Football Memories

by Jay Kerner

I fell in love with football in the late 60s when the Kansas City Chiefs were playing for championships. I was barely into two digits and scrawny, but I started hanging around the older kids’ pick-up games in the neighborhood, hoping to retrieve errant throws and kicks. I’d lean back, give it all I had, and watch my wobbly spiral go maybe 10 yards toward Steve Smith, the local phenom. He was always nice to the younger kids.

After my first season as a baseball benchwarmer, I watched my teammates rotate to football. I wanted to sit on that bench, too. I spent some paperboy money and bought a used set of equipment from an older kid, and signed up for Bantam League. They were taking anybody with a helmet at that point and barely had enough kids to play. So, I got to!

The only thing I had to offer was speed. I wasn’t the fastest, but faster than most, so they made me a wide receiver. Back then, almost everybody went both ways (Stop it! We’re still talking football!). So, my position on offense switches to defensive end on D. Somehow, this strategy had our smallest player (me) constantly going against the other team’s biggest. You can imagine how this worked out.

In practice, I had to go against Mark Sears. He was probably 6 inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than me. He was actually a pretty sweet guy, but I hated his guts for two hours every Monday – Friday. I liked him a lot better on game days, when he was pounding somebody else!

After a while, in an effort to avoid the worst of the hits, I had to get shifty. I worked on my moves. Fake left and go right. Like that. I remember the first time it worked. All of a sudden, I WAS OPEN! First time ever!
QB didn’t even look my way. Why would he? He’d never seen it either. Next play, I did it again, but in reverse. And I’m open again! And he sees me. And I make the catch. I’d like to tell you that I turned and raced to the end zone, but the truth is I caught the ball and collapsed to the ground before anyone could take it away from me.

That 5-yard gain in a practice was the highlight of my time with the team. But looking back, I was smashed by some really great athletes. One memorable example: Pat Casey, a fine player on some great LeBlond teams, was just as dominant at earlier levels. In fairness, he could have hurt me and didn’t. He mostly just stiff-armed me and tossed me aside. It was demoralizing.

But not nearly as much as my tryout for Freshman Football. I remember the physical in my tighty-whities. The turning and coughing. I didn’t know why a guy groping around in my “swimsuit area” meant I could play football, but he said I was ok, and I didn’t question it. From there, they stood us all up in the gym and walked around us like they were judging meat. Which was essentially what they were doing. They lined us all up, biggest to smallest, to pass out equipment. Dead last again.

I watched as the linemen got theirs. Then the “skill players.” Finally, only a few were in front of me. Then me. The coach actually laughed as I got on the scale. In High School, the varsity’s old jerseys and equipment become the JV’s while theirs drop down to the Freshmen. It’s trickle-down gear.

That’s why all they had to offer me was a jersey with no number, pants so big I had to wrap the belt around me twice, and a gigantic square helmet from a couple decades past, that was so oversized I had to stuff it with a bath-towel and hold it up with one hand as I ran to keep it from falling down over my face.

I tried, but it wasn’t happening. I played intermural football in High School and college. Played tackle football without pads with my brothers from TKE in Inter-Greek competition. Kicked a short field goal in overtime to beat our rivals. Sorry, Lamb Chops, not sorry! And then done.

The NFL never came calling. Nor the CFL, the WFL, or any of the other FLs. There wasn’t a place in football for the small, fast guy back then. Eventually, the game figured it out, and several dudes like that have won rings in the last couple of decades. I tell myself I was just before my time.