Football and French Teachers

     Due to tight budgets, high schoolers across America are subjected to athletic coaches being distributed amongst the real teachers. Often, these coaches end up “teaching” easy and/or undesirable subjects like social studies - or in the case of the Anglo-centric South, foreign languages. One of my favorite high school memories is of a particular day in French class. I don’t know what possessed me to take French over Spanish, but that’s what I did - probably the most interesting thing about this class was that it was taught by the head football coach.
     Coach Lowe was a very typical coach-teacher: Mondays were spent analyzing our team’s successes or failures the previous Friday night; Tuesday through Thursday was handled by distributing worksheets to be completed open-book style in class; and Friday was blown off entirely in anticipation of that night’s game. We also had some Tuesdays off – sometimes for our school-wide assemblies and sometimes because the Coach had to go to his Rotary Club meeting.
     One day, though, Coach Lowe decided to take a rare spin around the blackboard – planning, in fact, to actually teach a little French. Before entering the classroom he was distracted by some assistant coach in the hallway, and we wisely used this time to write all over the board and then throw the erasers into the prickly bushes outside the classroom. Returning to the class he quickly discovered the problem and went out to procure an eraser. By the time he came back, we had also disposed of all the writing instruments for the board. Quite confused but not yet defeated, he left again to remedy the situation. Feeling the need to ramp up the disturbance, we began removing desks and chairs from the classroom and hiding them along the outer wall of the school. This time when he returned, we had students with no seats for his eagerly anticipated teaching lesson. Frustrated, he grabbed a handful of his football players (oh, yes, excellent French students – no coincidence they were in the coach’s class) to obtain desks from an unoccupied classroom. Miraculously, when the new desks were brought in, we were still short about the same number of desks. Baffled, the entourage went on a second mission to transfer desks into our classroom only to discover the same shortage on their return. Now at this point, the Coach realized two things: 1) there were only 8 minutes of class remaining and 2) the previous teacher had really left that classroom a mess and needed a stern talking-to.

     To the uninitiated, there’s just no adequate way to describe a Southerner’s obsession with the sport of football. For so many of us, it is the first sport we learn – probably tossing a football before throwing a baseball. It’s the way of life.
     The entire year revolves around football: in the spring, we gather players and formulate strategies for the available personnel. In the summer we begin our grueling two-a-day workouts leading up to the start of the season. Joyously we know that fall has arrived because football is being played. We pore over statistics and injuries and records and opponents. We faithfully attend every game we possibly can and watch those we can’t. Birthdays, anniversaries even funerals must be planned around the football schedule. When the all mighty farm gods require we harvest during the football season, all attempts are made to break for the game, and if that is impossible, we play that home-team, Larry-Munson-style radio broadcast while on the tractor or combine. As winter arrives, we rabidly root for the highest prize possible – that state championship, the national championship, the super bowl championship. If by some cruel misfortune our home team is out of the mix, we diligently play basketball and baseball and track through winter and spring to keep us in shape for football season. We will continue year round to analyze our school, your school, the rules, the system, the possibilities…
     During the football season, every day of the week revolves around football. On Monday we are discussing the results of the weekend and if players, sharpening our skill for next weekend. On Tuesday we are evaluating where we stand and where our college and professional teams stand. On Wednesday as we continue to prepare – judging the weekend’s matchups to either play or cheer or adjust our fantasy picks – we are looking ever more closely at our opponents’ tactics. Thursday puts the finishing touches on all our adjustments for the upcoming game(s). Friday is game day in our hometowns. With no movie theaters or dance clubs to compete with, our rural communities attend the Friday Night Lights as if that game was the resurrection of Jesus Himself. By Saturday we are caravanning to our college game where 100,000 other die-hard fans cram with us into our massive Southern football stadiums in support of our team. Sundays we are glued to our televisions rooting for all those homegrown heroes who made it to the big leagues, and when Monday comes around…  we do it all over again.

Walter Camp: The Father of American Football

Intercollegiate sports were chaotic in the 1800s. Many of the games played were relatively new, such as tennis and baseball. Colleges and universities were slowly beginning to fund athletic programs and to form conferences and leagues in which to compete against one another. Accordingly, this time period was marked by ongoing disputes over format and scoring, as well as, necessary rule changes to address the many deaths in the contact sports. 

The Northeastern schools - that would eventually become the Ivy League - were at the forefront of intercollegiate athletics during this time, and possibly the most contentious evolution of sport came as those universities slowly morphed rugby into gridiron football - American football. In particular, Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia wanted to have more clearly defined rules of the rugby-style game they were playing against one another. To that end, they convened in 1876 to set some ground rules. 

At first this brand new Intercollegiate Football Association basically stuck to England's Rugby Union Code with some small changes like awarding some points for a touchdown - instead of only awarding points on the kick afterwards (at that time the object of the game was to score points by kicking a goal either after a touchdown or from the field during the course of play).  This version of rugby was generally 15 players a side on a 140 yard field, and back then Princeton dominated the half dozen or so schools that competed in the sport. It is in this setting that Walter Chauncey Camp entered Yale as an undergraduate in 1876. 

Camp was an all around athlete excelling in track and field events, baseball, tennis, and swimming. Not only was he rapidly added to the Yale football team at the position of halfback, but he quickly became captain and player-coach. His contemporaries and coaches considered him one of the premiere football players of that time. Beyond being a great player and having a keen mind for coaching, Camp was deeply invested in developing and defining the game. His innovations and ongoing impact on the sport earned him the title: Father of American Football. 

Even while he was still a player he was active in the Intercollegiate Football Association - at first as a representative of Yale and then continuing on as one of their members until his death in 1925. He began in the late 1870s lobbying to have the player number reduced to 11 per side, which he eventually saw adopted in 1880. He pressed for further changes in the 1880s most notably creating the scrimmage and the quarterback with one stroke.

As football followed the rugby leads, the ball changed possession rapidly and with little strategy most of the time. Frustrated by this, Camp invented the idea of the scrimmage. The possessing team would now start a "down" from the line of scrimmage. By controlling the possession and creating a scrimmage, the game not only slowed a little bit but also allowed for an entire new system of attack - and defense. As they moved from kicking the ball backwards from the line of scrimmage to handing the ball off behind the line to the increasingly important quarterback, strategies developed for how many players on the line, how many fullbacks or halfbacks and where to place them, and eventually even the evolution of the forward pass. (On this point, Walter Camp was originally opposed, but he did finally accept the forward pass.) 

Of course, the system of scrimmage and downs required great revision. Initially the new scrimmage rules allowed teams to effectively stall, holding the ball once they took the lead. This was boring for players and fans alike, and by 1882 they had devised the down system whereby possession would go to the opposing team if a certain mark - initially 5 yards, later changed to 10 yards - hadn't been reached in three (later changed to four) downs. This is when gridiron football was truly seen as lines marked off every five yards of the field. 

Also during the 1880s the Intercollegiate Football Association began tinkering with the scoring rules. In 1882 there was a strange system of 4 touchdowns equalling a goal (kick through the uprights) from the field and 2 safeties equalling one touchdown... It was messy. In 1883 Camp prompted the points be changed to: 5 for goal from the field; 4 for goal after touchdown; 2 for touchdown and 1 for safety. This was quickly revised months later to: 5 for goal from the field; 4 for touchdown; 2 for goal after a touchdown and 2 for safety. It wouldn't be until 1912 that our modern scoring system with 6 points for a touchdown was accepted.

Other significant changes occurred during the late 1800s. The field was shortened from 140 yards to 110, and it's width shrank from 70 yards to 53 1/3. The time of game was set to two 45 minute halves with a 15 minute break. The officials were actually paid (only one referee and one umpire per game back then), and they were authorized the use of whistles. Additionally Camp lobbied - successfully - to eliminate the flying wedge play that had been responsible for numerous deaths during games. 

Interestingly,  and possibly a contradictory change from a safety standpoint, in 1888 tackling below the waist was legalized. This actually created several changes to the game itself. Now the line of scrimmage pulled in - for it was necessary to form up a secure wall of protection for the quarterbacks, halfbacks and running backs from these brutal blows. This would actually clog up the game again until more forward passing began and thus open field running returned to the game.

Walter Camp was at the center of all these changes. Those he didn't directly create, he certainly contributed to nonetheless. Even while working as a businessman and establishing himself as a model citizen in his Connecticut hometown, he wrote hundreds of articles and over 25 books on sports and football. Camp was a lifelong member of the Intercollegiate Football Association and on its Rules Committee. He also aided the United States Armed Forces and gained notoriety with Walter Camp's Daily Dozen - a series of 12 exercises to be completed in 8-10 minutes each morning. 

Walter Camp, the Father of American Football, edited every American Football rule book published in his lifetime. He was well respected by all within the sport - from collegiate to the American Football Association to the National Football League. Camp has been credited with bringing "an almost mythical atmosphere of manliness and heroism to the game not previously known in American team sports." He continued his work perfecting the rules of football right up until his death, where at age 65 Walter Camp died of a heart attack while attending the 1925 meeting of the Intercollegiate Football Rules Committee.

Non-Football Sports

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OTHER SPORTS

I was recently asked the question, “Do I care about other sports?” This person was referring to anything other than football – which he knows I care about dearly. Here’s my answer.

…well, I grew up with the knowledge that basketball and baseball were solely there to keep you in shape for the next football season. In my adult life, I have grown to love college basketball – both men’s and women’s – which have heart and passion unknown to the NBA although in the last coupla years the NBA’s passion has improved, and I’ve gotten slightly more interested in it. I know the parity that has crept into the college basketball game has upset some critics. However, I would say it makes it more interesting. Why? Because there’s a play-off at the end, and we can pronounce a winner. It’s not the stupid BCS – we can actually watch these teams that are jockeying for the top rankings go at each other one-on-one and see which one REALLY is better. I reckon in that regard, college basketball has it better than football.

Then we get to baseball (because, as a Southern Lady, I am not even going to deign to comment on hockey – of which I know nothing and barely even acknowledge its existence) which we all grew up thinking was similar to basketball – you played it or watched it because football hadn’t started yet. Having said that, I do have a fondness for baseball. It’s laid back, slow paced play… the way you can watch it and still multitask a million other things while it’s going on – it’s different from ALL the other sports if only in that one manner. Baseball is so slow that you never miss anything. If anything truly great goes on – more than any other sport – they have plenty of time (and don’t even need slow-mo) to re-show the viewers whatever exciting thing happened. Turn those games on and I guarantee you won’t miss anything...wash your car; bake a cake; mow the lawn; write a novel...you will NOT miss anything. I can’t say that about any sport other than golf.

That brings me to the next two sports: tennis and golf. Let’s get golf out of the way first. It’s much more interesting to play than to watch. The exception to that rule is, of course, if John Daly or Tiger Woods are playing. Each can bring unique intrigue – Kardashian-style – to golfing events. Nonetheless, golf isn’t even as much of a sport as it is a hobby – like knitting and pottery making. I accept that it takes skill, patience, talent and practice to perfect it… It’s just not necessarily as athletic as other events classified as “sports.” Even NASCAR drivers have a better claim as a sport than golf. As for tennis, many will disdain the sport as outdated and uninteresting. I, however, still remember getting up extra early in July to watch the Wimbledon matches and staying up extra late to see Steffi Graff whoop up on folks in the Australian Open. I concur that it has lost some of its marketability in the last few years, and I’m not sure how that happened. It’s an excellent sport and one of the few that is one-on-one throughout its entirety. It also is one of the more demanding sports on the body. No, nobody is suffering concussions to the rate of football, but watch how their lower bodies take the brunt of the hard surface courts and pound on their hips, knees, ankles… It’s tasking. It’s athletic. It’s demanding. I personally look forward to its resurgence.

While on the topic of demanding, we’d next have to look at track and field – as well as the X Games - but first the classic. Track and field is definitely demanding. It’s just that it’s not so exciting to watch. I mean, if you’re watching the final hundred yard dash in the Olympics – maybe. If you’re talking about marathons, all anybody cares about (if they care at all) is who crosses that finish line first. Not very many people care to watch folks run for one or two or three hours…. It’s a little boring. Even those of us who have run them know we mostly did so to say we DID it. Most marathoners aren’t out to win. That’s why we all talk about our personal best times rather than how many races we’ve run…

Next is the X Games. Those are phenomenal, but like gymnastics and diving, they have an Olympics type aura to them so that we don’t look so much to who wins the half pipe this year…we are waiting to see who wins the Gold Medal in the next Olympics in the Half Pipe. It’s just not followed like the “regular” sports. If I have the opportunity to watch the X Games, I always enjoy it, but I don’t go out of my way to make sure I’m watching. Give me two pitiful college football teams in a make-shift bowl game, and I’m rearranging my schedule to see it….THAT is the difference. AND, I think that needs to change…marketing and television exposure just hasn’t caught up to the X Games. They’re working on it, but I would love to see more, more, more.

Did I miss anything? Cycling is ridiculous – particularly in light of what we now know about it and like marathons, is just tedious to watch. I get the draw of car races but am just not personally drawn to it. ….oh – the crossfit competitions! I really enjoy watching them. They give me great new ideas for stuff to add to my workout while also making me feel weak and inferior – but they are inspiring! Again, though, they are more about individual accomplishment than really competing against someone – coming up with strategies and game plans, etc. It’s just different, and like the X Games not as broadly marketed – yet!

So…. I reckon the answer to the question is what I’ve often told people about the state of Georgia…. There are 3 things that matter most here: God, Football and Coca~Cola.

So, all non-football sports are just time-fillers, AND I’m enough of a sports junkie to keep up with all of them anyway.

God, Football and Coca~Cola

 GOD, FOOTBALL AND COCA~COLA

When foreigners (people from the northeast or west coast, that is) ask me about the South, I try to dispel some of the myths and give them a better picture of the Deep South – which is where I have spent the majority of my life. Now, sometimes these conversations are difficult to start because these friends, acquaintances, or complete strangers may require a translator. That is, my beautiful Southern drawl occasionally takes a while to grow accustomed to, and even after knowing me for years, once in a while a friend will ask me to repeat a word… or I may actually have to spell it out loud for them to finally understand. I don’t mind. I tell ‘em it’s good practice – I’m a firm believer that God speaks Southern, so they may wanna perfect it now.

What do I tell these folks about the South? Well, I generally start with some of our wonderful traditions such as never letting a Lady change her own flat tire. I have never been broken down on the side of the road without a kind stranger stopping to help me with whatever was wrong – flat tire, car trouble, or traffic crash.

There’s another great tradition that happens after tragedy… Let me tell you, if somebody dies in your house, you will have casseroles, hams and cakes to last you a year – and I am NOT exaggerating. My Daddy died when I was young, and I distinctly remember my siblings and I cheering when Mama told us that that night’s supper was the last of the ham and casseroles from the freezer.

Additionally, we say “yes ma’am” and “no sir” – not to insult anyone’s age – but as a sign of respect. In the Deep South the men will still insist on opening doors for the Ladies, and it does NOT threaten my independence or strength or honor one single bit.

Particularly in the smaller towns, if one child gets sick, the entire town is praying for the whole family and raising money at school, businesses and church to help them with any of their needs. Southerners do NOT sit in a hospital room alone for any reason – nor is the waiting room devoid of folks offering love, support and, of course, food.

Generally, dogs don’t have leashes, and they ride in the open truck bed rather than inside the vehicle – unless there is no truck bed. Southern dogs also tend to shun their dog food as they are more accustomed to scraps after the people have eaten.

Seasons are measured by what the farmers are planting – wheat and oats before Thanksgiving; corn in late winter/early spring; soybeans and peanuts later in the spring or even early summer; then cotton as sometime between Easter and summer – and harvesting – wheat/oats at the tail end of spring; corn in the hottest part of summer (late July and August); peanuts in September; soybeans in October; cotton ‘round Halloween.

Southerners eat food grown in the ground within 17 miles of their own houses and usually from their back yard. The meals of the day are breakfast, dinner and supper…try and meet one of us for dinner and we’ll show up at noon.

The most common thing you’ll hear if a friend is driving you through the South is, “there’s another church; there’s another church; there’s a church with a mini graveyard…” Mind you, most of the churches are tiny li’l things with congregations of less than 50 people – although you will find the larger First Baptist Church, United Methodist Church and maybe a First Presbyterian Church. In those small towns, you will definitely NOT see a Catholic Church or Synagogue or anything other than “the big three.” (Ok, you may find some Episcopalian Churches…but that’s it.)

If you are way deep in the South, you will learn that you should NOT drive with hands at 10 and 2. No, Sir, you drive with one hand placed at noon (12 on the steering wheel). You do this so that you can lift your top four fingers in a casual wave at every other vehicle that passes you by – whether you know them or not. Also, the use of blinkers is optional.

In the Deep South, you grow up living within a county or two of your grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins – most of the time, every single one of them. The beauty of this is you always have a couch and a hand made quilt at some relative’s home to comfort you when you have the flu and your own parents are at work. We really do still quilt, knit and crochet.

To this day, I have not found anything that we can’t figure out how to fry. And yes, I’m putting that in the “good” column.

Hard work is still honored in the South and everyone knows who works hard and who doesn’t.

And I’ll stop here with: the Southland has the most beautiful spring in all the world, and a sweet Southern drawl is the most soothing sound in all the world.

Now, there are some not-so-nice parts to the South. We do have a touch of the humidity that northerners sometimes find uncomfortable. Our li’l pesky bug – the gnat – can turn out in swarms from time to time, as can the mosquitoes. We don’t like them either. While it’s really nice that you’ll get help when your car breaks down and people will feed you when you’re sick or someone dies…it also means that everybody knows everything about everybody.

There are few secrets in the Deep South. Be careful, though, we don’t talk about the bad stuff out loud – well, not around the folks in question. When you see someone you have a disagreement with, you smile, say hello, ask about their family and move on as if it were the most pleasant thing in the world. Then you talk about them behind their back as soon as they are out of earshot. We could probably do without that tradition.

“Bless your heart” can be translated as everything from “oh, that’s so sad” to “uhm-hmm…you brought this on yourself” to “this one’s ‘special’” followed by a pat-pat-pat on the shoulder. We also still have troubles with racism and subtle segregation – but that is improving, thankfully.

Also, some people would count it against the Deep South small towns that perhaps we aren’t so exciting with few restaurants, bars and what some would consider “cultural” institutions, but I personally find the slower pace and reduced amount of strip malls and discount stores to be refreshing….and we are a cultural institution all unto itself!

When I want to be brief, though, I stick to the big three… What matters in the Deep South and particularly Georgia where Coca~Cola lives, is:

 God

Football

And Coca~Cola

--in that order .

Footnote:  by football, we mean college football.