Alta Live: Rick Bass Goes Semipro at 60

Author Rick Bass has lived a football fan’s dream. The 60-something award-winning journalist spent a season playing for the semiprofessional football team Texas Express. In “Of Ice Packs and Men,” a special pull-out folio included in Alta Journal’s Issue 30, Bass recounts his experience as “a middle-aged white man” joining a struggling team in the Dynamic Texas Football Association. His story, none of it fiction, allows any sports fan to live vicariously through Bass’s brave (and at times painful, at other times victorious) undertaking. Now retired from the semipro football field, Bass takes a seat with Alta Live to answer our many questions, reveal parts of his experience that didn’t make the story, and fill us in on how his former teammates are faring now. Read his story, then join us for the post-season recap. Coach expects your attendance at this Alta Live.

About the guest:

Rick Bass is the author of more than 30 books, including, most recently, With Every Great Breath. He is the winner of a Story Prize, a James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and a PEN/Nelson Algren Award Special Citation for fiction and a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. He has served as contributing editor to Sierra, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Big Sky Journal, Amicus Journal, Outside, Orion, Field & Stream, The Contemporary Wingshooter, and many other publications. He serves on the editorial board of Whitefish Review and teaches in the Stonecoast low-residency MFA program. He was born and raised in Texas, worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi, and has lived in Montana’s Yaak Valley for almost 40 years.

Here are some notable quotes from today’s event:

On joining the Texas Express: “I thought it would be an adventure. I thought it would be fun. And it was both of those things. My best friend from high school, Kirby, was their trainer. I would watch, I’d go to games, and I was struck by how small they were: slight, slender. Not the linemen, of course—they were enormous. But the skill players were. They were human, they were human. And so I think, ‘I could do this.’ And then that led to one thing, led to another.”
On the players’ reactions to his start with the team: “I was received with such generosity.… I didn’t want to be a circus or a sideshow. And it was a wonderful, humbling reception into their team. They really defended me and supported me, supported it and were delighted with it. It was just magical. I mean, they looked twice, maybe, for about the first 15 seconds when the coach explained, This is what’s going down. After that, though, there was never any doubt.”
On playing football: “The days between practices, the stretching, the physical training stirs dopamine in you and becomes an addiction. The intense mental preparation: memorizing the plays and thinking who’s going to be where, what, how the play should be run perfectly and where you hope the defense will go. It’s world-building, and it’s like writing a novel. You’re plotting, you have a game plan, you execute, and you look for places on the field to exploit. It’s just, it is an addiction.”
On the players: “I think a lot of them are battling different things in their lives. And this is a place where they can express themselves, focus on something positive, and get out of it what they put into it. There’s guidance, there’s structure, there’s rules, there’s accountability, there’s pride—there’s a lot of positive things.”