YOU’VE GOT TO BE A FOOTBALL HERO

YOU’VE GOT TO BE A FOOTBALL HERO

This is my Pop

I recently uncovered some old 8mm films my pop took when I was a mere teen.  I found someone to convert these films to DVD (Thanks Jim at "TheVideostunad *Atomic Video").  The films are mostly of my high school football days.  My dad would park himself at the top of the stands and he used two cameras so he would not miss a play while reloading film.  He did not worry about a battery running down, the cameras worked by winding a spring.

Mrs. Cranky was somewhat surprised that I even played football in high school.   Then I informed her that not only did I play, I was co-captain.

A young Cranky 

“Oh…Captain…you must have had a lot of luck with the ladies.” 

You might think that, check out the PIC, even with a mild case of acne, I was a handsome lad.  Alas, it was not the case.  I played football from 1960 thru 1963.  In those days the heroes were astronauts, JFK, and “The Beatles.”  In the fifties, football players were much sought out by the ladies.  In the seventies, Joe Namath caused a resurgence in the sexy “football hero” image.  In the mid-sixties, at least at my high school, football players were “dumb jocks” barely a step above Neanderthal Man.

Some of the guys had luck with the girls, but they were the backs, the glamour positions.  I played on the line.  If football players were a step above Neanderthal Man,  lineman lowered the curve.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons I am a cranky old man.  I fell into that small window where the football hero was the football dope.  The girls preferred intellectuals, swimmers, and anyone that could play three cords on a guitar.  Frog (see fishing with Frog) was the equipment manager on the football team and HE got laid for crispy sake!