High School Football

That Tug of Football

/ cigarman501 / 5 Comments

“The thing about football – the important thing about football – is that it is not just about football.”
― Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

It is the time of year that I feel like I should be doing something else. High School football practice begins today. I haven’t set foot on a practice field in twenty-two years, but I still feel the tug.

I was involved with football for over half my life, first as a player and then as a coach. Now I’m just a spectator…and not a particularly good one at that. I can’t remember the last time I physically went to a game at any level. I choose to watch the game from the comfort of my recliner. I like the game still, but I don’t know the kids and I’ve found that while the game is important, it is more important because of the kids and coaches that I knew.

So many memories flood me.  There are too many memories to try to enumerate and pick even on that stands out more than others.

Thousands of want to be football players will brave the late July heat and humidity, the bruised and aching muscles to experience the highs of victory and the lows of defeat. Some will win it all, some less than all, a few won’t win at all, but I believe most will be better because they made the effort.

Kids in helmets, shorts, and tee shirts lined up today on fields wet with dew. Next week they will add pads, amplifying their discomfort and the sounds coming from the field. Waves of heat will shimmer above the grass, the sun turning the field into a sauna as the practice goes on. Despite the dew and humidity, the insides of mouths become desert-like no matter how much water is consumed.

The greenest grass you were likely to see, the painted lines blinding with glare in the morning sun. Sleds, dummies, ropes, and chutes sitting about waiting to be utilized. There is never anticipation like the first day of practice…unless it is the first game. There is anxiety and fear, but they are overcome by the joy of competing…and the first collision.

During my days as a player and a coach, we tended to use the word war metaphorically when describing football. I’m sure coaches and fans still do but we’ve romanticized both too much. Football is not life or death, war is. Quoting Bill Shankly, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.” I know he was talking about what we call soccer, but it fits with my line of thinking.

Football during my early days as a player and a young coach wasn’t war…but it was close. It wasn’t a game of finesse, more like World War One than the present-day battlefield. Football was a “line it up” and “ram it down their throats”, anything goes kind of game with the forward pass thought of as a trick play. The game was about imposing your will, not trickery. To quote George Orwell, “[Football] has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting.”

Orwell might have been a bit harsh, but I can’t deny coaching football right up to the line of committing a felony while preaching fair play. I coached the way I was coached, and all my peers coached the same way. Some of our players might say we stepped across the line on occasion. I can’t count the number of times I yelled, “Put a facemask on him” (now illegal) or felt an adrenaline rush when someone put a hit on the opposition that clapped like thunder and echoed through the stadium.

The game has become more dignified since I hung up my whistle. In some ways it doesn’t resemble the game I played but then the game I coached didn’t resemble the game I played, either. All things change and I am not saying the rules changes are bad. They are not. They are simply different, and, in many cases, they were necessary because of coaches like me.

There are things that haven’t changed. Moving that odd, shaped ball is not as much about the plays being called or stopping the opposition with the perfect defensive call. It is about execution. It is about digging deep inside when you are tired, bruised, and bloodied, and still finding a way to get it done.

Football relies on teamwork and always has. Eleven people operating as one. It relies on you trusting the guy next to you and him, trusting you. The game is about being a part of something bigger than yourself. It is about being willing to metaphorically sacrifice yourself for the good of the team.

The game teaches lessons and can be a cruel instructor when it does. One lesson, the most important and cruelest is the one we should all learn: Sometimes, you can do everything right, but you still lose…and the opposite is true too. Sometimes you muck it all up and it turns out fine. It doesn’t seem to be fair…kind of like life sometimes.

I miss the interaction, the comradery, the coaches, and the players. The good-natured banter that we, as a society, seem to have lost the ability to tolerate. It seems we are all offended about something.

If you want to know how to have a good relationship with people, how to get along, visit a good team’s locker room. People work out their differences for the good of the team. The important stuff is what goes on between the chalk lines. Everything else is just a distraction. Good teams aren’t distracted.

I’ve never been more alive than when I was laughing and crying with the team. I miss the Friday night lights. I just don’t miss July and August practices.

I wrote my first book at the urging of a student who thought my stories were humorous or uplifting. “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” The book was about my career as a teacher and a coach and the people I was fortunate to have run across. I should have quit while I was behind.

Don Miller’s authors page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR2USUuECtVZ30kyPLYDROKXQctOe6UaAbOiLHQ-IBV5nLr78HJ56V18iGs

Memories Revisited…

/ cigarman501 / 14 Comments

“One minute, you’re young and fun. And the next, you’re turning down the stereo in your car to see better” –Unknown

Who were these guys? I arrived late to the table and questioned, “How did you guys get so old?” I had made the hour drive to the restaurant thinking of those thrilling days of yesteryear, seeing them as the young men from forty years ago. Young men, full of piss and vinegar, with all their hair in my mind’s eye. Except Stan, Stan never had hair. Obviously, my mind’s eye needs some corrective lenses.

There were nine of us, eight retired coaches and one of our former players.  It had been the player’s idea. An impromptu reunion. I don’t know how many great ideas John has had during his life, but this was assuredly one of the better ones.

We had lived life like dysfunctional brothers for most of a decade and stayed connected for the three decades since. Clay, the head coach and athletic director. Carroll, the secondary coach, and basketball coach. Stan, the offensive line coach, wrestling coach, and later head coach and athletic director after my time. Max, a former player who could coach anything and helped me with the defense when he wasn’t calling plays for the offense. Cooper, the defensive line coach, resident comedian, and Precious Pup. Larry, our JV coach who would become a successful head coach in his own right. Mike, the trainer, and highly successful wrestling coach. John the wide receiver, punter, and wrestler we coached so long ago who went on to a college career before a continuing career as a successful human. Oh, I forgot. There was Don, the linebacker and defensive end coach.

Around the table there were jokes and laughter, stories that had been told before, with embellishment, I’m sure. There was catching up and a bit of talk about those we have lost over the years. Most of our conversations wound from our own craziness to the kids we coached or taught and their craziness. “Do you remember” began many of our conversations.

We were young coaches and teachers in the middle Seventies, in our mid-twenties to early thirties. Some of us fresh out of college were closer in age to our kids than our peers. We became seasoned quickly and somehow never quite gave up our youthful exuberance even as our hair fell out and turned gray. Testosterone ruled the day and sometimes youth is wasted on the young. Many mistakes, many humorous, were made but somehow, we survived and grew into responsible human beings.

There was nothing more important than Friday nights…or preparing for Friday nights and the parties afterward. It was war and losing was an affront to our manhood. One coach described winning as “better than sex.” Sex lasts minutes, winning lasts all week long.

We were a brash, egotistical about our abilities, hardworking, hard partying group. We were the Ivanhoe, King Arthur, and Knights of the Round Table of the football fields. We were Sirs Percival and Galahad seeking our own version of the Holy Grail and fighting opposing knights from the opposite sidelines. Like Percival and Galahad, we never found our Holy Grail, but it didn’t stop us from competing.

There might have been a bit of the wooing of the lovely Rowena or Rebecca but most of us ended up like Brian de Bois-Guilbert, dead on a sword…usually our own sword. It didn’t stop us from trying until marriage and family responsibilities reared their head. I promised not to tell those stories until we were all dead.

As I have become seasoned, or just old, I have come to realize there was much more to those years than the rush of winning football games. There is the rush, but eventually I learned it is about the people. The memories of wins and losses have dimmed over the years but the people…the people in those memories are crystal clear.

It has been almost twenty years since I stood girded for battle on the sidelines of a football field, a whistle or play sheet instead of a sword. I coached the game for thirty years. One might think I would have more ties but in all honestly, I haven’t watched a high school football game live in a decade or more. I’m not motivated. I don’t know the people. I don’t know the players, the coaches, the teachers, and the fans. There are no ties. There is nothing to bind me to the game except my memories.

I am often asked, “What did you do before you retired?” My answer is usually followed by another question, “A teacher and coach?  What did you teach and coach?” Once, I went into a litany of sports and subjects, now I simply say, “Kids, I coached kids.”

It is the memories that bind me to people…to my former students and players like John. It is the memories that bind me to seven balding coaches telling jokes and reminiscing. It is the memories that made it seem like just yesterday I walked off the football field and out of the locker room we once shared.

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.” ― John Banville, The Sea

“Kids don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” —Jim Henson

From left to right, from the floor and around the table: Hank the wonder dog, John Black, Stan Hopkins, Clay Bradburn, Larry Frost, Dennis “Max” Massingille, Don Miller, Cooper Gunby, Mike Frye, Carroll Long

Blog image of Mauldin Football from Gwinn Davis.

Don Miller’s author’s page https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR2n75Gfrb8wkA0AlIhcygC4VnZMTaNWVqzVDEqEKQRuMGy9oc8kN4B5l8I

My BBQ Hash Ought Not Be Lookin’ At Me

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

“Like the blind man said as he wandered into a cannibal village . . .“Alright! The country fair must be right up ahead. I smell barbecue!”― John Rachel

This morning I fell into a rabbit hole that involved football and BBQ.  If you have ever been to a football tailgate, you know how they are related. Southern football tailgates for sure. 

Here, in my part of the world, worshipers of the religion that is football filed back into various high school cathedrals erected to their pigskin gods this past week, and college football worshipers will begin their own pigskin revival this weekend. Many worshipers will bring with them their religious trappings in the form of grills and smokers, filled ice chests, and lawn chairs. 

It is time to sacrifice the fatted hog to whichever football deity you worship. Hardwood charcoal smoke and the aroma of Boston butts slow cooking will waft through the stadium parking lots and are the sacred incense of the religion of football.

I have worshipped football for most of my life and spent twenty-nine years coaching it. As a young, first-year football coach I was a clean slate.  I knew not what I was getting into when I accepted the offer to coach junior high football at Gallman Junior High School and scout for the Newberry High School Bulldog varsity squad in the fall of 1974. 

I was the junior high offensive and defensive line coach, positions I had played in high school…positions I found I was sorely lacking the knowledge necessary to coach. As my first varsity head coach, a big, hairy, square bodied man with the moniker, Bear, pointed out to me, “The first thing you need to understand is that you don’t know sh!t from Shinola and learn which one you need to shine your shoes with and which one you better not step in.”  An old phrase that meant I was ignorant.  Yes, I was ignorant, and some might claim, “You remained that way and to this very day, step in the wrong one…every day.”

Not only was I “on the field” ignorant, but I also had no idea what off-field responsibilities coaching entailed. Cutting fields, lining fields, taping ankles, doing laundry…all fell on the heads of the younger coaches.  I was twenty-three and a first-year coach, my duties weighed heavily upon my shoulders. Did I mention I was a fulltime teacher too?

Friday game nights I never saw us play live and in living color until the last game of the season. I was responsible for scouting. It was my duty to drive to the next week’s opponent’s game for reconnoitering duties and film exchange. Sundays, I assisted with film breakdown because I was the only coach who had seen our next opponent live.  All the while facing five classes of seventh graders daily, five days a week, and no real clue how to teach history, either.  I didn’t know sh!t from Shinola and I was learning which was which while on the job.

What does this have to do with BBQ hash? Nothing but I’m getting there.

Another duty I didn’t realize I had was the twice-annual fundraisers we ran to support our programs.  Athletic programs run off gate receipts and only a few sports make money.  Consequently, athletic programs run their “Sell Your Soul to the Devil for Athletic Equipment” fundraisers or allow the Booster Club to bend you over a desk.  “Was it good for you? Here is the chin strap you needed. See you next week and maybe I’ll give you a second one.”

In my part of the world at the time, the midlands of South Carolina, the easiest way to raise a lot of money was selling tickets for BBQ plates with all the fixings…said fixins. A local farmer gave us a deal on hogs, a local grocery a deal on chicken and the fixins, a local game meat processor did his part and viola, fund raiser.

The kids were handed a number of tickets to sell entitling the buyer to a plate of BBQ…with all the fixins. It also gave us an idea of how much to prepare. That’s right, coaches, their wives, their teams, and any fool stupid enough to volunteer were responsible for preparing and serving the food.

Family and friends who allowed their arms to be twisted into purchasing a ticket would show up on the blessed day and pick up their Styrofoam containers and consume them where ever. This was held in conjunction with meet the Bulldogs and picture day. Everyone wins, athletics get their needed equipment and supporters get a meal. A right good meal I might add.

Unfortunately, it also requires a sleepless night of slow cooking porkers and cluckers for the coaches and then filling plates with pulled pork, or roasted chicken, slaw, pickles, fried hushpuppies, baked beans and my duty, BBQ hash smothering white rice…all without the benefit of any sleep for over thirty-six hours and a hangover from drinking too many brown likker drinks brought by one of the other assistants to help while away the hours. I truly didn’t know the difference between “sh!t and Shinola.” Ah, the stupidity of youth.

BBQ hash is a dish served over white rice, an accompaniment to BBQ served mainly in the Dutch Fork of South Carolina.  Unrecognizable pig parts are cooked until they attain the consistency of mush.  Unrecognizable pig parts means “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Head meat including snouts, tongue, liver, and other organ meat were primary and I guess I just told.

Sautéed onions and potatoes are added and are further cooked to death.  Near the end, mustard BBQ sauce, vinegar, pepper, and hot sauce are added and simmered just long enough to give the flavors a chance to blend. That could be ten minutes or forever plus one day. Finally, you’ll stir in butter.  The dish is much better than it sounds and not a dish you need to eat if counting calories or if you have an arterial blockage.

The Most Underrated Barbecue in South Carolina | First We Feast
SC BBQ Hash-from http://www.firstwefeast.com

My duty? Stir the hash in a huge black, cast-iron kettle over an open fire with a wooden boat oar.  Stir, stir, stir, sweat, sweat, sweat, drink, drink, drink.  Repeat until the correct consistency is achieved, or you are too inebriated, tired, or dehydrated to stand.  Couldn’t be dehydrated. Don’t worry, the hash will all come together on its own.

At some point during the early, still dark hours of the morning, I watched as a white object was stirred to the top of the hash. No I wasn’t drunk or dreaming. In the flickering light of the wood fire under the kettle, I watched an eyeball roll over and fix me with its gaze.  This was not an unrecognizable pork part but I decided not to tell. As it sank, it seemed to wink at me as it disappeared into the ooze. 

Suddenly wide eyed, fully awake, and fighting the urge to scream, I dipped the oar where the eyeball had disappeared but never found it.  Later as I ladled hash on top of white rice, I worried which lucky diner would receive the prize he or she didn’t want.  I also admit it was years before I ate BBQ hash again and to this day, when I do eat it, I’m careful to search each forkful before opening my mouth.  Hash ought not to be lookin’ at you while you are eating it. 

In my best Bugs Bunny voice, “Bon Appetit!” For a recipe for genuine SC BBQ hash that doesn’t use “don’t ask, don’t tell” pig parts try https://spicysouthernkitchen.com/south-carolina-barbecue-hash/

In case you are unsure, Shinola is a now defunct type of shoe polish.

Funny, Marca, and Shoe: BROWN SHINOLA O O REG. U. S. PAT OFF MARCA REGISTRADA WAX SHOE POLISH Some people just don't know the difference Some people...
From http://www.awwmemes.com

The image of the football grilling over coals came from Canva.

Don Miller’s Amazon site can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1Kd0edLWxmy4Zt24SHvYnwe7QBAyx47b-LwntLo5wOhrAjT838vBaFKL0