by Ben Utecht
A month before I was to report for my first U of M training camp, I was selected to play in the Minnesota Football Coaches Association all-star high school football game. Playing in this game was a huge honor, a recognition as one of the best high school players in the state. Eighty-eight players from all over Minnesota came together for a week of practice before the game at Macalester College in St. Paul. Most of the guys were going to play college ball somewhere, but not many had full rides at Division I schools, much less a Big 10 school. That made me stand out on a team full of standouts. I enjoyed the attention. There’s a verse in the Bible that says pride comes before the fall. Knowing that, I should have been ready for what came next. I wasn’t.
On the last play of the all-star week of practice I took off across the practice field, running a pass route. I jumped up, grabbed the ball out of the air, then landed right on top of the only sprinkler head that was out in the middle of the field. What it was doing there is anyone’s guess. Since I never expected to land directly on a sprinkler head, I wasn’t watching out for it. When I hit it, I hit it hard. I came down awkwardly and heard another loud pop. My pelvic injury was fine, but I had broken my left ankle. Not only was my all-star game over before it started; in all likelihood so was my dream of starting for the Golden Gophers as a true freshman.
Just like with my broken pelvis, my ankle injury left me scared and worried. Any amount of ego was gone, replaced with humility. I had no idea what the university was going to do. They had honored my scholarship offer before, and I hoped they would again, but I wasn’t sure. On top of that, I played a position predicated on speed. Exactly one year earlier I ran a 4.4 forty-yard dash. Now I had a broken ankle and was coming off a broken pelvis, both on my left side. I had no idea what that combination might do to my speed. If I couldn’t run pass routes fast enough to gain separation from defensive backs, my career was pretty much over before it started. Again.
Once again, I started praying. I pleaded with God to make all the bones go back together the right way, and honestly, to keep my speed where it had once been. Yes, it was a selfish prayer, but it didn’t feel like it then. I was depending on God to come through as I wondered what else could be done.
My prayers were answered. Coach Mason again proved good to his word. The university sent me to an orthopedic surgeon, who removed a bone chip that had broken off my ankle. Within four weeks my ankle was as good as new and I was cleared to practice. The season was just starting, so technically I could have still played. However, when the injury happened Coach Mason decided to redshirt me. Redshirting meant I still worked out with the team and went to class, but I could not suit up with the team for games for the entire season. Since a redshirt misses the season, the NCAA grants them another year of eligibility. Basically it meant I now had a five-year scholarship rather than four. With an extra year of school paid for courtesy of the football team, not only could I get my bachelor’s degree, but I could also pursue a master’s if I wanted.
Once the doctors cleared me to practice, I threw everything into proving myself once again. Thankfully my speed had not diminished, and I dominated the rookie squad. I played so well that the coaches actually considered bringing me off the list of players unable to perform (PUP) and putting me on the active roster. However, because I had already missed a few games, they decided they would rather have me play on the team for four full seasons rather than the three and a half. I agreed with the decision as being the right one. By the end of the year I was named offensive demonstration player (a player who has not yet made the active roster but plays a significant role in practice) of the year. Coach Mason and the rest of the staff had high hopes for me the next year.
• • •
When I moved to Hastings at ten years of age, all of my closest friendships started on a sports team. The same thing happened when I went to the University of Minnesota. Most of my closest friendships came from the football field. That’s where I got to know Dan Nystrom. The two of us came to the university as freshmen the same year, although Dan did not sit out a year as a redshirt. He was our kicker, but he was also a singer, like me. Both of us had been in as many choirs as teams through high school. Dan even made the all-state choir his senior year. We also shared a common faith. On top of all that, we just hit it off, and our voices complemented one another.
Any player on the roster of a major college football team has dreams of playing in the National Football League. Dan and I were no exceptions. But we also harbored dreams of doing something with music. We sang a little together, which made us start talking about singing publicly. The conversations might not have led to anything, except Dan had a friend whose dad worked the penalty box at the University of Minnesota hockey games. Hockey is huge at the U of M. Dan and I made a demo tape of us singing the national anthem and sent it to his friend’s dad. If this seems like a roundabout way of getting a singing gig, well, it is. The friend’s dad passed the tape along to the hockey rink manager or someone who made decisions about who performs at Golden Gopher games. I don’t know if we really knocked it out of the park on our demo tape, or if it was the novelty of having two football players sing the national anthem, but however it happened, Dan and I were invited to come and sing at one of the Gophers’ games.
On the night we were to sing, the PA announcer introduced us. Dan and I went out to center ice, microphones in hand, waiting for the music to start. I guess I should have been nervous, but I wasn’t. If I had known what all this night was going to lead to, I really would have been scared to death.
I didn’t know it, but up in the stands, sitting with her parents, was a freshman member of the Minnesota women’s golf team. Her dad had played college hockey for Minnesota, and they’re season ticket holders who don’t miss a game. When the PA announcer said, “Please rise and remove your hats for the national anthem. Tonight, the anthem will be performed by Minnesota Golden Gopher football players Dan Nystrom and Ben Utecht,” the girl leaned over to her parents and whispered, sarcastically, “Well, this ought to be good.” She thought we were going to be the typical football jocks.
Then we started singing. Dan and I nailed it that night.
“Okay,” the girl said, “these guys can sing.” That made her pay a little closer attention to the two guys down on the ice. At six-seven, I literally stood out. She noticed me. After Dan and I finished singing, she sat down, looked over at her mom, and said, “Now why can’t I meet a guy like that?”
A couple of weeks later she got her wish at a midwinter Fellowship of Christian Athletes event. To say she was disappointed by the meeting is an understatement. She knew who I was after hearing me at the hockey game. Afterward, she learned a little more about me, including the fact that I was very active in the university’s FCA. That only made her want to meet me even more. She was more than a little excited when a mutual friend and one of my teammates, Justin Hall, offered to introduce us. And that’s where the excitement ends.
I walked into the FCA event feeling pretty good about myself. That is to say, I had already started to develop the Big Man on Campus attitude I had in high school after I got my scholarship. Even though I had redshirted my first year due to injury, the fact that I had played so well on the rookie squad and the recognition I received from singing had already started going to my head. (After that first hockey game, Dan and I received numerous invitations to sing for all the U of M sports teams. By the time we graduated we sang for all the area professional teams as well as for Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush.) On top of that, I had a girlfriend, so I wasn’t out to make a good impression on any other girl I might meet.
Justin came over and found me right after I arrived. Since this was winter in Minnesota, everyone was pretty well bundled up, even inside. “Hey, Ben,” Justin said, “I want you to meet Karyn Stordahl.” Honestly, the girl sort of looked to me like a stocking cap and sweater with a face in between. I didn’t pay too much attention to her.
I reached out my hand.
“Hi, Karyn. Ben Utecht. Nice to meet you.” As I said this my eyes scanned the room, looking around to see who else was there.
“You, too,” Karyn replied.
The conversation ended there, as did Karyn’s slight infatuation with the singing football player. She figured she’d already met plenty of guys like me, guys who looked through her and past her, you know, the typical stuck-on-himself jock type. Even though that was far from the type of man I was inside, my actions at times showed otherwise. Unfortunately, it was going to get worse before it got better.
CHAPTER 4
MILD TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY
I SUFFERED MY FIRST HEAD injury when I was four years old. To be honest, it sort of surprised me. After all, when it happened, I thought I was Superman.
I loved Superman and still do. My dad introduced him to me when he bought me a model set of Superman bursting through a wall. The two of us built it together. After that, I wanted all things Superman. My parents bought me some Superman pajamas complete with a cape that Velcroed to the shoulders. After I watched Christopher Reeve’s 1978 Superman a few dozen times, I convinced them to buy the John Williams soundtrack for me. The more I listened to the music the more I wondered, Why not me? Why can’t I be Superman? The idea made perfect sense to my four-year-old mind.
One afternoon I learned why not me. My friend Tim came over and the two of us decided to play superheroes. I don’t remember who he pretended to be, but there was no doubt about who I was. I put on my Superman pajamas and cape, cranked up the John Williams soundtrack on the stereo, and took off running, trying to get airborne. Tim took off in the opposite direction. All the upstairs rooms in the parsonage in which we then lived connected to one another, which made it possible to run a complete circle through every room in the house. That’s what Tim and I did. We flew off in opposite directions, only to meet back in the dining room, running full speed, each one of us oblivious to where the other might be. I didn’t see Tim until it was too late. However, employing my superhero reflexes, I dove under Tim, who jumped up as high as he could. I then flew right between his legs, and I might have kept on flying if it hadn’t been for the wooden dresser that lay directly in my path. I slammed into the corner of the dresser, face-first.
I don’t know if my mother first heard the loud bang of my head hitting the corner of the dresser or my scream that followed, but she came rushing into the room to find me sort of attached to the dresser. She pulled me free, carried me to the car, and rushed me to the emergency room. The doctors stitched up the cut, which went all the way down to the bone. I still have the scar today. It reminds me I am not from Krypton. The injury slowed me down, but only for a couple of days. It wasn’t long before I was running around the house again. I only had one speed, and that was full-on with no fear.
My next confirmed head injury came fifteen years later. I never saw it coming, either.
• • •
My body had caught up with my height by the time football training camp came around for what was now to be my redshirt freshman season (that is, my first year of eligibility for football, making me a freshman, although academically I was a sophomore). I reported for camp twenty pounds heavier than the year before, when I had my ankle surgery. I was now six-seven and weighed 240 pounds. Coach Mason and the receivers coach took one look at me and declared, “You’re our new tight end.” I did not like the sound of that at all. All through high school I had played wide receiver. The name tells you what the position does. I split out wide and I caught passes. Occasionally a play called on me to throw a block, but when I did, I went up against defensive backs. Those guys are small and quick. The tight end catches passes, but he is also an offensive lineman who spends most of the game blocking very large men on the defensive line or very large and very fast men who play linebacker. My height gave me a great advantage as a receiver, since most of my routes had me go up against those same linebackers, who were shorter and slower. However, this advantage changed once I got the ball. When I went over the middle to make a catch, I was vulnerable to being laid out.
Privately, I hated the idea of changing positions. I went into it kicking and screaming. However, outwardly I didn’t argue. It felt good just to be wanted. Coach Mason had told my dad that if I gained forty pounds, he would make me the top tight end in the Big 10. I trusted him. When Coach asked what I wanted to do, I told him I would play wherever he needed me to play. Timing-wise, making the switch could not have come at a better time in terms of the evolution of the receiving tight end. In the earlier decades of football, most teams ran the ball first and foremost. Tight ends blocked and only occasionally caught a pass. About the time I became a tight end, offenses had opened up and threw the ball much more.
After spending my first year on the redshirt rookie squad, I finally got my chance to suit up for the Golden Gophers at home against Louisiana-Monroe in the Metrodome on September 2, 2000. All of my family was in the stands cheering me on. On the first play of the game, I took off down the field on a seam route. I flew past the linebacker, looked up, and pulled the football out of the air, landing in the end zone for a forty-yard touchdown reception. Coach Adamle, the coach who got so excited about me making a catch on a similar route in the summer camp where I was recruited to come to the school, could hardly contain his excitement. This was my welcome-to-college-football moment and I loved it. I had waited for what felt like forever to make a play like this. The moment felt as good as I dreamed it would.
We went on to win the game 47–10. I only made one other catch, a short seven-yard reception. Altogether, eight different receivers or running backs had catches that day. I spent most of the game blocking. The blocking schemes were still pretty new to me, but I was starting to get the hang of it. After the game I found I had reached a new level of acceptance in the locker room. Guys three and four years older than I was started treating me like an equal and fully accepting I was as a member of the team. I didn’t get that during my redshirt season. I have to tell you, it felt really good.
We lost our next game to Ohio University. I made one catch for thirty-nine yards, which is great statistically, but good stats don’t mean anything when you lose. Then we went on the road to Waco, Texas, to play the Baylor Bears. We won the game, but that’s not the story.
My mom went over to a friend’s house to watch the Baylor game on television. Dad had a wedding to officiate so he was at the church getting ready for the wedding to start when the game kicked off. After the opening kickoff our offense came out on the field. In typical mom fashion, my mom cheered loudly for me when she saw me on the TV screen. I think it was almost as much fun for her to watch me on television as it was to sit in the stands. Everyone in the house cheered for me as well. The place had a party atmosphere to it. Everyone was having a good time.
As a tight end, most of the plays we ran called for me to block someone to open up a path for our running backs. As I said, the blocking schemes were all pretty new to me, since I never did much blocking when I played wide receiver. As a tight end, I learned a blocking technique where I led with my head and hands to land the initial blow on the defensive player, then launched up to gain leverage and move him out of my way. Playing the position is more complicated than that sounds. We had several different blocking schemes, depending on the play that was called. Most of the time I knew what to do, but on one running play early in the first half against Baylor I got spun around and I slammed into our starting left tackle. It was a helmet-to-helmet hit, which is never good. The force of the collision sent me sprawling to the ground, where I stayed.
A thousand miles away, in a living room in Hastings, Minnesota, my mother saw this play. The moment I hit the ground, she gasped. When the camera zoomed in on me lying very still, she stood up and stared at the screen. The camera stayed on me. Normally, even after a big hit, a player slowly gets up or, at the very least, rolls around in pain. Not me. I did not move a muscle. I have no memory of any of this because I was out cold. My mother
told me the television announcer then said, “This doesn’t look good. Utecht’s legs aren’t moving. He’s very still. It is possible he could have broken his neck or injured his spine.”
And then they cut to a commercial.
The wedding over which my dad was to officiate was ten minutes from starting when a member of the wedding party found my dad in his office. “You’re Ben Utecht’s dad, right?”
My dad gave him a funny look and cautiously said, “Yes.”
“I just heard on the radio that Ben got knocked down on a play. He’s laid out on the field and they don’t know if he is going to be okay,” the man said. “I thought you would want to know,” he added, then left.
Now it was crisis time for my father. He wanted to grab the phone and call my mother, but he didn’t have time. He had to go out and do the wedding right then. And that is what he did. He said a prayer for me, then went out and took his place in the front of the church as the groomsmen came in and the bridesmaids all marched down the aisle. All he could think about was me lying on a football field in Waco, Texas, when the bride’s father escorted her down the aisle while the crowd stood at attention. For everyone else in the room it was a joyous celebration. For my dad it was the longest wedding of his life. He had the bride and groom recite their vows and exchange rings, then pronounced them man and wife, all the while wondering what news was waiting for him once the wedding was over.
Across town my mother paced around her friend’s living room, crying and praying during the longest commercial break in the history of television. Finally, the network came back to the game. She rushed over to the television, looking for me in the huddle of trainers and coaches crowded on the field. Finally, she caught a glimpse of me. I was still on the ground, but my legs were moving back and forth. The announcers said, “It looks like we’re seeing some movement.”