Flag

WHAT IT WAS WAS FOOTBALL

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

WHAT IT WAS WAS FOOTBALL
Earlier in the week with equal parts understanding and trepidation, I viewed the story of a Missouri school district disbanding its football program. Danger and fear of head and neck injuries and, with the addition of less expensive and less dangerous sports, reduced participation in football is inevitable. When I say less dangerous, I believe that in any sport there is a potential for injury but with collisions on every play, football is high risk. My apprehension is that this is the drip that will turn into a flood if we don’t work to make football safer and more fun to play. Fun may be more of the issue than safety. In a national poll, the highest percentage of former players listed no longer enjoying playing as their reason for giving up football.

As both a player and a coach, football was a part of my life for over thirty years. It’s still a part of my life as I have become a spectator; however I have found that it is not nearly as enjoyable because I do not know the kids who are participating. I am a little jealous of my friends who are still coaching…but not enough to brave the August sun, the long hours and what has turned into a yearlong season.

I never thought I would be talking about fun and football in the same sentence. Making football more enjoyable has come a long way with the new pass-happy offenses…that is unless you are a defensive coordinator. I think if I were still a defensive coordinator I would wear a paper bag over my head if I had to try to stop these “fun and gun” offenses.

There are just some parts of football that are not fun. Bumps and bruises aside, August heat and humidity are hard to endure. Offensive linemen don’t have fun…unless there is a “pancake” block I guess. I was an offensive lineman in high school and I can assure you I never walked out on the playground and suggested that we work on our blocking. “Hey! Stand there and let me run into you and then you can run into me.” During our Thursday before practice tag football games I witnessed that even “Big Eaters” like to play with a football.

Rule changes and new technology have actually made football safer but not totally. New diets and new year-round strength and conditioning programs have made it both safer and more dangerous. Force equals mass times acceleration. With the increase in size and speed, players are able to hit each other a lot harder. Want to lessen head injuries? Take the face mask off the helmet. Dental bills and nose jobs will increase but I bet you traumatic head injuries will decrease.

Football is harder to play than other team sports. Before you attack me, I did not say better or more important. To the person playing “tiddlywinks,” it is more important. Tiddlywink players, I support and applaud you. Hitting a baseball may be the hardest athletic technique to master as even a good hitter has a seventy percent failure rate. I salute pitchers for their skill. But that is not what I mean by harder. What I mean is, physical pain aside, a football team has more “moving parts” that have to be in sync. A baseball or softball game can be controlled by one person, the pitcher, if that pitcher has someone who can catch the pitch. In basketball, a game can be controlled by a point guard, a post player and three people willing to get out of the way. In soccer, within the team concept, there is a great deal of individualism and individual creativity. None of these sports require the precision that is necessary in football…These are sports that I have coached or coached and played so I have some experience to go with my opinion. Just so you other folks are not mad at me, I also believe that there is an artistic beauty to those other sports that you just don’t have in football. Football is just brutal, even when occasionally played with a little finesse.

I have never believed that any athletic event is a war, no matter what pro-athletes or, cough, cough, coaches say. I believe we use this description too often and it devalues what our military and law enforcement personnel go through. Football has a foxhole kind of mentality that you don’t get in other sports or, at least, the sports that I have coached.

Life lessons are learned when playing all sports; however, there is a uniqueness to lessons grasped in football. Just because of the sheer numbers in football, a very distinctive form of teamwork must be executed. Everyone has to learn a role, even second and third stringers. Outstanding football teams have good backups who understand their roles. Each player has to rely upon the guy next to him to do his job. The players absolutely must work together.

Football players must persist to achieve and to continue to work hard even when they are banged up or after a big loss or series of losses. It’s easy to come to practice after a win because you have an adrenaline high after the victory. I had one coach tell me that it was better than sex. Why? Because the high lasts all week. If you win a state championship, I guess the high lasts for a year. If this were a Viagra commercial we would need to seek medical help! What is grueling about the sport is having to get back up after a heartbreaking defeat or a whole series of them. I know it seems trite, but football is not about getting knocked down; it’s about getting back up.

I heard a young head coach speak this week. I felt for him. They are five games into the season and his team has scored just thirteen points…and given up over two hundred. That’s right. They have been outscored over forty to a little less than three. Talk about an exercise in futility! What impressed me first about him was his humor, even if it was a type of gallows humor. Secondly, he was optimistic that they were getting better… even if it was just picking up one first down.

I hope high school football doesn’t go the way of the dinosaurs or that we turn it into a flag football league. Had I had a son, I would have wanted him to play but would have supported him if he didn’t want to play. My daughter played futbol and was a tough knot. Had she wanted to play football, I would have supported her after I had tried to talk her out of it. I just believe it is worth the risk because of the life lessons that you learn and the friendships you cultivate. I hold this opinion because of the warm feelings that I have as I remember coaching and playing this awesome sport.

AN INCONVINENT TRUTH…OF SORTS

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

This has nothing to do with Global Climate Change or a documentary of the same name produced by a former Democratic vice president but I feel the need to express my belief that while the climate has changed as much as the South’s most revered river, the Mississippi, has meandered, both will continue to do so without help from the human population that inhabits our little blue ball. That being said, I also believe that, despite what superstitious conservatives say, the human population is helping to speed up and worsen the outcome of those changes and that Al Gore did not invent the internet. Hopefully the audience that is reading this has a clue as to what I just said.
There is a problem with history because it is just that—history. We weren’t there and we have to rely upon the writings of others in the form of what are called primary documents to attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle that is that history. We must also view what is being said using the “light of the times” which has dimmed as time has marched on. Most of us, unless we are historians, don’t want to go to the trouble of pouring over dusty historical texts that are decades old. We want the CliffNotes or we want someone to teach us the history that we need to know and if it is an inconvenient truth we look for a different set of CliffNotes or teachers who support a more convenient truth. We also tend to look at it in the light of our times which sometimes reminds me of that beautiful “honky-tonk angel”… when the harsh light of closing time comes on…not that I have spent any time in honky-tonks lately unless Linda Gail was in attendance and she looks beautiful whatever the light.
For instance, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” Ever heard this statement before? Sure you have. Civics and US History classes or if you slept through mine, Fourth of July celebrations. Sometime in your life you have heard it even if you can’t remember if it is the Declaration of Independence or the Preamble to the Constitution. Which is it? Hint—July 4, 1776. But what did it mean in 1776? That’s right it was the Declaration of Independence but what did “all men” mean. We think that “these truths” meant “all men and women.” The old universal man because we are seeing it in the light of today. But “these truths” didn’t mean that. Our founding fathers could have just as easily said “Only white men of voting age who are landowners are created equal.” No slaves, no women and no white men who didn’t own something. Universal women’s suffrage would not be enacted until 1920 although women in Wyoming territory had the right to vote in 1869 the same year that the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified giving all citizens the right to vote…except women. Male ex-slaves would have the right to vote, although severely abridged, before women and Native Americans who were not made citizens as a group until 1924. I also believe that there are a group of old white guys in blue suits who wish it was still that way. Yeah I’m an old white guy but the closest I will come to a blue suit will be a predominately blue Hawaiian shirt.
As the Civil War is being re-fought throughout social media I keep seeing statement after statement, reported as truth, which as a history teacher has me reaching for the Preparation H or at least the Gold Bond. Excuse my indelicacy but, “It galls my ass!” The latest had to do with the most revered man of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and the most defamed man in the Union, Abe Lincoln. Over and over posters stated that Lee “freed his slaves before the war” and that Lincoln was actually a “closet” slave owner. I also something about him being gay but he never appeared to be too happy. From my research, I am not sure how many slaves Lee actually owned, if any, and he may have freed what HE owned but he certainly did not free the ones his wife, and therefore he, inherited from her father until 1862 when the point was mute because the Union Army had already taken over his inherited home at Arlington. Why did he not free them? In his own words Lee stated that he needed them to avoid bankruptcy “and to put things right.” Should this make him any less revered? Should we defame him for having the worst comb over prior to Donald Trump? Viewing it under the light of times, I would say not, but stating what are at best the half-truths in today’s light makes one wonder.
Abe Lincoln a slave owner? Except for a short stint of time in Washington, Lincoln spent his entire life in Illinois, a free state. His family was so poor that his father “contracted him out” to pay for the families debts. Maybe that is where the confusion came from. Lincoln was a type of indentured servant for his own family which is a type of forced servitude but he owned no slaves. Grant owned slaves, as did eleven other former US Presidents but not Lincoln.
While I am on stupid statements about slavery, “There was just as much slavery in the North as the South!” Really? Not including the Border States, which were considered Upper South and in which Delaware was included, only two Northern states, Connecticut and New Jersey, had not abolished slavery by 1848. According to the 1860 census Connecticut had no slaves to free in 1865 while New Jersey had a whopping two hundred and eight-six too many. And while we are at it, Lincoln could not free the slaves in the rest of the United State with the Emancipation Proclamation. It would take an Amendment to the Constitution to do that and it did in 1865.
I was taught that if you were unsure of an answer or were sure you did not know the answer try and “baffle them with bullsh!t.” It would seem that I was not the only person to learn this lesson. I have seen much bul sh!t lately whether is dealt with the Civil War, religion, gay rights or our presidential candidates. Anytime someone states an opinion other than yours, rather than take the time to look up and research a rebuttal, we throw out what are at best half-truths or at worse total lies. When all else fails we just call each other names.

7/10/2015

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

Word had come to me that our state house of representatives had voted to remove the flag from the capitol grounds and place it in the Confederate Relic Room with its own area where those who believe in its heritage can give it the reverence that it deserves. For those who believed that it flew in the “face” of a large portion of the population and represented hate and racism, kidnapped or not, at least, it is out of sight, if not out of mind. That short journey began at 10:10 this morning and, thankfully, was over in the blink of an eye, although what it all means will continue to be debated ad nauseam, including, I hope, this set of stories. In the year 2000 I felt the flag should have been removed but, unlike now, I was too chickenshit to say it. Despite feeling one wrong has been righted, I am also thankful that those of us who want to celebrate our heritage still have the opportunity to do so…in any way we so desire, provided it is not illegal and doesn’t infringe on the rights of others. That might be the fly in the ointment or, maybe worse, the “Baby Ruth” in the swimming pool.
I have always questioned where my rights ended and others began. You want to play your music loud, louder and loudest and employ woofers that could create a sonic wave strong enough to knock a fighter jet out of the sky. At what point do I get to ask you to turn it down? More to my point – as I have viewed and read the comments on social media or had discussions with friends, I have been both shocked and appalled at some people’s venom. “Some people,” along with everyone else, have those pesky First Amendment rights whether we agree with the “connerie” they might be spouting or not. They have the right to say anything hurtful short of “Fire” in a crowded theater, I guess. They do have the right to call me a stupid asshole just like I have the right to unfriend them on social media which I didn’t. I am so thankful for the grace of the families of the “Emmanuel Nine” and for most of South Carolina. Dylann Roof was definitely one of those “Baby Ruths.” Maybe he has given us an opportunity to examine how dirty and polluted the water was before he climbed into the pool. I hope it will give us the opportunity to drain that pool and fill it with clear and pure water. I would settle for just potable.
It is true that the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia did not pull the trigger that took those nine lives. Dylann Roof killed them and we do not need to place the blame on “that flag” nor should we place it on the gun he did it with or the fact that gays have the right to a civil marriage or that I must have the right to go deer hunting with an AK47. (Sorry, I could not help myself!) We do, however, need to place the blame on those who hijacked the Battle Flag and turned it in to a symbol of hate. That would be people just like me. I was born in South Carolina in 1950 and was taught both the heritage and the hate. It was just two years after Strom Thurmond’s bid for the presidency running as a Dixiecrat, the party of segregation. They might have been the first to hijack it as they rallied round the Battle Flag while playing “Dixie” during their convention. Prior to that time, for over eighty years, the Battle Flag had rarely been seen, used only at parades or memorials and the like, in other words, just as it should have been, the way Robert E. Lee would have wanted. After 1948 it became much more than a symbol of heritage and I lived through it all and saw the efforts to keep African-Americans segregated after Brown replaced Plessey in 1954. I saw it all on my little black and white with Walter Cronkite. I heard it in church and in school but, fortunately, I did not hear it at my parent’s knee. I saw it in “Whites Only” restaurants or restrooms. I saw the burning of crosses and Freedom Rider buses, The Little Rock Nine, The Greensboro Four, Bombingham, fire hoses and police dogs in Selma and an assassination or ten. Thankfully none of it occurred in my part of South Carolina but then I might just be suffering from the disease of cranial rectitus that goes with the color of my skin. I do remember being taught that one did not call “coloreds” mister, “birds of a feather flock together” so much so you never expect to see redbirds with crows. In a history class I learned that the familiar statement “All men are created equal” was not true because you had those people born “lame, retarded and colored.” Unfortunately, too many times these occurrences were accompanied by both Confederate and US flags. We simply must recognize that and admit to ourselves that it is as much about hate as it is heritage.
On a Sunday afternoon in 1970 I stopped in a small upstate “nameless” town on my way back to Newberry for a milkshake that was, in fact, vanilla. As I sat at a concrete picnic table I heard cheers and yelling from behind a stand of trees and privet hedge. Being of a curious nature I decided to wander down a path and see what was going on. As I broke into the clearing the smell of kerosene became strong as a six-foot-tall cross burst into flames with a gigantic “Whoosh!” It was a small cross but there were plenty of white sheets and Confederate flags to go with the fifty or so people in attendance who were cheering the festivities on and shouting about the n@$$%^& bucks who would be raping our daughters during the upcoming school year. Looking a little like a Jewish banker, I remembered that “Curiosity killed the cat!” It was time to make a hasty retreat!
Activities such as this or the Klan rally that took place on the statehouse grounds should not define our culture as Southerners in general nor should it define South Carolinians specifically. We must accept that they are a part of us and as much a part of that heritage as the flag. So are the heritages of the others who live here. I applaud our diversity and love it. Dutch Fork BBQ, The Blues and Blue Grass, Shrimp and Grits, Sea grass baskets, Catawba pottery and an Indian-American governor named Haley – just to name a few things that came from someone else’s culture. I also thank the people who made my re-education possible – those teachers, parents and students whose cultures were different than mine…and the same as mine. All of your feelings count to me and, if being kind makes me too concerned about political correctness, I happily plead guilty.
Mainly I am thankful for a grandmother who, despite living in very racist times, taught me, and more importantly, lived by an old Chinese maxim that was hijacked by the Jews, the Christians and pretty much every major culture in the world – the ethic of reciprocity or what I knew as the “Golden Rule.” For those of us who probably need to hear it again, please pay attention. The way that it was taught to me was “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or to translate, “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” Despite this universal teaching, it would seem that the world and its many cultures have chosen to ignore it and I don’t care who is at fault. Someone needs to take a first step. Choosing to revere our heritage in a museum and to accept the hate that goes with it might be that first step…if we are brave enough to take it.