By Joe Proudman
Deep in Brooklyn, where the borough meets the water in Sheapshead Bay, is a football field. It’s a patchy gridiron, with more weeds than grass, that make up most of its green color. Two uprights stand at the back of each endzone, where the lighting drops off rather quickly. Benches on the home side are made of 5-gallon buckets with a large plank as the seat; the other side doesn’t even have benches. Before the start of each game the announcer asks a few times for volunteers to hold the first down chains – the game can’t start without them. A large storage trailer behind the field is used as a locker room, with an American flag on the wall and a refrigerator for beer near the door.
This sandlot of a football field is home for the Brooklyn Mariners. It’s a fitting arena for a group of normal guys who want to play football.
Most of the Brooklyn Mariners would never be mistaken for football players these days. The team is made up of bartenders, bouncers, accountants and pest control workers. Some are right out of school and others have flecks of gray in their hair.
Despite their ragtag look, the Mariners are as professional about their roles as any pro team.
They wear pads, helmets and uniforms. They tape their wrist and ankles. They hit hard and take hard hits. They play through injuries and fight their way to championships. Some have national titles, and the rings to prove it. All of them have stories from the football field, whether in Brooklyn or with the Indianapolis Colts.
The Mariners play with 23 other teams that make up the Big Northeast Football Federation, a minor league football organization, playing games through the summer and fall in the northeastern part of the country. It is a league created by former football players, for those who want to play post high school or college, and those looking for an avenue to progress their careers.
Father and son.
Unlike high school or college players, even some professionals, the Brooklyn players focus on more than football. Many have full-times jobs, families and responsibilities like mortgages, bills and such. It goes without saying that one big hit, or even several small ones, on the field could jeopardize all of that.
“There's risk in anything you do. You risk crossing the street, that’s what I tell everybody, there's more people getting hurt in car accidents,” said quarterback Paul Bourlis, 30. “Why play? It's a sport I've loved my whole life.”
Bourlis joined the Mariners two years ago, and for the second time was running onto Kings Bay Field. He says that he is probably the only person on the Mariners to play for Kings Bay Youth Organization which shares the field with the Mariners and often play their pee-wee games before or after the adults on the weekends.
“When I was a kid, like these kids walking around, I use to come at night and watch the Mariners every week,” Bourlis said, whose family eventually moved to Long Island away from Marine Park. “I always use to say, one day I want to figure out what happened with the Mariners.”
Bourlis, who works as a certified public accountant in Long Island, use to watch his neighbor’s grandson play for the Mariners, on the same field as he did as a child. It was almost by chance that Bourlis found the team again. Two years ago he was playing flag football in Long Island, when a teammate had to leave one day to go play semi-pro football.
“I was like, ‘Where you playing?’ and he's like, ‘The Mariners,’ and I'm like, ‘Get the hell out of here,’ and he's like, ‘Come on down,’” Bourlis said. “So last year, the summer before, I came down and came to practice.”
Bourlis, who has been playing football since he was 9 years old, joined the team as a tightend, working his way to starting quarterback. But on a Sunday night in New Jersey, Bourlis went down hard, resulting in him having to be flown to the hospital and put his future with the team in jeopardy.
The Brooklyn Mariners were battling the New Jersey Staggs during the last game of the regular season. It was late in the game and the Mariners were protecting a lead along with a league title and a higher seed going into the playoffs. The Mariners were on their side of the field, with Bourlis in shotgun formation.
“I remember the play. It was four lead. We got the ball back after they scored. We were on the 30-yard line. I had Mike [Cerone] in the backfield with me, and he called the play. It was just a running play, I follow him right up the middle and just get some yards and kill clock, that's all we were trying to do,” Bourlis said. “I was like alright, done this a million times, ran this play a hundred times. Never would've thought about it. Never would've thought twice about it. All I remember is catching that snap and running to the line of scrimmage and everything went black. Then I woke up and everybody was around me.”
As he made it to the line, a helmet slammed into the side of his head causing it to bounce off the ground. He went into concussive convulsions as a result of a severe concussion and was unconscious for a few minutes. He doesn’t know who hit him, just bits of what happened after. He doesn’t recall the hit.
“I remember going to sit up and something holding my neck and I didn't notice at that time but my head was strapped down to the board with a neck brace on,” he said. “I was able to move my fingers, move my toes. I moved my legs. I was alright, I have full feelings. I felt my neck I was like who's holding my neck. My first reaction anytime I play when I get knocked down or I take a big hit or I do something is I try to get up as fast as I can. Cause its just a reflex – as soon as you get hit with a hard hit, if you can, I just get right back up as fast as I can to see if everything works.”
When he went to get up this time the straps held him down and he got a little rough.
“I started getting a little physical with everybody and they had to sedate me or paralyze me or whatever, to get me onto the helicopter. If I would've done that on the helicopter the copter would've came down apparently,” Bourlis said. “So from what I heard, is they shot a paralyzing needle into my leg to paralyze all my muscles and then one in my arm to sedate me to put me out cold and then when I got to the hospital they sedated me again so I didn't wake up in the CAT Scan.”
Even with the possibility of another staggering blow and more injury, Bourlis smiles at the thought of getting back on the field. A few months after the hit, he says he feels normal, with no side affects from the injury, and the only thing holding him back is long-term injuries.
Mariners' quarterback Paul Bourlis looks downfield for a pass.
“Theoretically on paper I could play again, but I don't know what my risk is of taking another hit like that,” he said. “Will I black out, will I be able to wake up and have full functionality of all my body parts, will one part of my brain be damaged?
“I just want to ask, ‘What's my risk?’ If my risk of getting a concussion is the same as it was as I stepped on the field the last time I stepped on the field, then I have no problem playing,” he said. “If my risk now is quadrupled of having brain damage, I don't think that's something I want to mess with.”
Bourlis says his chances of playing this summer are 50-50, but says it as if he has already decided to play. This is the sport he loves because of the competition, because of the camaraderie among the team. He needs to play.
“You never want to end a playing career like that. You want to be able to walk off the field. You don't want something else saying you're done," he said. “It's the love of the game. That's all it comes down to. Everyone here, look around you. It's a bunch of grown adults with full time jobs that love the sport. They've played it their whole life. It's that feeling you get.”
After Bourlis was flown off the field, the Mariners lost the game 21-20. They played well enough during the regular season to make a run in the playoffs as a wildcard team, where they made it to the conference finals. It was late in that game when the Mariners suffered another quarterback injury to Bourlis’ replacement, Chris Calabrese. Bourlis helped him to the sidelines after his knee gave out in the open field, leaving the team without a QB again.
“Everybody looked at me like, ‘Did you bring your stuff,’" said Bourlis. “Who's to say if I had some equipment in my car, my emotions could've got the better of me. Everybody stopped and looked at me like, ‘Could you do anything to help us.’ And again you feel disappointed.”
The Mariners lost that game and their season was over. When time ran out, several Mariners just sat in the middle of the field, letting the feeling of the abruptly ended season sink in. Bourlis stood on the sideline kicking the dirt with his foot like a kid who just didn’t know what to do. The look on his face was a mix of disappointment, anger and frustration.
“It was a disappointing feeling to me. Kind of like you let everybody down cause you weren't out there with them. You wanted to go down with them,” he said. “I know I could of made some kind of difference."
In their second year of playing in the Big Northeast Football Federation, or BNEFF, the Mariners were just one game away from playing for the league championship and possibly moving on to pursue another national title. They had won consecutive titles in the now defunct Garden State Football League but have found a home with the five-year old league.
The League
The Brooklyn Mariners have been around for nearly six decades, but the BNEFF has been around since 2007, along with their sister league the Big East Football Federation. Between the two leagues, which are overseen by the BNEFF Group Inc., they have 32 teams that stretch from New York to North Carolina. They soon plan to include Connecticut and a third league, the BEFF 10, which will serve as a third-tier league, behind the BEFF and BNEFF.
The league had humble beginnings.
Penn State graduate Dexter Girven, who was recruited by legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno to play for the Nittany Lions, is the man behind the BNEFF. While at Penn State, Girven was having a hard time handling both football and school work, causing him to leave the team. In order to keep some of his football scholarship, he was allowed to work on the sidelines for the team. But the experience has had a lasting effect on his career.
Girven’s journey to the BNEFF started out with coaching pee-wee football. He transitioned to playing semi pro football with the Westchester Steelers as a tight end that lasted one year before he says his calling wasn’t tied to smashing linebackers and catching passes.
“As a player I said I see something here, but I can’t see it from a player’s perspective,” Girven recalled. “I’m going to pull myself out of it and I became the offensive coordinator.”
Over the years, he’s moved from coaching to general manager to team owner, and help out with the Garden State Football League, while it was still around, before starting the BNEFF.
The league started with six teams. The next year they jumped to 12. In their third year they were able to field 21 teams.
Girven is on a mission to develop an identity for the BNEFF and its players, who are men that probably played some high school ball, maybe some college, but are simply looking to play football. In America the National Football League reins king of football. College football teams such as Alabama, Texas, LSU and Florida, have rabid followings, as anyone who follows football knows. High school football in Texas spawned “Friday Night Lights,” one of the most popular books about high school sports that went on to become a respected television series. So where does that leave those players in between?
Mariners quarterback Chris Calabrese is sacked.
“We’re still trying to identify who we are,” he said. “I think that’s where a lot of the confusion comes from as far as the acceptances and the respectability that comes with the game which is what we have been dealing with for years. Our brand or what we are trying to do is brand the BNEFF and identify ourselves as minor league football.”
The major difference between minor league football and semi-pro football, is the latter pays it’s players to participate in games. Minor league football does not. This is a very important fact to consider when creating an identity for the BNEFF Girven says. The league is a mix of older and younger players. You’ll see players who have been around for years and wrinkles to prove it, and you’ll see players who look like they just graduated high school the night before. It is the latter player that is truly affected by the status of the league.
“I have to constantly go over what the definition of semi-pro football is, which is a paying league,” Girven said. “We want to identify as minor league. Why? Because a lot of the players we have are college eligible, NCAA, naturally that player is no longer eligible if we are a paying league.”
But that’s not to say that Girven’s aspirations stop with minor league football. He says the BNEFF Group will turn into a four-tier system in the next couple years, with their top league, the USA Pro Football League or USAPFL, being a paid semi-pro league. Currently the USAPFL has a website with mentions of starting in 2011, but Girven has said that it is kind of out there to test the market, with no immediate plans to start this year. They plan to create a sort of farm system with all the leagues, though the USAPFL would be very distant from the other three.
“The BNEFF would be the USS Enterprise, the USAPFL would be a space shuttle that’s out there on it’s own, completely totally disconnected,” Girven said. “Because of course, BNEFF, BEFF, BEFF 10, has kids that have the potential to play college ball or kids that have played college ball that want to go back to college. The three can stay together in a pod, but that [USAPFL] has to take a life of its own.”
There have been numerous football leagues that have sprouted up only to sink after a few years of playing. One of the more notable have been the USFL in the 1980s, which played a spring league and included several players that would go on to hall of fame careers in the NFL. It folded before the end of the decade. In recent years, there was the XFL, founded by the WWE’s Vince McMahon, which failed after one season of playing. There is also the AFL, which is making a return in 2011 after financial problems kept them from playing in 2010. They arguably have had the most success.
Mariners’ coach, owner and all-around heart-and-soul of the team, Pudgie Walsh has been at the helm of the Brooklyn team for 55 years. It is his responsibility to organize the team and pay the bills, on top of recruiting and coaching. He recalls that when he first took over in 1957, it cost just under $33 a game to run. That included $12.50 to rent the field at James Madison High School, 25 cents for a permit, $5 for a guy to mark the field and $5 for each of the three referees. These days, he says you can’t even buy a few rolls of tape with that, much less turn a profit with a minor league team.
The Mariners before kickoff.
“It's not a business because there is no money to be made. I was never in it to make any money. All the money goes to the team,” he said. “Every time we step onto that field at Kings Bay it costs us $1700, and we're charging $10 and we get 40, 50 people in the stands, so we have to make up the difference around $1200.
“If you play 10 games that’s $12,000 you have to make up and that doesn't include equipment, that doesn't include insurance, that doesn't include referees fees at the field where we split, league fees and various other expenses that come up in running a semi-pro football team,” Walsh said. “If anyone thinks they can run a semi-pro football team and make money I don't see it.”
The league charges $900 for each team, in which Walsh says helps to pay for expenses in the post-season. Each player usually buys their own equipment, especially if they are planning on playing for a number of years. For away games, the players usually drive themselves, as Walsh said that bus prices have gone up. He doesn’t necessarily charge each player, but each Mariner is expected to help fundraise about $250.
"It's tough, it's always where does the next buck come from, how do you do it. We run golf tournaments, we run this, we run that. Anything to keep the team going," Walsh said.
“This thing is for love of the game. This is pure, you love football and you want to play and you want to go out there and risk injury, your body. Guys play a long time; they get it in their blood. You look at some guys on the Mariners they play 20-something years. My son played 20-something years, now he's coaching with me."
Girven on the other hand, does feel that there is money to be made in minor league football and has a very concise view of what kind of league will be successful. He says, any one that challenges the NFL is simply going to get sacked for a big financial loss, but believes the BNEFF can give fans something the NFL can’t give ¬¬– an up-close and personal football experience.
“I think there is a huge disconnect from the NFL to the families,” Girven said. “I want to create an environment that a father, if he is not making the money to support a season ticket at Giant’s Stadium… he can take 20 bucks, go less than a mile away, get on a bus, come to one of our games feel like a father, feel like a man, teach his son about the game.
“His son doesn’t know the difference between a 250-pound man wearing a New York Giants’ jersey or a 250-pound man wearing a Brooklyn Mariners’ Jersey,” he added. “The difference is that Brooklyn Mariner will walk up and sign an autograph for you. He’ll let you hold his helmet, walk up to the gate. That ain’t going to happen there.”
Girven is right, it does in fact happen at Kings Bay Field, were the pee-wee teams warm up alongside Mariners. Fans walk right up the chain link fence, inches away from the players and chat about the previous play. Fans sport red and navy blue jerseys, with an anchor embroidered into them. It’s a team made up of normal guys, looking to play a little football.
The Mariners
Pudgie Walsh could be called a legend in Brooklyn and among football circles. Google his name and you will find numerous stories by The New York Times and New York Daily News that talk about him like he’s a local celebrity you should have met by now.
He is exactly as you would picture a retired firefighter and old-school Brooklynite, with the voice to go with it. He is a short, portly sort of man, 77 years old. His face is that of a man who has spent decades in the FDNY and a voice that has been worn down by years of avid cigar smoking and speaks with a tone that is conclusive. When he talks, you listen. It’s probably why the Mariners have had such a successful run the past 55 years. He sits six wins away from 600 total victories as a coach, amid four national titles and 10 Garden State Football League titles during the past six decades.
Despite all his success with the Mariners, he started out as a player for the Flatbush Knights in Brooklyn, and wasn’t interested in coaching. In April of 1957, he was on probation from the fire department and not planning to play football for six months till it was up. He was sitting in a bar when two Mariners, who were suppose to be playing a game, walked in.
“What happened was, the first game was scheduled, and it rained that morning. The coach decided to call the game off cause they had an open date and not rip up the high school field they were playing on. The other team was agreeable. And what happened, the ball players wanted to play from the Mariners and they got into an argument. The guy quit. I wasn't even there,” Walsh said. “And then I ran into two of the ball players when I though they'd be down on the field, later on and said, ‘What are you guys doing here?’ And they told me the story and said, ‘We don't got a coach you got to coach.’ I said I don't want to coach them and I said I'd do it for one year and here I am 55 years later doing the same thing.”
The Mariners have had interesting guys over the years that run the spectrum of professions. Walsh says the team has fielded firemen, policemen, and soldiers. Guys who work on Wall Street and some guys who have spent time in jail.
“One guy, I'm not going to mention his name, played for me for about seven years. He got locked up, served six and a half years. Came out and he became an actor and he went to Hollywood,” Walsh said. “He was in a lot of pictures, and I said to my friend one day, ‘You think so and so will ever win the academy award?’ He said, ‘If he don't win it, he'll steal it.’”
As you can imagine, it takes a certain kind of guy to play for the Mariners, but Walsh insists that it is fairly simple.
“I'm looking for football players that are athletes and guys that want to play,” said Walsh, who is constantly recruiting. “It's guys, they love football and they just want to get out there and hit.
“You like to get a guy, right out of college who is single. And then when he gets married, his girlfriend has been to the games,” he said. “You get them when there is no attachments and they just want to play football, that's what you want.”
Mariners linebacker Sean McGlynn puts on his gloves prior to a game.
While Walsh has essentially been the man on the sidelines for the better part of five decades, Sean McGlynn has been the man on the field for the Mariners for the past 16 years.
“Sean McGlynn is the most intense person I’ve know in my life,” Walsh said. “Sean, when he stops, I don't know what he's going to do you know. You can't go on forever."
McGlynn, who is in his 15th season as captain for the Mariners, says that he would always play to his number, which is 42, and then call it quits. But he isn’t calling it quits anytime soon after hitting the self-imposed marker this past year. Yes, technically he’s over the hill, and pushing on 35 years of playing football on every level imaginable, but the man is the most in-shape person on the Mariners and probably a good chunk of the league. For a living, he works as a personal trainer, and apparently leads by example, standing about six feet one inch tall and muscular 230 pounds.
Maybe he’ll stop when he feels 42 years old.
If someone was intended to play football in life, it was McGlynn. His first big experience with the sport came when he was 6 years old and spent the day at a Miami Dolphins practice, hanging out with the likes of Larry Csonka, and the rest of the 1972 undefeated Dolphins. The next year he would take the field himself, though there was one issue, his town didn’t have a tackle football league, just flag.
“My dad said, ‘If you’re going to play football, you’re going to play football,’” McGlynn said.
So his dad drove his son 45 minutes to Huntington, NY, the closest town that played tackle football. It was there that McGlynn would get even more encouragement from a pro football player. One of the coaches on the team, whose son also was on the team, played for the New York Jets at the time and often worked with McGlynn.
Today the long island resident plays linebacker for the Mariners, but in high school he was an all-state kicker at the perennial powerhouse St. Anthony’s high school. He held several state records for a time, such as made field goals and longest kick, though they have all been broken by now. His talents earned him some great looks from schools, including Penn State, but McGlynn didn’t want to be a kicker. He says he knows the importance of the position, but the kicker doesn’t really seem like part of the team, one of the guys. He wanted to play another position, so he went to Southern Connecticut where he played both offense and defense, while kicking. By his senior year he was just a safety.
Not too many football players get the chance to play college ball, and even fewer get the chance to earn a paycheck playing. After graduating, McGlynn got his shot at the NFL, trying out for both the Indianapolis Colts and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He was cut from both teams. McGlynn said that the Colts felt he was a “tweener,” too big and thus too slow for a safety, and too small for a linebacker. But that didn’t stop him from playing football.
“I just don’t want someone telling me you can’t play,” McGlynn said. “The NFL can tell you you’re not good enough to play in the league. But that doesn’t mean I can’t play somewhere else, do something else and that’s what I’ve done.”
After his chances with the NFL, McGlynn bounced around various leagues, including the Canadian Football League and the Arena Football League. He made the AFL’s Albany Firebirds team, but was force to quit after being injured and the $500 a month paycheck just wasn’t enough.
He eventually worked his way back to health and went to Switzerland to play in the Swiss American Football League for three years, when he was 29 years old. After coming back he finally found a permanent home with the Mariners, where he has won three national titles.
The Marniers gang-tackle a New Jersey Wolves runnign back.
After three decades of playing, breaking every finger on both hands, several concussions, injury after injury, McGlynn said he’ll stop when it’s too hard to get going. After the season he usually takes some time off, till about the end of January, then starts training again. With the first thaw, he’s out running. When that is too much to do, he says that’ll be time to hang up the cleats.
“You know I love football, I love the Mariners. I drive 110 miles to come here to play and I’ll do it as long as I can. It’s just all about love and being here,” McGlynn said. “I don’t care about stats and all that other crap, all American crap, I just like being respected by my teammates, by my coach, that’s all that matters to me.”
The Mariners were one game away from the BNEFF championship this year. Having tasted championships multiple times, it’s hard for McGlynn to walk away from the game that’s been apart of his whole life. He says the game is part of chemistry, part of his make up.
“I’ll be back, just like Arnie said right, I’ll be back. I can’t go out like this,” he says. “But you know I could end up saying this the rest of my life every year if we lose, I can’t go out like this. Eventually I’ll have to make a decision.”
Until then he might have to bump up his number.