Fine moments in football
Published 2:03 pm Monday, September 27, 2010
While soccer is known as the “beautiful game,” and baseball is considered the “thinking man’s sport,” football modestly acknowledges itself as all of those things, as well as the national pastime, a mantle that used to belong to baseball. Football is fun, but its big-shouldered sense of self-esteem can grate at times. Which is why we can appreciate the softer side of the gridiron. For example:
n Thanks to YouTube, the final play of the freshman high school football game between St. Joseph Benton and Maryville in St. Joseph, Mo., has become a hit nationally. To replay: With 10 seconds left, and Maryville winning 46-0, St. Joseph Benton coach Dan McCamy saw an opportunity to get his player, Matt Ziesel, 15, who has Down syndrome, into the game.
McCamy called time out and asked the opposing defensive coach, David McEnaney, if they would let Ziesel score on the next play.
The team agreed, and Zeisel took a handoff and ran 60 yards to score a touchdown to end the game.
If you don’t think that many, many football teams, and freshman ones at that, would be unwilling to make a gesture that would ruin their shutout, think again. Way to go, coaches and players.
n With due respect to the Bellevue High School football team, we are not sorry it lost 35-17 earlier this month in Texas to the Katy Tigers, ranked No. 13 in the nation by USA Today. Katy, a suburb of Houston, is known as a “football power.” In Texas, that’s saying something. Like “semi-pro.”
Katy has won back-to-back 5A Division II state titles, in addition to playing in the title game four of the past six years. Bellevue can boast winning six of the past eight 3A state championships, including four straight between 2001-2004. Even more impressive is the school’s graduation rate, and the number of students who go on to college. We’d like the Wolverines to challenge the Tigers to a good ol’ Quiz Bowl.
n When the University of Washington Huskies shocked USC two weeks ago, quarterback Jake Locker naturally did his share of celebrating, which included shedding tears after sharing a hug with his mom, Anita, and again with his teammate Paul Homer.
Asked afterward about the last time he cried, Locker said: “In joy? I don’t know. Probably the time I won the state championship my senior year (at Ferndale High School in 2005).”
We love that perfect clarification to a rather imperfect question: “In joy?”
Spoken like a man who survived a 15-game losing streak and lived to tell about it.
