Football
The older I get, the more I realize that I’m coming full circle.
I’m becoming a kid again. A very responsible, bald kid with mortgages, credit cards and a three page resume. And one of my joys of childhood was the sport of football.
Yeah, I’m a geek, ex-Goth, ex-expatriate – but before I was a geek I ran in the backyard, in the streets and across the neighbors front lawns playing football. Not tag or flag either: full blown, no-padding tackle football.
And I loved it. We played football in the rain, sleet and snow. We played football on frozen earth and slick concrete. We played football until we were catching passes with our faces in the dark.
It is a passion that has lurked beneath the surface, that only comes out when the days get shorter and Summer fades into Autumn.
Football season.
Now that I’m older, I don’t play it anymore – though I would if I could confidently do so without ending up in the ER. Now I have to enjoy the sport vicariously.
And nowhere was that enjoyment as vicarious as the Steelers-Colts game yesterday. I’ve always respected the Steelers franchise. After all they produced the legends of my childhood Terry Bradshaw and Mean Joe Green. So I’ve cheered for them more than other teams (Eagles excepted – I am and shall remain a die-hard Eagles fan no matter where I live). And yesterday’s game was a throwback to that earlier era. Without a doubt this was the best game I’ve seen since I was a kid.
Evidently I’m not alone in this sentiment: Peter Kingfrom Sports
Illustrated agrees.
The Steelers pile-drive Manning twice, on second and fourth downs, and the Steelers get the ball back … at the Indy 2! Insurance points to come! Here comes Mr. Insurance, Bettis, to score the icing touchdown. He slams into the line, but the ball is knocked loose by linebacker Gary Brackett (go, you mighty Rutgers alum!), and picked up by the knifed one, Nick Harper (whose wife stabbed him 24 hours earlier, causing three stitches to be taken near his knee). From emergency room to all-time hero, in the span of one day! There goes Harper, racing downfield! On the Pittsburgh radio-cast, Steeler color man Tunch Ilkin is shrieking some word that sounds like “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!’’ And here is rumblin’, stumblin’ Ben Roethlisberger, backpedaling and running, trying to get in position to stop Harper, who jukes this way and that. And then, as Big Ben is falling backward at the Indy 42, he gets his right hand on Harper’s kneecap, just enough to make him fall!“The Immaculate Tackle! That’s how it’s going down in Steeler history,’’ my HBO boss, Brian Hyland, screams into the phone a few minutes later.
That game was a rollercoaster for any Colts or Steelers fan, but when it came right down to it, it was one helluvah game!
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