Fantastic Football

For those of you that are following this and care about the football: damn, it was fun. For those of you following this that don't care about the football, you might wanna go elsewhere today.

We've all gotten really out of shape, as evidenced by T.F. walking down to the field with a cigarette in his mouth and a Rockstar energy drink in his hand. Yes, this clearly is the choice of champions.

Thus, it was pretty funny that T.F. served as all-time offense, since we had seven people, and he was getting run all over the field. S.F., B.F. and D.F. comprised one team, whereas T.G., E.B. (yeah, he's still alive) and myself comprised the other.

It wasn't even close. We blew them out six touchdowns to two. We would have made it seven, but T.F. had to go collapse. The basic strategy? Short pass to T.G. and massive yards after carry for a touchdown, short pass to K.T. and massive yards after carry for a touchdown. all around short passes in a no-huddle offense. Contrast this with S.F.'s elaborate schemes which more often than not ended in failure (but when they worked, ooh, baby, were the completions pretty).

My personal bragging moment for this game came when I'd caught a short pass, then proceeded to pinball back and forth across the field three times in succession to get open. The blocks that my teammates laid down were sick. Honestly, I was so freaked out and afraid of getting hurt, it was like everything was standing still, and I was ready to avoid everything. Soon as I broke the third time, I made a beeline for the end zone, having seen sunlight.

The second game shifted me onto all-time offense, and put T.F. in my place on the team. This was actually kind of fun because I could either catch the short passes, or burn the person defending me, but me catching the long bombs was hopeless. Stone hands, fleshy heart. Thankfully, this cost both teams, and this game ended on a sweet S.F. to B.F. pass when the game was tied up. One turnover on each team kept things lively.

My personal "Oh, snap" moment in this game came when I had caught a pass and juked around T.F. I'm barreling towards the left cone, and E.B. is fading in my sights. All of a sudden, T.G. is on a direct intercept course, and I see he's going to catch me. Just before the out of bounds line, I stop, and he slams into me with a forearm shiver against my back. In the span of half a second, I think the following: "Crap, [T.G.] caught me. E.B. is going to kill me. Wait, there's room between them. T.G. didn't close his arms around me." Bam, I pull off a spin move, slip between them, touchdown.

T.F. became so demoralized, later in the game, I caught a short pass, ran towards him, and he just looked at me and said "I'm not going to even try to stop you." This actually threw me off, as I was planning to jump around him when he closed. Thus, I had to rejigger my gait and barely slid in for the tee-dee.

Things got a little awkward when some middle and high schoolers wanted to play. The middle schoolers especially had filthy mouths, and the high schoolers were a lot shorter than I remembered (though they may have been freshmen). We had to shift to two-hand touch, despite their pleas to play tackle (E.B. would have destroyed them). Then, several cars honked, and they all left. Ah, memories.

Final injury count: sore neck, sore right hand, aching left knee, fat lip. Apparently, when my teeth were coated in blood, I looked quite dangerous, as there was also salivary foam around my mouth at the time.