College Football

I used to be a big sports nut. I still am to an extent, but not the way I was as a youngster and into my twenties. I think my interest may have dropped off after I quit playing the games. I was disappointed I wasn't good enough to make it all the way to the big leagues in baseball, or the NFL or NBA. So sports lost some sheen for me eventually. At various times it might pick up again, off and on. I get absorbed in a World Series, or NBA playoffs, for instance.

I never really cared too much for the Super Bowl after Joe Namath retired. Broadway Joe. Drunken Joe tried to kiss Suzy Kobler on TV once. Pretty funny. Joe says he hasn't drank since then. Took stock of his life and all. Still, pretty funny.

I liked the San Diego Chargers in the seventies. They never made it to the Super Bowl, so I didn't have to break my disinterest in that hyped up madness.

I'd had a few classes with Dan Fouts at Oregon when he played there. He was a smart, friendly guy, so I followed his pro career pretty closely. Air Coryell, they called it back in the day. Pass, pass again. Pass once again. Then pass it. Fouts could really fling it around. Guy drank a lot of beer, too. In college, I'd see him at parties with a good looking girl on each arm. Then a couple more might come up to him. Give him a beer. Tryin' the magic on him.

I mosied along, wishing I could be a great quarterback.

I played the line, small college. Got the crap kicked out of me a few times. But I could dish it out, too. I learned how to cheat. An offensive lineman, right guard, I learned how to hold big time. I often got away with it. There's a technique for doing it right. But I do believe refs watch for it more these days. It may not be as easy as it once was.

Here's one thing I've noticed about football. Everybody is bigger now. And faster, particularly the really big guys.

I have great memories of the game, going down on a kickoff and hitting a return man so hard the ball flew 20 feet into the air. A teammate picked it off when it came down and strolled into the end zone for an easy defensive TD.

And I recovered a teammate's fumble once in open space, pulling to the left to block, thought I might score. Everything was in slow motion.

The great athletes talk about that, how time suspends when they're in a "zone." Feels like everything is in front of you, you're not moving very fast, but you're actually moving very quickly.

Michael Jordon used to talk about that.

Announcers say, "He's in a zone!" describing a series of great plays by a performer. You've played sports, you know what it is if you've been there.

Well, I was never really in the zone. I was just naturally slow. What I felt, the non-suspension of time, is what everybody saw with their own eyes, because that is what actually happened.

I couldn't run very fast at all. That's why I played the line at 190. If I'd had wheels, I could have been a helluva receiver, because I had glue-hands.

But Miss Piggy could have covered my routes as things were.

One coach told me, "Build yourself up." I had technique, I knew how to play the line. I was undersized, even for small college ball. I couldn't do it, I hated lifting weights. It might have worked, I often wonder about it.

But I had other reasons for dropping athletics. They were cultural, political. I played in the era of dissent. I couldn't identify with the jock mentality, never really. I just loved the game. I could take or leave most of my football playing friends. Well, not friends, but teammates.

There may have been a few others on that football team who attended a morning football practice before heading off to the anti-war protest in the afternoon, but I can't remember them.

It was definitely a different era, and I, admittedly, was kind of an oddball.

But, like I say, I still love to watch college football, and my team is still Oregon. It upset me to see Jeremiah Masoli mess up so badly months back.

Can you imagine the stupidity of that? Come on, you're likely going to win the Heisman Trophy, or at least be in contention for it, and you make that choice, to steal a lap top? That choice?

My God...

Only thing a Heisman winner ever did dumber than that was kill two people, slashed them to pieces.

Orenthal James Simpson was a hero of mine once upon a time.


TS

P.S. I should explain the photo above. That's Oregon's Super Sophomore All-America Kick Returner, Kenjon Barner, beating down some woeful would-be UCLA tackler on his way to another astonishing return at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena last season. My buddy Charles Deemer grew up near the Rose Bowl, and he can't explain UCLA's ineptness of late, though fortunately for him he attended both schools, and therefore doesn't feel bad when one of his teams loses.