
the Reverend Joe Ehrmann temporarily abandon the
soft language of his day job when he introduced
the three P's expected of anyone who wanted to
play defense for him. Penetrate. Pursue. Punish.
"All eleven men flying to the ball," Joe said.
"All eleven men. Every single play."
Still, no matter how much football I saw and
heard during those initial hours of the season,
I drove away thinking only about the
philosophical overview Biff had shared with the
boys during those first few minutes of the
morning. If a Martian had just happened to land
on Earth and somehow found himself witnessing
only that introductory talk, a perfectly logical
communique home might have included a summary
such as this: "Learned about some sort of group
gathering called football. It teaches boys to
love."
* * *
Joe, Biff, and the boys had nineteen days to
prepare for the first of ten games on their
schedule. The toughest part of that stretch
included both morning and afternoon practice
sessions - "two-a-days" in football parlance - wrapped
in the stifling heat and humidity of
late summer. Standing on the sidelines and
wandering around the field for a good number of
those practices, there were times I felt like a
kid again. Occasionally, during a break in the
action, I would get one of the boys or one of
the coaches to play catch for a few minutes.
With the pebbled leather of a football both
scuffing my palms and stoking my imagination, I
might as well have been back in training camp
with the Colts.
Of course, it never took too long to be reminded
that my reality was now housed on a totally
unfamiliar end-of-the-age spectrum. With the
Colts, I was a wide-eyed kid running around in
an adult world filled with real-life action
heroes. At Gilman, I was a grown man surrounded
by football players still dealing with pimples
and prom dates.
I initially found it disconcerting whenever one
of the boys addressed me with a deferential
"sir" or called me Mr. Marx. But spending time
with them quickly proved to be an extremely
refreshing experience. Without any children of
my own, I enjoyed the burst of exposure to the
rhythms and rituals of the teen years. The boys
were so excitable. They were often hilarious.
And they were always open to new thoughts and
ideas - so inquisitive and ready to learn.
They could not have found two better men to
serve as teachers.
Joe and Biff originally met in the mid-1970s,
when Joe was with the Colts and Biff was a high
school football player who sometimes found a way
to sneak into the team training facility and
lift weights with the pros. Though their only
conversation was brief, Biff would always
remember being charmed by the magnificent leader
of the Sack Pack, and that alone made him feel
personally connected whenever he saw Joe play at
Memorial Stadium or on television. More than a
decade later, after Joe had retired from
football and Biff had completed his own playing
days as an offensive lineman at Duke, the memory
of that one chance encounter in the Colts'
weight room remained fond enough for Biff to
respond with great joy when he happened to see
Joe back on television. It was around
Thanksgiving. Biff was visiting his parents when
Joe was interviewed for a feature story about
The Door.
"Hey, Dad, we need to go down there," Biff said.
"Can't we do something to help?"
They drove downtown to The Door, unannounced,
with a sizable donation of food. Biff was
pleased to find Joe there, and they struck up a
conversation that has never really ended. The
first project they did together was a football
camp - part football, part education, actually
- for kids from The Door. Then they started
working together on a summer camp for
disadvantaged youngsters in South Carolina,
where Biff had a home. Over time, their wives
became friends and their young sons started
playing together. Joe and Biff became
inseparable.
"We've always had an incredible bond," Biff told
me. "It just seems like there's a bridge between
our souls."
When I asked Joe about that, he said, "Biff is
God's replacement for Billy."
Even the age difference - Joe now fifty-two,
Biff forty-one - was about right.
Joe simply loved having a little brother again.
* * *
My favorite part of two-a-days was Biff's daily
talks about Building Men for Others.
Prior to afternoon practices, the boys streamed
into the meticulously maintained field house
officially known as the Redmond C. S. Finney
Athletic Center (named after a longtime Gilman
headmaster) and climbed the stairs to the team
meeting room, where they plopped themselves in
chairs behind four long rows of tables. Large
windows at the front of the room overlooked a
cavernous gymnasium, but the blinds were
generally kept closed. All eyes were on Biff. He
usually began in a chair, facing the team from
behind a small table of his own, but he often
got up to use the grease-marker board waiting in
a corner for him, and once standing, Biff
typically paced for a while as he spoke. The
talks usually lasted twenty to thirty minutes. I
was the only one taking notes. Everyone else
just listened.
There were times when Joe contributed a relevant
story from the Bible to underscore a particular
message Biff was sharing with the boys - and
Biff sometimes injected a brief passage on his
own. But the overriding themes were, if not
entirely secular, certainly universal.
"I expect greatness out of you," Biff once told
the boys. "And the way we measure greatness is
the impact you make on other people's lives."
How would the boys make the most impact? Almost
anything Biff ever talked about could be
fashioned into at least a partial answer to that
question.
For one thing, they would make an impact by
being inclusive rather than exclusive.
"The rest of the world will always try to
separate you," Biff said. "That's almost a law
of nature - gonna happen no matter what, right?
The rest of the world will want to separate you
by race, by socioeconomic status, by education
levels, by religion, by neighborhood, by what
kind of car you drive, by the clothes you wear,
by athletic ability. You name it - always gonna
be people who want to separate by that stuff.
Well, if you let that happen now, then you'll
let it happen later. Don't let it happen. If
you're one of us, then you won't walk around
putting people in boxes. Not now. Not ever.
Because every single one of them has something
to offer. Every single one of them is special.
Look at me, boys."
They were looking.
"We are a program of inclusion," Biff said. "We
do not believe in separation."
The boys would also make an impact by breaking
down cliques and stereotypes, by developing
empathy and kindness for all.
"What's empathy?" Biff asked them. "Feeling
what?"
"Feeling what the other person feels," said
senior Napoleon Sykes, one of the team captains,
a small but solid wide receiver and hard-hitting
defensive back who had already accepted a
scholarship to play college football at Wake
Forest.
"Exactly right," Biff said. "Not feeling for
someone, but with someone. If you can put
yourself in another man's shoes, that's a great
gift to have for a lifetime."
Continues.
