More Truthful Than You Think

The young man raced down the field. His pads were sticky with sweat, but he ran.
He had the ball.
His enemies crashed all around him, like waves to the shore, and he, like the tide, pushed them back away, free to run. He neared his goal, closer and closer by the yard as he sprinted.
Then came a vision; a golden, calm sea of meaning, and there were people all around him on the shore, and no one was running, just smiling.
"What the hell am I doing?" he asked himself. And he stopped in his tracks, his opponents and comrades flying past him, not anticipating his immediate halt.
He lay down on the plastic ground beneath, urging for real grass, and the stadium grew silent, in shock at this horrendous display of apathy.
The crowd starting booing, and chanting obscenities at him, threatening to burst out of their seats and kill him. He stood up, without the ball or helmet, all forgotten. The coach stormed out to him.
"I quit," he simply stated.
Soon, a shot rang out, silencing the crowd once again, then turned them to yells of approval and grunts of satisfaction. He was dead, shot through the skull. His life ran out onto the fake grass, the crowd not letting him completely quit.
"At least SOME part of him is still out there," someone says through the din.
He is mounted on the post, for all to see, with the words "DO NOT QUIT" pinned to his naked chest, the team's colors now disgracefully stripped from him. And there he stays, as a reminder.
"DON'T YOU DARE BE DIFFERENT."