Brady Feeney awoke from a two-hour nap and saw his name going viral. He’d yet to play a down of college football, but his story was being dissected by everyone in the sport.
An average college football fan probably doesn’t remember Feeney’s name. Three years have passed. But in the late summer of 2020, this incoming freshman lineman at Indiana was at the center of whether or not college football would even be played.
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Feeney was an otherwise healthy teenager when he contracted COVID-19 shortly after moving onto campus. Within a week, he was admitted to the hospital, where he spent days receiving oxygen.
His mom, Debbie Rucker, posted about her son’s experience on Facebook, begging people to take the virus seriously.
“Football does not really matter when your child’s health is in jeopardy,” she wrote.
Intense Facebook post here from Debbie Rucker, mother of Indiana freshman OL Brady Feeney.
— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) August 3, 2020
Rucker was a concerned parent who wanted to help others in her position and have her son’s harrowing story known. If they were going to play college football, what happened to Feeney at least needed to be on the record.
What came next was an onslaught. Feeney and his illness became a political football, so to speak. Her post was shared by thousands. And people on either side of the debate about whether or not to play utilized his story to make a point.
“The only thought in my mind is ‘I want to play football, this is my dream.’ I was there, and I was ready to wreak havoc on the scene,” Feeney said. “With something like this, everything goes out of control. There was nothing that I could control. It was so disheartening. It felt like I was cursed.”
Feeney retired from the sport before this season. But he got the chance to live out that dream last year at Colgate, a small FCS program in Central New York. He was happy there, he says. By all accounts, his teammates loved him. He got regular playing time. He boasted singing talents on campus and became a mental health advocate.
But to get to that experience of playing college football, Feeney had to overcome the aftermath of his illness, both physically and emotionally. Feeney’s experience at Indiana following his physical recovery sent him on an emotional downturn. His team, he said, almost completely shunned him. Players who were once friends no longer responded to him. It felt like a concerted effort, in his mind, to make it known he wasn’t welcome.
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“I knew that he was extremely unhappy,” Rucker said. “I maybe didn’t know the extent of what he was going through until later.”
Shortly after being diagnosed, Feeney awoke in the middle of the night gasping for air. He was scared and knew he needed to go to the hospital. He feared dying in his sleep if he didn’t.
Despite the clock reading the wee hours of the morning, it was the most packed Feeney had ever seen a hospital.
He asked for a doctor because he needed oxygen. Then he looked around the quarantined room to where he’d been sent. Everyone else was in the same condition, in need of the same air. A truly horrifying sight at the pandemic’s peak.
Feeney eventually saw a doctor and was given a bed. His blood oxygen level was in the high 60s to low 70s. Safe is considered between 88-92. He was put on oxygen and stayed in the hospital for several days.
“My family was very, very concerned,” Feeney said. “The Facebook post wouldn’t come out if they weren’t concerned. It was a time where it was really hard not to be able to have contact with my family. … Because that’s when I needed them the most.”
Kevin Warren, the then-Big Ten commissioner, called Feeney to talk with him about his experience and the heart inflammation he suffered as a result of his diagnosis. Later that day, the season’s cancellation was announced.
Though Warren’s call wasn’t publicized, the public placed some of the blame on Feeney. He and his mom received death threats from people online, a horrible reality for a midwestern family that just wanted to see their son play on Saturdays.
Media inquiries poured in. Attention came from every which way. And while it was not all malicious, none of it felt good.
Rucker believes it all happened for a reason and stands by what she wrote. The message came from a good place. The response might have been bad, but what she said was important.
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“I do not regret putting that out there. I do regret the consequences for Brady,” Rucker said. “I can handle it. Bring it on, people.”
Feeney says he went to Indiana head coach Tom Allen to discuss the situation, and though he felt as though Allen wanted to help, he’s unsure whether Allen took steps to help the situation.
A spokesperson for the Indiana football program declined to comment.
Whatever was or was not done, nothing changed for Feeney. He tried sending messages to people who were once his friends, asking why they’d stopped engaging with him. He got replies, mostly telling him they’d grown apart.
The experience severely impacted his mental health. From his traumatizing hospital stay, to the loss of his friends, to being just a regular teenager starting college in a new city, everything was overwhelming.
He had to see the team every day in some capacity. Every day, he had to be around people whom he felt didn’t want to be around him.
“It was kind of like a team mentality,” Feeney said. “If everybody’s going to do it, they’re going to do it. If I’m going to be the outlier on the team — if they’re going to all have animosity toward me, then they’re all going to do it.”
When Feeney says “all” he’s not being literal. There were teammates of his who supported him. But it was outweighed, he said, by those who didn’t.
Just a week after leaving the hospital, he received backlash from posting a tweet about listening to the doctors when it came to COVID-19. The disease has always been politicized. But in the college football world, it was rare for young athletes to have severe symptoms.
They wanted to play, an understandable desire. Like Feeney, they too worked their whole lives to get this opportunity. Feeney was asked by some to create a post with the hashtag “We want to play,” but he didn’t feel comfortable doing that.
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“They believed that once the initial season was canceled,” Feeney said, “it was partly me to blame.”
Feeney stayed at Indiana for the 2021 campaign for several reasons. One, after the season was restored in 2020, Indiana had a good team. He wanted to be a part of the successful culture. But more importantly, he viewed transferring as a form of quitting. And he did not want to quit.
He felt like he saw “the true colors of the program” in 2021 when the Hoosiers went winless in conference play. Coaches were let go. The team, he said, was placing blame on each other. He’d not recovered from the mental toll of the shunning that continued into 2021.
Transferring to Colgate was like moving into a different world. Patriot League football is not the Big Ten. Hamilton, New York is not Bloomington, Indiana. The people there were either unfamiliar with his story or had a vague recollection.
It was a place he could start over. He compared it to leaving a toxic relationship and starting a healthy one.
“His situation was very unique and he was looking to bounce back from it,” Colgate head coach Stan Dakosty said.
“I took it as a positive. He’s been through a lot. He’s not walking away from college football. He’s not walking away from what his ambitions are in life. He just needed a change of scenery to feel more grounded. We were excited to help with that.
“He’s open about battling through stuff. He’s got a lot of pride in who he is.”
Colgate’s first game last season was at Stanford, and Feeney started. Playing in a college football game for the first time, it felt like he’d finally made it. His family made the trip. They were proud of him, they’d known what he’d been through just to step on that field.
Perhaps more importantly, he felt comfortable enough with his own mental health to become an advocate for it at his new school. He worked as a liaison with the team on that front.
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“It’s the fact that these guys are my teammates, instead of my enemies,” Feeney said of his Colgate team. “They’re actively wanting to work with me. They’re actively wanting to be there for me.”
𝗥𝗮𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿: Tuesday night, Central NY got another chance to see greatness, as our own @brady_feeney took the field at The Salt City Mets' game for the National Anthem. All Rise! 💪🔥👀
Thank you @SyracuseMets!#GoGate | #ThreeForTheGate
— Colgate Football (@ColgateFB) July 21, 2023
Football drove him three years ago. But football, and then the joy of playing it, was taken away from him. Being there for others in a way he knows he needed not long ago is what drives him now.
Feeney knows it’s not easy for male college athletes to be open about these issues. That’s what he wants to address, and has found success in speaking with his teammates. Colgate has a policy to not accept online credits, which Feeney said took him off track to be eligible to compete this year. (He signed an eligibility waiver that allowed him to compete in 2022.)
He’s now back home taking grad school courses at St. Louis University. And mental health advocacy is what will drive his future.
Feeney felt he was cursed at Indiana. A slew of horrible things happened that crushed him. That period, as horrible as it was, shaped what he’s become today.
A kid known for getting COVID-19 has turned into a man who hopes to change lives.
He entered the sport wanting to be a big-time Big Ten player. He left it accomplishing something completely different.
(Photo: Courtesy of Colgate Athletics)
