Ron Martriano - Book of Football Stuff

A Charlesbridge Imprint

Text 2010 by Ron Martirano
Illustrations 2010 by Mick McCoy
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Charlesbridge and colophon are registered trademarks of Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

An Imagine Book
Published by Charlesbridge
85 Main Street
Watertown, MA 02472
(617) 926-0329
www.charlesbridge.com

ISBN 978-1-60734-366-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009922032

Designed by Marc Cheshire

To my stepfather Ron, my uncle Frank,
and every Sunday dinner cooked by my grandmother
that was interrupted by the Giants game

Like the moment after a running back commits himself to a potential hole in the defensive line, football brings together opposing forces to create unforeseeable results. It is a strategic game orchestrated with tough guys in helmets by tougher guys holding clipboards, and it is as cerebral as it is physical. Week after week, tactics and violence come together to produce the incredible, and every now and then, they hit hard enough to force out a laugh as well. There should be nothing funny about a quarterback whose leg is broken on an endless slow-motion loop replayed for the country to squirm through over and overuntil years later when the linebacker who broke it suggests that he should be thanked by the QB for all the mileage he got out of the story.

Like all sports, it is the stories left behind that give context to the stats in the record books. So many of the games stories exist only as punch lines (the quarterback who gave himself a concussion celebrating a touchdown, the wide receiver who shot himself in the leg), that part of the fun in writing this book was connecting those one-liners back to the games. Yes, Eagles fans once booed Santa Claus, and yes, a defensive end once recovered a fumble and ran the wrong way. Sadly, not all game-time interactions and off-the-field hijinks are verifiable. Somewhere out there are stories I couldnt nail down, like the pass off the fingertips of its intended receiver or a Green Bay kicker who dared defy Vince Lombardi by faking a field goal to set up a touchdown and was then afraid to come off the field and face the iconic coach. Fortunately, so much of the games history has been detailed and catalogued that many of the myths, legends, and tall tales I grew up with (as well as those I saw unfold as a fan) could be matched to the plays that made them possible. Hopefully, the result returns a small, fun history of the game back to the Sunday afternoons (or Monday nights) when they were first experienced.

Get over here. Ill show you how to kick!!!

While the truth behind my mystery kicker unfortunately remained out of reach (if the story actually happened, it was most likely Don Chandler), the stories in the pages that follow not only capture the elements of the game but also lift those elements beyond the Xs, Os, and yellow Telestrator lines on your television set. Youll find no discourse of strategy or postgame analysis: Only moments that have lived on, including some of those whose principles would just assume they were forgotten. Victory and defeat are a given, but politics, history, business, oddballs, thugs, and stupidity all find their way inside the huddlenot to mention an endless supply of football puns. So, in the tradition of fall and winter Sunday family gatherings in which mealtime conversations were punctuated (and occasionally hijacked) by the play-by-play calls of a nearby television set accidentally left on, I invite you to take a seat and thumb through an album of seasons past.

Eat the turkey or watch the turkeys.

Its the sport of kings, better than
diamond rings football. LL Cool J

L ADIES may love Cool James, and while he might just have easily rapped about football as the sport of presidents, the unfortunate follow-up rhyme would have been much less flashy (played by each states residents?).

That said, many of those who have taken Americas highest office have embraced the sport and its place in our culture above and beyond the nuclear football carried by their nearest military aide. Commissioner Pete Rozelles decision to resume the football schedule within a week of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (whose games of touch football on the White House lawn were a regular feature in Camelot) is for some, the gridiron equivalent of FDRs letter requesting that baseball be played during World War IIelevating the sport to a form of national escape and signifier of normalcy during difficult times.

While no one expects the President to throw out the first pass of the season, as football has taken its place atop the American sports culture, it comes as no surprise that many of the men of the people are fans of the game.

Sure there are international crises and domestic dilemmas facing the president every day, but sometimes its not enough for a him to play tag football on the lawn or watch the game from the stands. There are times when presidential leadership is required to keep players, coaches, and fans from really hurting themselves or institutions from really hurting the game we all love.

The 1893 Army-Navy game was an all-out war in the stands. Navy won by a final score of 6-4, but the contest (which was also the first time a helmet, then made of leather, was worn on the field) incited numerous fights and an alleged incident that saw a rear admiral nearly duel a brigadier general. In attendance was President Grover Cleveland, who was so disturbed by the breakdown in behavior among military personnel that he called a cabinet meeting the following February. The results of which saw the Secretaries of the Navy and of War return to their respective institutions and inform the student body that there would be no more games between the two military academies.

The cease-fire lasted five years, until Teddy Roosevelt, then the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, got involved.

Well Bob, I think Army has a distinct advantageit can attack from the ground and the air.

Roosevelt wrote a letter to the Secretary of War seeking to reinstitute the game (foreshadowing the WWII correspondence written over forty years later by his cousin FDR to the commissioner of baseball). In the letter, Roosevelt suggested academic standards for both teams be created to ensure that the contest be played for the further enrichment of the cadets on the field. It took another two years, but in 1899 the game resumed, and it has been played annually (and without interruption) for more than 100 years.