There was a skinny young boy who loved football with all his heart. Practice after practice, he eagerly gave everything he had. But being half the size of the boys, he got absolutely nowhere. At all the games this hopeful athlete sat on the end of the bench and never played.

This teenager lived alone with his father, and the two of them had a very "special" relationship. Even though the son was always on the bench, his father was always in the stands cheering. He never missed a game.

This young man was still the smallest of the class when he entered high school. Yet his father continued to encourage him but also made it very clear that he did not have to play football if he didn't want to. But the young man loved football and decided to hang in there. He was determined to try his best at every practice, and perhaps he'd get to play when he became a senior.

All through high school he never missed a practice nor a game but remained a bench-warmer all four years. His faithful father was always in the stands, always with words of encouragement for him.

It was the end of his senior football season, and as he trotted onto the practice field shortly before the big playoff game, the coach met him with a cell phone. The young man answered and then became deathly silent. Swallowing hard, he mumbled to the coach, "My father just suffered a stroke and is in ICU. Is it all right if I miss practice today?"

The coach said, "Take the rest of the week off, son. And don't even plan to come back to the game on Saturday, it's not like we need you or anything."

Saturday arrived, and the game was not going well. In the third quarter, when the team was forty points behind, a silent young man quietly slipped into the empty locker room and put on his football gear. As he ran onto the sidelines, the coach and players were astounded to see their faithful teammate back.

The coach scanned the length of the bench in search of a player who wasn't injured, hung over from partying the previous night, or was just too intelligent to want to participate in the massacre. His eyes fell upon the young man at the end of the bench.

"Hey," the coach screamed. "Get in there!!!"

The coach, the players and what was left of the fans in the stands could not believe their eyes. This little unknown who had never played before was charged with energy. The first play after taking his position at cornerback, he charged up to the line and tackled the ball carrier for a loss.

Unfortunately, while trying the same tactic on the following play, he was hopelessly out of position when the quarterback executed a play-action fake. He was burned for a 85 yard touchdown pass. The very next series, he was met by a pulling 260 lb guard and buried into the turf.

Mercifully, the resulting concussion numbed the pain that was enveloping his entire body.

When his head finally cleared, the stands had emptied and he found himself in the locker room with the rest of his team on the receiving end of one of the coach's famous tirades.

"64-0!!! You pathetic bunch of quitters," the coach screamed, "you make me physically ill!" He followed with, " Does anyone have anything to say for themselves?".

The young man looked at the coach, with tears in his eyes, and said, "Well, you knew my Dad had a stoke earlier this week, but did you know that he is permanently blind now?"

The young man swallowed hard and said, "Dad came to all my games, but today was the first time he could have seen me play because all those years, you would never put me in. And today, when you finally played me, he couldn't be here! He will never see again and will never have the chance to live his dream - to see me play!"

The frustration of all those years of near heat stroke, the steady pain of being a human tacking dummy for the first string, the constant humiliation and ridicule suffered at the hands of the cheerleaders and all the other popular kids, coupled with the stress and loss associated with his Dad's illness all came together in one volcanic moment.

He actually felt a part of his mind, the part that controls reason, logic, and morality, become detached and then swept away in the floodwaters of his rage. In that brief nanosecond of realization, he also knew it would never return. He embraced it.

He attacked with the speed of an uncoiling predator. He grabbed the first object handy, a team mate's steel cleated shoe, and swung it with great force at the coach's head. The coach, who had become the embodiment of all the young man's pain and suffering, never saw it coming.

One of the spikes on the bottom of the shoe buried deep within the coach's temple, sending him to the floor, face down, in a heap. The deranged and enraged young man was on him in a flash. He grabbed the chord that held the cursed whistle around the coach's neck, and choked the remaining life out of his tormentor.

The boys on the team, along with the assistant coaches, either turned their backs and walked away, or actually prevented members of the media from assisting the fallen head coach until it was too late. "Things are going to be different around here next year...", they thought.

As the police were taking him away, the young man thought, "It's a shame that Dad can't see me now�".