Sports

Y'know, as much as I think the USA is the coolest country of all (attempts by a certain Kenyan muslim to destroy it notwithstanding) there's one place where I firmly agree with the rest of the world about how screwed up we are: the topic of "football."

The rest of the world plays "football" with their FEET and a BALL.  Americans play "football" with their HANDS and an EGG.  We really should call it HANDEGG.

(There's a demotivational poster embedded in this message -- if you're on the text client you can go to http://pix.motivatedphotos.com/2009/2/2/633692057194761860-handegg.jpg to see it.)

Handegg, is a game not dis-similar to our Rugby, although, we play without all the girly safty gear your boys wear. We even have cheer leaders, and mascots these days, a far cry from when I played. We call it Rugby Football, because there is some kicking of the ball, but it's mostly about carrying it across the oposition "Touch-Line." It's a game drevied from Association Football, but is tougher.

I do wonder how long before you see our guys in helmets, and pads tho' it can only be a matter of time. The last game I was at (England -v- France, which we won 60 points to 6) one of our guys was knocked out cold, in a tackle, when he got up, he carried on playing as if nothing had happened.

We have a saying "Football, is a game for gentlemen, played by morons. Rugby is a game for morons, played by gentlemen"

These days, the songs are cleaner, and there's less beer drunk, but it's still played by real, honest -to-goodness men, as opposed to the prima donns, playing football.

One of my good friends played on our university girls rugby team.  She was small but vicious.  It looked like fun.  After the football program complained about how our marching band wasn't as excited and motivated as a visiting team's marching band (which may have been motivated as hell, but sounded terrible), we were invited to play at the rugby games instead.  I wish we had done it.

We only had a marching band at Central WA University because the alumni really wanted one for the football program.  The music program was much better known (at least regionally), but the football program brought money.  So we did a marching band.  Not a lot of really fancy maneuvers; as I recall, we did a lot of formations for the first and last songs, and mostly "park and bark" for the middle.   Sometime during third quarter, we would sing "White Christmas."  Warmups on Saturday morning consisted of playing outside the dorm of whatever girl the drum major was trying to woo that particular week.  We played four home games, packed up the stuff, and got on with the real music program.  But we always sounded very good.

[I was anomalous.  Not really part of the music program, I only showed up for marching season.  By the time we started actually taking attendance and realized I wasn't even signed up for band, I was gone.  Repeat the following year.]

The visiting band (a phenomenon I'd never witnessed before) did all sorts of high stepping, intricate field maneuvers while playing a horrid rendition of Dream Theater.  They high-stepped all the way into the stands, did lots of chants and seemed very tight with their team.  But they sounded terrible.

Our philosophy was more like, "We choose to have a mobile concert that happens to be co-located with a football game."  Probably just as silly.  But we had fun.

The band at my school was good. They were in step, something our JROTC unit could never do.

3500+ people at the last bout of the season last night. Incredibly loud - loudest it's ever been since I started watching at working at The Roy Wilkins, plus a very very close game. I was shouting and could not hear myself. Wild stuff. Final was 111-95.

That's why we normally use whistles; although the period I was referring to was during a time-out. The whistle I normally use (Fox 40 Classic) tops out at 114 db; I have one that's supposed to go over 120 db, but I'm not normally allowed to use it.