Me and Marcus Dupree

Having seen ESPN’s “The Best That Never Was,” I now realize that Marcus Dupree and I were amazingly similar football players.

I don’t mean in the superficial, obvious sense. He was 6-foot-3, 225 pounds. I was not.

He ran a 9.5 hundred. I did not.

He rushed for 7,355 yards with an 8.3-yards-per-carry average in his high school career and scored 87 touchdowns. I did not.

He was considered the best high school player in the country – perhaps of all time - and was relentlessly recruited by every major and not-so-major college in the country to wear their uniform and score touchdowns for them.

Again, I was not.

But after one notable season playing for the Oklahoma Sooners (including a Fiesta Bowl record 249 yards) and a few games into the next, Marcus decided he had had enough. It isn’t fun anymore, he explained, and he quit, not quite in that order.

Just like me! For exactly the same reason!

My decision came a bit earlier in life, after my junior year in high school. And unlike Marcus’s, it wasn’t precipitated by a concussion that left me woozily wondering where I was, and what I was doing there. But I imagine the thought process to have been identical:

Not fun + hard work + pain = Outta here.

Of course, having been blessed with an abundant lack of God-given talent, I did not face the repercussions Marcus did. Network news shows did not take note of my choice. And, unlike him, I did not go on to play in the USFL, tear up my knee, attempt a comeback five years later and manage to last a few games over a couple of seasons with the Los Angeles Rams.

Still. We are brothers under the skin.

Some things in life have to be done whether they are fun or not. Some things do not. The trick is to be able to tell the difference and, for those things that do not have to be done, not to do them.

I still try to live by that rule. And I hope Marcus does, too.