All posts tagged Football:
Slobberknocked! – at my first football practice, as a 5th grader at Coopertown Elementary School, I was lined up in “the Pit” drill vs. Lon Claney a 6th grader and he was like Troy Polamalu is for the Steelers - Lon Claney brought the pain!
5th grader/running back vs. 6th grader/defensive back…whistle…KRRAAACK!...he absolutely drilled me…slobberknocked! As I lay on the ground, gasping for any air I could suck into my heaving lungs and still clutching onto the football (at least I didn’t fumble the ball), my coach knelt down and screamed into my helmet’s earhole at me and for all the other players to hear/heed, “here’s a lesson that all football players need to know Carroll… the difference between being “hurt” ( it’s only temporary pain) & injured (no way you can continue) - which one are YOU?! Of course I couldn’t say a word because I was frantically trying to recall how to breath. My coach told me that I was ONLY hurt - lesson learned!
TD #1 - 5th grade game vs Oakmont ES; memorable play: Quick Pitch/Right; Scampered to the end zone untouched and ran “scared” the whole way – with my “slobberknocked” memory fresh in my head!
(note: I had to wear jersey #55 the whole season to honor an injured player on the 6th grade team. I had to give up my coveted #22 jersey that I wore to emulate the Dallas Cowboys Bob Hayes).
Watching football games always conjure up some of my early memories of the game that introduced me to organized sports. I took a lot of lessons from playing on the gridiron that helped shape my understanding of being a part of a team. Lessons like: support each other, you win as a team and/or lose AS a team, it’s not about YOU it’s all about the TEAM. Lessons that I still follow today. Do you have any positive and enduring lessons that you can recall from sport?!
Enjoy Super Bowl Sunday and enjoy your chase…
This is a Rotary Project where we are partnering with other community groups to participate in a highly successful international social change program – By providing most of the volunteers to run this years Homeless World Cup to be held in Federation Square & Birrarung Place – we will be creating a model for Rotary Involvement in future HWC’s. A unique opportunity for Rotarian’s, family & friends to utilise their vocations whilst participating in an exciting project that uses sport for social change.There are one billion homeless people in our world today. In the USA there are 3.5 million homeless people. Here each person costs society around $60,000 a year to be homeless. It costs $40,000 per year for one place in an emergency shelter in New York.
The Homeless World Cup exists to end this so we all have a home, a basic human need. We use football as a trigger to inspire and empower people who are homeless to change their own lives. We do this firstly by creating a world-class, annual, international football tournament; and secondly, by inspiring and supporting grass roots football projects working with homeless and socially excluded people all year round…”
Follow the link to read the entire post.
It is quite apparent that all of Melbourne, Australia is mobilizing for the upcoming Homeless World Cup, December 1-7, 2008 - why even Victoria Premier John Brumby is getting in his kicks!
What’s your Red Rubber Ball?!
From the Sports Academic blog:
Sport as Socializing Agent
I would like to begin a conversation on sports acting as socializing activities. Scott and I have talked around this issue some in other posts and comments. The general theory is that sports serve the interests of society by teaching practitioners and spectators behaviors needed or prized in a given time and place. This means that the same sport may socialize practitioners and spectators differently when the historical and social contexts change.
Speaking generally, Victorian era British sports, for example, emphasize social etiquette and restraint. American sports, on the other hand, tend to blatantly defy British decorum and, in the case of baseball, attempt to erase European genealogy. Instead, craftiness (cheating?) and a dogged determination to win are prized. “Stealing,” is even permissible.
I attended a “Philosophy of Sport” conference in England in 2004. Most of the attendees were European and I surprised some when I mentioned that in America, soccer is largely a sport for the upper middle class, played in wealthy suburbs. In Europe, it is a decidedly working class sport, and the matches often attract many disenfranchised, unemployed young men looking to take their anger out on the opposing team or its fans.
I offer these two general examples merely as primers. Over the next few weeks, I invite you to join me in analyzing the socializing effects of a number of sports and games: golf (yes, there is more to be said), tennis, soccer, baseball, fencing, trictrac, football, basketball, and maybe racquetball, rodeo, hockey, and others you might suggest.
What societal values are transmitted through sport/play? How does that process vary by class, race or gender? How do sport and play impact the maintenance of, or evolution of societal values?
Observed superficially, sport and play seem trivial, but as the “Sports Academic” demonstrates, sport is a mirror of who we are and studying sport and play can offer unusual insights into our culture and ourselves. Those careful observations and insights can help lead - if we are motivated and wise - to change.
What’s your Red Rubber Ball?!
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