Know Your Colts History: Bob Sanders Fined

Michael’s first test was not an official game but a preseason scrimmage at home at the start of his senior year, against a team from Munford, Tenn., 25 miles outside of Memphis.

From the first play of the game, the Munford defensive end who lined up directly across from Michael targeted him for special ridicule. The Munford player was about 6-foot-2 and couldn’t have weighed more than 220 pounds, and yet he wouldn’t shut up. Every play, he had something nasty to say.

Hey, fat a—, I’m a kill you!

Hey, fat a—! Fat people can’t play football! I’m a run your fat a— over!

The more he went on, the angrier Michael became, and yet no one noticed. The first quarter and a half of the scrimmage was uneventful – until the coach called a different sort of play.

The coach had called a running play, around the right end, away from Michael’s side. Michael’s job was simply to take the defender who had been jabbering at him and wall him off. Just keep him away from the ball carrier.

Instead, he had fired off the line of scrimmage and gotten fit – which is to say, gotten his hands inside the defender’s shoulder pads – and then lifted the Munford player off the ground.

So here were 19 football players running down one side of the field after the Briarcrest running back with the ball. On the other side of the field Briarcrest’s No. 74, Big Mike, was racing at full speed in the opposite direction, with a defensive end in his arms.

From his place on the sideline, Sean watched in amazement. It was a perfectly legal block, with unusual consequences. Big Mike drove the Munford player straight down the middle of the field for 15 yards, then took a hard left, toward the Munford sidelines. “The Munford kid’s feet were hitting the ground every four steps, like a cartoon character,” Sean says.

As the kid strained to get his feet back on the ground, Michael ran him the next 25 or so yards to the Munford bench. When he got there, he didn’t stop but piled right through it, knocking over the bench, several more Munford players and scattering the team. He didn’t skip a beat. Encircling the football field was a cinder track. He blocked the kid across the track and then across the grass on the other side of the cinder track. And kept going – right to the chain link fence on the far side of the grass.

Flags flew, grown men cursed and Sean called Michael over to the sidelines.

“Michael,” said Sean, “where were you taking him anyway?”

“I was gonna put him on the bus,” Michael said.

Parked on the other side of the chain-link fence was, in fact, the Munford team bus.

“The bus?” Sean asked.

“I got tired of him talking,” Michael said. “It was time for him to go home.”