My Sunday column

The earliest memories I have about attending high school football games involve rolling down a hill.
As a young kid I went to games at Chattooga High. To the right of the home side stands, next to where the band sat, was a steep hill. My friends and I spent most of the game there, rolling down the hill, wrestling and occasionally playing tackle football with a battered milk jug, a wadded-up shirt or someone’s old shoe. No kidding, once when we couldn’t scrounge up a ball, some kid volunteered one of his shoes. (At halftime the cheerleaders threw some of those little plastic footballs into the crowd. We scrambled after one, nabbed it and the generous kid got his shoe back.)
Ever so often, we might actually watch some of the game.
Chattooga had some very good football teams in those days and the better players often took on a mythic stature. Every one of us totin’ that old shoe wanted to be the next James Burse or Jimmy Lenderman. We all wanted to be as big and strong as Glenn White or Billy Martin.
Almost 40 years later, I still love a Friday night at the football field — any football field.
And I have seen a few.
Working as a sports writer here in the 1980s, followed by newspaper stints in Georgia (at football strongholds like Valdosta, Griffin and Warner Robins), Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, I have seen some truly great players: Cartersville’s Keith Henderson, Phillip Buchanan, who now plays for the Tampa Bay Bucs and Ronald McKinnon of Elba, Ala, who played more than a decade in the NFL. Best of all was a running back from Mariner High in Cape Coral, Fla., Earnest Graham. You want to see Earnest in action, watch him today against the Falcons.
Ironically, as much fun as seeing a player like that in action is, they seldom make the best stories. I’ve always gravitated toward the linemen. Maybe it’s because in my own limited playing experience, I was usually an offensive and defensive tackle. (My one short stay at tight end ended ignominiously when a should-have-been scoring pass hit me in the chest and bounced to the ground.)
I sympathize with every linemen who has ever suited up who had to bite his lip when hearing a football fan or announcer refer to “skilled players.” Because when they mention “skilled players,” they are separating out those of us who lined up six inches away from a snortin’, stinkin’, teed off 235-pounder who wanted to jam our heads back down our spinal column.
God bless you linemen. If it wasn’t for you the game would be ballet with jock straps.
I am incited to this righteous rage for a couple of reasons. First, it’s football season and I tend to get a little goofy this time of year. Second, during the Northwest game on Friday I saw a scene on the sidelines which summed up a lineman’s existence.
A Bruin tackle, looking like he’d just crawled out of the trenches at the siege of Verdun, was sitting on the bench adjusting a pad or brace. A nearby “skilled player” — no doubt frustrated by his team’s second half offensive struggles — slammed some piece equipment to the ground. It bounced up and hit the lineman in the leg.
For a second I thought I was about to see the death of a “skilled player,” but the lineman held back. He looked at me and we both smiled the smile of the knowing.
Then the lineman got back up, shambled onto the field and few plays later helped bust open a hole for a “skilled player” to run through and win the game.
Little things like that I eat up like watermelon on a hot day.
As I was leaving the game, I tossed possible leads around in my head as traffic inched up the hill to Reed Road.
Off to the side, near the top of the hill, I notice a huge mound of dirt. On top two young boys were laughing riotously. They were sliding down the hill, rolling and tumbling and probably ruining their clothes.
For a second the urge to pull over, park the Explorer, and join them was tantalizing.
But I couldn’t. Deadline was screaming at me.
I had to get back to my game and open a few holes.

Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. He dedicates this column to linemen everywhere and to the hump-busting sportswriters who get it right (mostly) every Friday night.