What is was was football. Huge stands of lights flickering with insects. The smell of hot dogs, popcorn, and mown hay like a taste on the tongue. Wide shoulder pads emphasizing narrow bottoms. Torsos stuffed into cheerleader outfit sausage casings. Dipilatoried legs. The smell of sweat and testosterone. Fans milling around more than sitting, tractor-supply-hatted men leaning on chain link fence. Percussion starting distant and growing louder and louder. Loudening. Oh yes! What it was was football.The feeling was that NOW had arrived. And NOW was the classic American high school football game.
I got the call on Wednesday--the newspaper needed someone to cover the local high school football game. Would I do it? Fear filled me but I said yes anyway. "We just need column inches--it doesn't have to be good." Why shouldn't it be good? At the very least, it would be grammatical. That would be an improvement on much local sports reporting. In my brief (two-week) career as a stringer for the Vinton County Courier, I had covered a local author, the opening of a tanning salon, and a young woman returned from a mission trip. I was thirsting for something with a bit more wild in it.
I'm still thrilling with adrenalin two days later. I declared myself to be a member of the press and waded right into that football game, camera and notepad in hand. I visited the ticket taking women and the concession stand crew and sniffed out the popcorn popping Mr. Ziegler. I was delaying the moment when I would cross that barrier between regular football game goers and the specially privileged--the chainlink fence dividing the fans from The Game. My heart was racing. I had been invited down to the surface of this alien planet called Sideline. I saw the familiar face of Commoner Journal reporter Paul McManis, and his smile and wave got me through the gate.Still early, sun broiling, grass glittering green, sky shimmering blue. I was early and the preliminaries took forever. I trolled up and down the sideline getting the feel of it. I found out where not to stand (coach's box). I took pictures. I hoped pictures would fill up column inches if I had nothing to write. I took random shots of light poles, goalposts, cheerleaders--then the team came boiling out onto the field like soda out of a shook bottle. A roar went up. Healthy, helmeted, maroon-clad players crowded into a fist-raised huddle and then migrated to the sidelines in the natural choreography of a hundred wild mustangs on an American prairie.
A revelation to me was referees in shorts. Women, you should all try sports reporting. I was submerged in a tsunami of male energy that exuded even from the well-toned calves of the officials. The refs functioned like cowpokes in this arena, managing the flow, yellow-flagging the over-exuberant and the tardy alike. But it was the coaches who were the alpha males of the herd, the big stallions. (They were also in shorts.) The coaches on my side of the field were directive without being mean and free with praise. Their coaching had been done in the weeks leading up to the game; now it was time to let the players do the work.As the sky darkened and the lights came up I felt like I was in Oz. How could this stereotype of Americana be real and me in it? I moved with the team as it ebbed and flowed up and down the field, again in natural choreography dictated by the movement of that little oblong pigskin ball. I was inside the energy sphere and submerged in the action. I yelled. Fist-pumped. Woo-hooed. "Go, go, go, go--YES!"
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I had the time of my life.
I kept thinking of Andy Griffith all evening long, and the comedy routine that made him famous, called "What it was was football." You can find this on YouTube and I recommend it. His description of the game from a novice point of view is priceless. Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I42JIgfnMYE
This inspiring victory may be the only football game I ever cover. I give thanks for it. And I wonder what it's like to report on a losing effort. What's the energy like for losers? I don't know if I want to know. But, until then, this is sports reporter Joy Dickerson putting this article to bed. Good night.
