December 2, 2008

And Then There’s Football

Well, Thanksgiving is behind us. We’re still a couple of weeks away from having all our footwear caked with that festive white halo of parking lot salt and all our credit cards maxed out. This means that I have a little time to talk about another thing that happens a lot this time of year – football.

Where I live, the whole football fan thing is pretty much winding down for the year. The University of Michigan has polished off the worst season in the school’s history, so instead of preparing for any sort of appearance in a post-season bowl game, the young student-athletes are back in their dorms, probably concentrating on their dissertations in existentialist literature or chemical thermodynamics.

Our local professional football guys, the Detroit Lions, are well on their way to cementing a place in the pantheon of sports legends as the worst team in NFL history. If they lose their next two games they will tie the current champions, the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, at 0-14. Just two more losses after that, well within the reach of this inspired Detroit squad, and they will set a record that can only be beaten if the NFL should someday go to a 17-game season.

So I guess we still do have something to root for.

Even without a fan connection, I’ve been tuning in some football games over the past couple of weekends, and watching them brought back some fond memories. You see, I played a little football when I was too young to clearly understand the meaning of the words “compound fracture,” so I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a few thoughts about the game.

The first thing to understand about football is that it is a game of inches. This means that a player who stands six feet, eight inches tall can smash a player who is a mere eight inches shorter (like me) into a sort of lumpy pulp with a helmet and shoulder pads mixed in.

Another important thing every player must learn is that psychology is probably your most important weapon. Before the play, you have to look across (and up) at the opposing player with a confident sneer. The idea is to intimidate him, to let him know that you are not afraid of him.

In fact, it is better if you actually show scorn for him. Insult him. Say something derogatory about his mother. Call his sister nasty names. Tell him that those stretchy football pants make him look fat. And then when the ball is snapped, you must explode across the line and hit him with all the uninhibited violence you can muster.

Later, when you regain consciousness in the emergency room, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you played the game as it was meant to be played.

There were some types of football games that I always thought were a lot more fun than others to play in. My favorite was when heavy rain would turn a natural turf field into a big muddy Slip ‘N Slide with yard markers. For one thing, every time the six-foot-eight guy and four or five of his friends fell on me, my body would just squish down into the muck. Sometimes I would even kind of squirt out from under the pile, like that big old glob of guacamole and chicken does when you slam your fist down on an overloaded fajita.

The best part of playing in the mud was that picking the clumps of sod out of my face mask and my teeth gave me a great way to while away the time in the huddle.

Of course, to be absolutely clear, I should point out that what I am talking about here is good old American football, not the European kind. European “football” involves a lot of skinny guys in shorts prancing around on a big field and kicking a white ball back and forth. Eventually one player happens to brush against the jersey of an opponent, at which point the opponent whose jersey was brushed falls to the ground and writhes in agony until his team gets a free kick.

At least I think that’s how it goes . . .

Copyright ©2008 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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