You can know too much in a locker room. Or focus on the wrong information. I couldn’t tell you where any of my managers spent their time after the game was over and I saw these men more than I saw my own family. We spent an inordinate amount of time together in the locker room, on the field or on a plane for most of a day. At first glance that was considered the ultimate in intimacy, but in reality, it was just close proximity.

And close proximity can create a survival mode of another kind. One that can work seamlessly on the field, can execute fly patterns and call curveballs, but you are most likely not the emergency contact on your teammate’s medical records. When it came to personal questions, I knew only the answers that people offered to give without prodding. The rest was empirical evidence, manifestations while in-game, revelations from bumping into someone at a campus party. Good data, but incomplete data. Then, once you do know intimate details, they are not to be shared. If you’re playing for an iconic, highly-visible institution like Penn State, you have even more silence.

But the silence isn’t just directed towards the media or away from ethical obligation. It’s endemic to the inter-personal relationships on any given team. It can be explained in how I could have a teammate for years and couldn’t tell you if he had a sister. However, I could tell you how well he blocks. Yes it is a code, but it’s often steeped in a lack of true intimacy. And in reality, this kind of silence proves to be much more deadly than any other kind.