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Phil's Findings: Four Months Of Football On The Way
By PHILIP A. RUE
As
the football season enters our lives
each September, I find myself once
more trying to explain the complexities
of
the game to my wife after she has
inadvertently paused in front of the TV
set to look at the screenful of
colorfully-attired figures on the field.
"Some of the colors don't go," she
observed. "Look at the orange and
green uniform! The other team is just
as
bad with Navy blue and Nile green."
I
think she is still influenced by
ROYGBIV of high school classes.
Then she asks me why the ball carrier
rushes into the center of the line where
all the bodies are, instead of sprinting
to
the sides where there are open
spaces where he can escape with the
ball.
My
wife does know that yards and
downs are related. Once, near the end
of
a game, she heard the words "Hail
Mary" and thought it was wonderful
appeal to a higher authority to catch a
pass in heavy traffic.
My
wife's knowledge of football goes
back to our college days. On game
day, I would present her with a large
yellow China chrysanthemum, then
we'd sit on the plain wooden benches
with classmates to watch the game.
Our small Swedish Lutheran college,
Upsala, played in a minor league of
college teams.
At
our home games, we claimed rights
to
an unusual feature which has never
been duplicated. We shouted our
cheers in Swedish! All I can remember
is
"Kor igenom" and "Osky aj aj"
repeated.
I
suspect that our foreign language
huzzahs confused our own Vikings as
well as the other teams, for although
we
did win games, we seldom had a
winning season.
One of the great games in Upsala
history was against the Eagles of
Boston University played in 1938.
Although they beat us 25-0, we felt it
was a moral victory for two reasons.
First, we held the powerhouse Boston
College team to only 25 points, and
second, our senior tackle, Joe Grecco,
was voted "Most Outstanding Player"
for his tenacious tackling.
When I was a lad, we played sandlot
football on Saturday mornings with
pick-up teams. On one occasion when
it
was my turn to carry the ball, my
teammates opened a big hole in the
line. But all I could do was slip and
slide in the mud and barely made it to
the scrimmage line. When I got home
in
my damp, muddy clothes, my
mother gave me another dose of
scrimmage.
We
also played touch football on the
residential streets of Newark, N.J.
Time-outs were frequent as we waited
impatiently for cars to cross our
macadamized field of play.
Every team wanted Jasper because he
was the most elusive,
change-of-direction, swivel-hipped,
twisting ballcarrier in the
neighborhood. Today, he would be a
professional standout worth millions.
At
age 82, however, he can only
dream.
Not lost on my wife is the critical
importance of a field goal kicker.
Being both sympathetic and
empathetic, she feels very sorry for the
kicker when he misses a crucial field
goal or PAT attempt.
I
wonder if any readers remember the
old drop-kick method of kicking the
football. A kicker would drop the ball
so
that it would fall on its end and the
moment it hit the ground he would
kick it.
When passing through the room again,
and my wife asks how many minutes
are left in the game, I might answer,
"Ten minutes only."
"That'll be another half hour, at least,"
she would comment knowingly. And
she'd be right.
In
addition to Monday night football,
which runs three hours, there are high
school games on Friday night, college
games on Saturday afternoons, and
professional games all day Sunday. It
is
football saturation time in the U.S., a
September-December phenomenon
which ends in late January with the
Super Bowl.
Mercifully, high school and college
games are over by New Year's Day.
Football widows should convert to
becoming football hostesses and cater
to
their armchair-quarterback
hasbands. They do not have it easy
playing the games winningly for a full
four-month period, not to mention the
Super Bowl.
Since the Super Bowl falls on or near
my
birthday, my wife helps me
celebrate by relinquishing her favorite
recliner and allowing me to nestle in it.
As
a postscript, I would like to state
that my wife's lack of depth in football
was far surpassed one day several
years ago.
While I was recovering from my
double bypass at Kaiser Sunset, my
daughter and several of her nurse
colleagues stopped in to visit. I had
been watching the Sunday football
game.
During a lull in the conversation, one
of
the nurses looked at the action on
the screen for a while and then said
exasperatingly: "They all hit and jump
on
each other and when the umpire
gets there, they all look so innocent."
The other young lady observed: "All
they do is chase that one ball."
Then the height of cultural
misunderstanding was expressed by a
loud male voice several beds away. It
was obviously from a
not-yet-assimilated-into-American
culture person who said, "They should
have more than one ball. This is a rich
country!"
I
stayed in bed another day to recover
from that!
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