When I exited my twenties, people kept asking me what debauchery I got into to celebrate the big three-zero. And I told them all the same thing: I woke up, took a shower, contemplated my own mortality and the fleeting nature of existence, and then tried to continue about my day as if I wasn't acutely aware of the inexorable passage of time.
That was three years ago. Since then, like a smoke alarm that beeps every 90 seconds to let you know that the batteries need to be changed, my body has been sending me periodic signals that eventually I'm going to have to acknowledge the fact that yeah, I'm getting slightly old. Grey hair, creaky knees, brief moments of panic when I remember that I'm overdue for a tetanus shot... well, it's not that bad, really (I'm in pretty good shape), but the thought that this whole "life" thing is kind of an extended exercise in maintenance on a machine that they eventually stop making parts for is kind of a bummer.
But then there's LeBron James.
And to be clear, I'm not LeBron James. No one is. There's at least a 20% chance he's not fully human, rendering this whole thing moot. But the dude is three months older than I am, and from what I've seen, powered what I assume to be mostly righteous indignation at the idea that he isn't the best player on the planet and will continue to be so until the heat death of the universe.
In theory Old Man LeBron gets tired taking his trash out (like me) or starts to sweat after walking up a small flight of stairs (like me) or mildly sprains his fingers because he opened a door awkwardly and put too much pressure on his knuckles and now has a hard time making a fist (like I did about a month ago).
It's just that after dealing with the Human Condition, LeBron goes out and drops 43 god damn points and 14 assists against the top seed in the Eastern Conference on the road, laughing at Father Time all the way.
It's inspiring as hell, but LeBron isn't the only senior citizen (in athlete years), going out and showing that great things are possible the longer you go.
The thing about college sports is that we don't really see players age, at least not over a long enough time span to really see them challenge the dregs of time. So even when a guy like J.T. Barrett finally shuffles off to that great UDFA beyond after five or so years hanging out in Columbus, his accomplishments as a Buckeye will remain frozen in amber, and I'll always think of him as a 21ish year old who dunked all over Penn State in a legendary 4th quarter and outran the entire Minnesota secondary in 10 degree weather. He may not end up with a great NFL career, but that doesn't really matter because of what I've seen from him at Ohio State.
It works the opposite way, too. Players that had good or even great Ohio State football careers, but who also didn't achieve the kind of folk hero status the likes of an Ezekiel Elliott or a Braxton Miller, also have perceptions of them frozen in time: it doesn't matter how long they've been playing in the NFL or what kind of success they've had, we tend to forget that they exist until their name pops up on Monday Night Football, we look at a calendar and note that it is the year of our Lord 2018, and then do some quick mental math and realize that holy hell these guys are over thirty and have been kicking ass for the better part of a decade.
Kurt Coleman is a great example of what I'm talking about. An All-Big Ten defensive back at Ohio State, he had a great career as a Buckeye, especially as a senior in 2009 when he racked up five interceptions and was an integral part of one of the best Ohio State defenses I've ever seen. And that's probably where most people stop remembering the dude, but welp, here he is, a guy who wasn't drafted until the 244th pick in the 7th round of the NFL Draft, still doing his thing in the league almost a decade later.
Coleman turns 30 in July, and just got 16 million bucks from the New Orleans Saints to help anchor their defense.
Cameron Heyward is another player that fit this bill. He was more highly regarded coming out of Ohio State than Coleman was, drafted at the tail end of the first round as a defensive lineman. Cam, who will be 29 in a few days and who I still mostly remember for de-pantsing Jacory Harris with an 80 yard interception return in the latter stages of a 2010 game against Miami, has quietly put together a really great NFL career and is coming off a terrific season where he was named as an All-Pro.
30 year old Malcolm Jenkins, who had a great Ohio State career, just won a Super Bowl with the Eagles and is considered one of the leaders on their team, both on and off the field. But we have to ask ourselves: do we give him more credit for what he's done in the past few years as a professional, or for being one of the first to establish Ohio State's reign as DB U?
Nate Ebner is also a fun guy to bring up here, mostly because he's had by far the weirdest career out of the three. Besides being the Special Teams Dude Emeritus for the Patriots and winning a couple of Super Bowls, he's also been on the national rugby team and played in the freaking Olympics. He's closing in on 30 himself, but also just signed a two year extension to keep him in Foxborough and doing his thing.
Neither Ebner, Heyward, Jenkins, or Coleman have had the kind of impact that LeBron James has had and continues to have, but the larger point is that as an athlete ages and moves away from our idealized memories of them (particularly as college players), we kind of push away everything else to hang on to that image of them in a Buckeye uniform.
The assumption on our part is that once they hit a certain point in their careers, maybe there just isn't that much left to accomplish, but all of these guys have thrown that mentality right in the trash where it belongs.
As for me, I'm not going to be dunking on guys a decade and a half younger than I am or pushing around 330 pound offensive lineman anytime soon. But seeing what's possible as I age is a pretty huge motivator to not get so caught up in the whole linearity of time thing and to focus more on just getting better every day.
Until I hit 40. Then all bets are off.
