Growing Up on the Gridiron

by Vicki Mayk

  A supportive girlfriend, Abbie would help him to study, making him flash cards and quizzing him before tests. He pulled all-nighters and still failed to earn the top grades he’d earned in high school.

  Jake said that the Wharton School—legendary for a high-pressured, cutthroat culture among its students—was exceptionally tough, even in the already challenging academic atmosphere that pervaded Penn.

  “There’s a lot of guys who play football who go through Wharton. Not any of them do real great,” Jake said candidly, adding that the general atmosphere in the business school made it even more difficult. “Everyone’s out to get each other. It ends up being a very negative environment.” Owen, who, perhaps because of his athletic background, was the epitome of a team player, did not relate well to the “take no prisoners” attitude of his business school classmates. He was competitive but tended to focus on contributing as part of a team. In addition to his own achievement, he also wanted others to succeed.

  Adam Grant came to the University of Pennsylvania in 2009 and in a short time became a superstar professor, consistently earning recognition as a top teacher at the university while winning international acclaim as an influential management thinker. By 2013, he’d published The New York Times bestseller Give and Take, which examines why helping others drives personal success. He later would write two more best-selling books, Originals and Option B, coauthored with Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook. The latter book, published in 2017, would examine facing adversity and building resilience. Much of Sandberg’s portion of the book would focus on the sudden loss of her husband, Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey. At the beginning of chapter 3, Grant would recall the unique classroom contributions and the untimely death of his student Owen Thomas.

  “There are students who make a mark and who change you in ways that you didn’t expect. . . . I can’t think of a student who’s done that more than Owen,” Grant said. During Grant’s first term teaching at Wharton in fall 2009, Owen was in his Organizational Behavior class. A formidable physical presence at over two hundred pounds, his red hair an exclamation point on top of his head, Owen bounded into Grant’s classroom and claimed a seat in the front row. It was the seat he would occupy for the rest of the semester, tossing insightful questions into discussions as effortlessly as he fired footballs at practice.

  “I think it was sort of emblematic of who Owen was. He was larger than life,” Grant recalled. “He was full of energy and joy and curiosity. You could see it all over his face and the way that he walked. This was somebody who loved life and loved sharing and soaking up all of the great things that the people around him had to offer.”

  It set him apart from other Wharton students. Grant acknowledged that undergraduate business students could become pressured to amass the right experiences on their resumes or to worry that a classmate might be competing with them for a prestigious, high-paying job or internship, or for top grades in a class. Owen was different.

  “You know, Owen was a breath of fresh air in that environment, somebody who came in and said, ‘I’m here to learn,’” Grant said.

  Owen’s attitude would earn him the accolade “The Most Cooperative Negotiator” in Grant’s class, an anecdote recorded in Option B. In some ways it was a dubious honor in a course where students were required to do role plays negotiating deals. Most of the students would assume positions that were assertive, hard-nosed, and savvy. Not Owen.

  “He sat down and he was there to help the other person achieve their goals, and then he was happy with whatever was leftover, and that was striking. It was unusual,” Grant said. He paused before adding, “You know, everyone recognized it as unusual.”

  When Grant asked students to evaluate the class, he received surprising answers to the open-ended question “Any other comments about the class?” They wrote things like, “Yeah, I just want to comment that Owen Thomas is a highlight of being in this class and on this campus and . . . knowing him makes my life better.” When asked, “What part of this class most enriched your life?,” several answered, “Working on a project with Owen.”

  Grant was amazed at the feedback. “That was the answer that came up more than once, and it does not happen every day. It doesn’t even happen in every class or every year or every decade, right?” Grant chuckled. “That stands out.”

  Later, writing Give and Take, Grant said he realized Owen had been the quintessential giver. “I felt like every person he met, his first goal was to figure out how he could help them and what he could add to their lives. And the remarkable thing was, he often added to their lives just by virtue of them knowing him,” Grant said. “You meet Owen Thomas and, all of a sudden, you realize, ‘Wow, there are some extraordinary human beings on the planet.’”

  It was clear, in the campus culture some referred to as the Penn Bubble, Owen was recognized as he had been throughout his life—a charismatic figure who was genuine, fun-loving, and sincere. So it came as a surprise when he confided to Mike Fay, John Zaccaro, Jamie Pagliaro, and other high school friends that the pictures that they saw on Facebook and other forms of social media that showed him having a great time did not completely reflect how he felt. Mike and Jamie both recalled that he told them that he felt lonely in the city.

  While embracing new academic and athletic experiences, Owen retained ties with what had been part of the most perfect and important part of his life—the time spent as a Parkland Trojan playing high school football. His continuing romantic involvement with Abbie helped him to straddle the old and the new, the life of a Penn student and that of a Parkland football boy. High school friends who attended college within driving distance of Philadelphia visited the house on Baltimore Avenue for parties. Emily Toth DeLuca met her future spouse, Owen’s roommate Luke, on such a visit, while she was still dating her high school boyfriend. Abbie’s sister Jess continued to date his hometown buddy Mike Fay, another Parkland connection.

  At home, Owen’s house remained a gathering place for the Parkland football boys. During one break, he invited his high school friends to a party, even though he still had a term paper to finish. Music blasted in the Thomases’ basement rec room as friends walked in and out. Owen sat in the center of it all, laptop balanced in his lap, only occasionally looking up to admonish one of the guys: “Hey, don’t break that.”

  Owen and his high school teammates realized soon after starting their college football careers that the game they loved as boys was now a different experience. High school football, while requiring commitment, was carefree when compared to the demands of playing in college. Their high school coach, Jim Morgans, had been a father figure. College coaches, whose jobs often hinge on win-loss records, tend to be all business. It is equally intense for college players, who live the game 24/7, rooming with teammates and planning class schedules around athletic commitments.

  “You play in high school, and it’s because of the friends, the camaraderie. You play in college and survive four years, it’s because you love the game,” said Marc Quilling. “In college, it’s not an easy thing, when you’ve got a full academic load, you have six a.m. lifts, and go to three classes or whatever. Maybe you take a quick nap after lunch. Then you go right down to films, practice, dinner, study hall. Then you do it all over again. It’s a full-time job. It’s a double major. Because Saturdays and Sundays are full too. Saturday’s a game day. Sunday you’re waking up early. We do a full workout and we’re watching films.”

  Despite the grueling schedule, Owen and Marc were forging close relationships and finding a new brotherhood at their colleges. Mike Fay was disappointed by the lack of commitment among his teammates at Kent State University in Ohio. With 120 players on the team, only a handful of starters, which included Mike, were committed to winning. The second and third string players huddled around heaters on the sidelines, oblivious to the play happening on the field.

  “It was very apathetic, our school, towards football, Kent State. Not a very good tradition. No one rea
lly cared,” Mike says. “We would go five wins, seven losses.” At the end of the season his father would encourage him to stay, telling him to give it one more year. Before he knew it, one year turned into two, then three.

  Jamie Pagliaro relished his college career playing for the Tribe at the College of William & Mary, but he sometimes felt the stress of balancing academics and athletics. “William & Mary was hard. Keeping up my grades was tough. And then you had football, with working out at six in the morning,” Jamie said. “But Owen talked to me. He reminded me that not many people get the chance to play college football. He said, ‘You’re on scholarship. You won’t regret it.’ And I didn’t. I loved every second of it. I wish I could go back and play football again.”

  Although Owen had found a new brotherhood among the Quakers, it somehow fell short of the relationships that high school football had provided. Reluctant to abandon that identity, he continued to follow his high school team closely. In his room at Penn, reading a story online in his hometown newspaper, The Morning Call, about the traditional Parkland-Whitehall rivalry and the upcoming game between the two schools, he became incensed that Whitehall coach Tony Trisciani had boasted, “Yes, we can beat Parkland.” Owen was inspired to deliver one more pep talk to the Trojans, just as he had done as team captain. He wrote an email addressed to Parkland head coach Jim Morgans. Offensive line coach Paul Hagadus was cc’d on the missive, which had the subject line: “The Whitehall Game.” It was sent at 4:12 a.m. on Wednesday, October 31, 2007. Friends later said they could imagine him pacing in his room at Penn before sitting down at his computer to write a locker room speech that would be shared with Parkland players by coaches for several years before each Whitehall game.

  This fucking pissed me off so badly when I read this. It made me sick. This quote just illustrates how big of a rivalry and how important of a game Whitehall is. You need to understand that this is more than just a game, it’s personal. This game doesn’t reflect records, or past seasons, or hype. It reflects business. It doesn’t matter if they’re 7–2 or 2–7, this game is a glorified way to just personally kick the fucking shit out of a bunch of punch-bitch wannabees who think they can beat you. It will be four quarters of tough, hard-nosed football and this is how it should be because Parkland = Power. WE don’t do fancy plays or finesse the ball down the field. We grind it out, pound it out with strength, technique and determination. We win the battles in the trenches, where the game is won and lost. We run hard, play hard, and succeed. We don’t change our game plan. We fight, we battle, we persevere, and we win. This is Parkland Football. Last time I checked, these bastards haven’t won this game in a while; and you know what? It’s your job to make them remember why. When you get ready for this game in practice, or in the weight room, on Thursday practice, even in school Friday, remember: You Guys Represent Us! YOU REPRESENT PARKLAND FOOTBALL! I know I’m old hat and I’ve moved on, but trust me, like any coach can tell you, there is nothing like high school football, and there sure as hell isn’t anything like Parkland Football. I am so proud to be a product of Parkland Football because Parkland Football represents what true high school football is.

  I want you guys to read this and think about what this game means to you. Think of how you will feel after you dominate their souls and pound them into the ground. Think of how you need to execute and work hard in order to send a message. Think of the focus and preparation you need in order to win. Think of how you want to look back on this game in the years to come. Then just play Parkland Football.

  CHAPTER 9

  PLAYING THROUGH THE PAIN

  IT IS A TERM SOLIDLY ENTRENCHED in the University of Pennsylvania campus culture, a part of the lexicon simultaneously embraced and criticized. Penn Face refers to the masking behavior—the public face—that students at Penn present to the world to maintain a perfect image while hiding feelings of inadequacy, failure, or vulnerability.1

  By spring 2009, at the end of his sophomore year, Owen Thomas had his Penn Face firmly in place.

  The idea of the Penn Face came under scrutiny after the increasing number of student suicides at Penn peaked with seven student deaths in the course of the 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 academic years. It led to a campuswide questioning of the culture of perfection that pervaded the Penn campus. Following those suicides, the university administration responded with a mental health task force to examine the campus culture and make recommendations for improvements to mental health services. Grassroots student organizations were founded to deal with mental health issues and with what could be a demoralizingly competitive campus culture.2

  The response was five years too late for Owen. As an athlete, he already had a warrior’s mentality that precluded letting down teammates, friends, and family. It was part of a personal commitment to never display anything but his best. It’s a long-acknowledged trait among competitive athletes that they are willing to “play through pain.” With that mind-set, the concept of showing his Penn Face to the world while hiding personal challenges made sense to Owen. Indeed, after years embracing the idea of being an academic and athletic warrior, it almost seemed natural. And underneath it all, unknown to anyone, there was a brain already riddled with macerated tissue, more than twenty lesions indicative of CTE. Like a bad knee predisposes a player to injury, the presence of CTE in Owen’s brain could predispose him to depression and memory problems. Damage in his prefrontal cortex could contribute to difficulties with impulsivity.3 This physical liability combined with the student culture at Penn began to erode Owen’s usually positive nature as he transitioned from his sophomore to his junior year.

  Abbie and Owen had continued the romantic relationship that had started when they were high school seniors. They maintained their romance through the first two years of college, text messaging four times a day, visiting each other many weekends and during holiday breaks. Abbie was the person to whom he first confided his struggles to compete academically at Penn. Recalling his status as an intellectual superstar in high school, he had told her, “I’m not Owen Thomas anymore. I’m at Penn—where everyone is Owen Thomas.”

  In truth, failure sometimes meant a B or a C instead of the A grades that previously had been the norm. By spring 2009, seriously feeling the stress of balancing athletics and academics, he began struggling with depression and started seeing a counselor—something he confessed to her with some embarrassment. “I said, ‘I support that. I can’t help you as much as a counselor could,’” Abbie recalled.

  He continued the counseling appointments in summer 2009, remaining in Philadelphia to take summer classes, work a job in the campus gym, and maintain his strength and conditioning regimen. Dave Macknet, who had just moved into the house, lived with him. “We were the only ones living in the house that summer. He was taking classes, I was doing research at the hospital,” Dave said. Whatever personal problems Owen might have felt, Dave saw no evidence of them. Owen appeared as he had always been to his teammates. “We would meet in the weight room at night,” Macknet said. “I loved working out with him because of the intensity he brought and the effort he brought.”

  The start of fall semester saw the return of the other roommates to Baltimore Avenue. With Macknet added to the crew, it promised to be another year of balancing academics with unbridled fun.

  The fall 2009 football season would be a golden one, with the Quakers’ only defeats being two losses in September in nonconference games against Villanova University and Lafayette College. Owen and high school friend Marc Quilling, now playing for Lafayette’s Leopards, would trade barbs about the loss. The Quakers would go undefeated for the rest of the season to win the Ivy League title, clinching it with a 34–0 win over Cornell at home at Franklin Field. Owen would earn second team All-Ivy status recording twenty-nine tackles and finishing second in the league with six sacks.

  In team photos recording the celebration that followed clinching the Ivy League title, there’s no sign of depression on Owen’s face. He beams, grinning at
the camera, his flaming hair—now cropped short—bright among his dark-haired teammates. It would be a high point of the semester, a positive memory that his teammates would burnish.

  Owen’s relationship with Abbie ended shortly after his birthday in September. High school friend Mike Fay, traveling on a darkened team bus across Ohio as the Kent State team returned from an away game, received a phone call from Owen. Mike still dated Jess, Abbie’s twin sister, and the four had been inseparable. “It was the last time I talked with him,” Mike said. “He said, ‘Fay, I just don’t want to lose you as a friend. I’m not with Abbie anymore. I just don’t want to lose you as friend.’ And I told him, ‘Of course not.’”

  Abbie quietly characterizes the end of the relationship as a natural outcome of going to different colleges and leading different lives. “We grew apart,” she says. A few of Owen’s male friends chalked it up to him needing more freedom.

  Academically, he seemed on an even keel. With Abbie gone, there was no one in whom he could confidently confide his academic problems. In some classes, at least, Owen was succeeding. The fall 2009 semester was the time when he became the memorable student in Adam Grant’s Organizational Behavior class.

  For the first time, Owen was a single college guy, free to party and to join his friends prowling the bars on the streets surrounding Penn’s campus in University City. He and his teammates were regulars at Smokey Joe’s—called Smokes in Penn parlance. If they weren’t there, they might be at Sansom’s or the Blarney Stone.