The
blog has been quiet for a while but that doesn't mean we haven't been
thinking football. In the below piece, Jim waxes poetic about his
involvement in the game and some of the formations he played in and the
people he met.
When I first started playing this odd game called football, it was, to
me, chaotic, what with people flying around hitting each other. I was
definitely a lost boy in a lost land. I understood the pain part of the
game all right. Maybe that was the only thing I did understand. The
pain from Old Lady Holt in The Foster Home from Hell was powerful
compared to the beating my older brother (by five years) would give me.
When she beat me, she also beat him for allowing me to do whatever it
was that made her angrier than she usually might be. Gary's beatings
were usually ineffectual because he smoked and ran our of breath pretty
quickly, but Old Lady Holt could bring the wood with the best of them,
better than most men.
As I said, the game was, in that beginning 8th grade
year, mostly confusing. The fact that I never really was given a
position to play may have added to the confusion. It took me a few
tries to get my shoulder pads on straight, and the thigh pads were a
mystery that threatened my ability to father children in the future.
They were, it seemed diabolical devices of torture, devices made of
thick cardboard covered with heavy leather. When these pads were
placed in the correct pockets in the football pants they fit glove-like
the outside of the thigh, protecting from a possible thigh bruise,
which I found in ensuing years could be more than a little painful. Woe
to the neophyte who got those pads backward, placing the outside of the
pad on the inside of the pocket. As I did the required wind sprints I
swear that I could hear a number of fourteen year-old voices joining me
in chanting, "Ow! Ow! Ow!" as we traversed the forty-yard course,
giving testimony that I was not the only guy on the team with thigh pad
problems. I was so bad that Bob Johnson ran over me once in practice.
Jughead Johnson, who had allowed a small group of small kids to stick
his head between two narrow pipes that ran from the boiler to the
radiators so they could sandpaper his nose. Why? I dunno. I do know
that he never played football again.
That year we were coached by a short, roly-poly man
named Homer Morris who launched my budding football career by placing me
firmly on the bench and refusing to let me play...at all...not one
play...the entire season. My seventh-grade teacher Mr. Jerry Halpin was
the freshman football coach, and he had seen me run during track
season. I was one of those perpetual third-place finishers; never
first, never last, seldom second, but I was 5'10" and weighed about 155
pounds, good size back then for a freshman. On the first day of school,
Halpin approached me and said, "You're turning out for football". It
was not a question, just a statement of fact. He ran the varsity's
T-formation offense. I have no idea what Coach Morris ran. As I said. I
was never given a position. Halpin asked what position I played and
the only position I could remember was "tackle," and that was the
position I mumbled. He said, "I'm going to make you into a fullback."
In my first game as a T-formation fullback, I ran seventy-two yards for
a touchdown,
As I said, In my sophomore year, I was on the varsity,
one of five sophomores to earn starting nods. I was the backup fullback
and starting right halfback. It didn't mean much, because we never won
anything until the final game of the year against South Bend on
Veteran's Day. Our T-formation did not lend itself to trickery. In
that final game, I scored on a three-yard plunge over right tackle Tom
Smarciarz (pronounced Smodges) who was an All-State performer, but not
because of any offense we might have generated. He was, however, a
defensive terror who later played for Idaho State. And then, there was a
new sheriff in town and everything changed. Coach Bob Harp, a guard on
the University of Wyoming football team that played the University of
Florida, that featured the future Chicago Beats great fullback Rick
Casares, in the Orange Bowl. Harp was tough (his job in the army was a
prison guard and that is what the army suggested he was best suited for
in civilian life). Rather than prison he came to Raymond to teach
History and Coach football. My initial thought when I first met him was
"Bulldog", a 6'0", 240 pound human bulldog without an ounce of fat. He
was not an offensive genius. If the Single-Wing was good enough for
Tommy Prothro first at UCLA, then to Oregon State, it would, by God, be
good enough for a bunch of waterlogged Seagulls from Raymond High
School. Harp was a defensive guy, and our defensive efforts that junior
year gave us the belief that our senior year would be dynamic. He
bought new black home uniforms and introduced us to the world as the
Black Bandits, a name he borrowed from Paul Dietzel of LSU and his famed
Chinese Bandit defensive group. It gave us an identity, and we bought
into it. Our tackles were Allyn (Turk) Clevenger (one of the two or
three toughest hombres I have ever seen on a football field.) and my
writing associate Dick Kalla. At 196 pounds they were a formidable
pair. Unfortunately, we didn't have much of an offensive
identity, except maybe "three yards and a cloud of mud." I never
realized just how outdated and antiquated the old Single-Wing really was
until I went into the Air Force after high school. Our coach, Captain
Poole, who had played at Georgia Tech was an offensive-minded guy, but
using a full-house T-formation backfield our offensive options were,
again, severely limited. Since I was the right halfback, I either drove
straight over tackle, took a quick pitch around the right end, released
into the right flat for one of the infrequent pass plays, ran a sweep
to the left behind the blocking of the left halfback (Jim Price was a
first-team All-Military performer, so his blocking for me was like using
a race horse to pull a plow) and the fullback; or ran a counter (which
in those days pretty much defined imaginative offense strategy).
After the military stretch, I went back home to
Raymond. Feeling claustrophobic and the need to get out and do
something else, I packed up my meager, post-military belongings and
headed to the Seattle area. It was there that I met an insurance
salesman, who came to the house where I was lifting weights in the back
yard, and who started talking about football. It seemed that he had
played at Penn in the Ivy League and was currently playing for a team
called the Seattle Cavaliers. It was, he said, a lot of fun. We play,
he advised me, small four-year schools, junior colleges (before they
were called community colleges), and other semi-pro teams. He invited
me to stop by practice on a playing field at Garfield High School to
meet the team's owner/coach Elmo Hudgens. When I walked up to this
giant (6'6", 285 pound behemoth, I saw him presiding over an incredibly
familiar offense. They were running the single-wing!
I became the primary single-wing fullback after Elmo
found out that I had played it in high school. I knew the plays and I
could bang into the line, two things a single-wing fullback had to do.
That lasted for a few short years, until a new player showed up. His
name was Bob Cason: quick, ultra-athletic, with a cannon for an arm.
He played at the University of Puget Sound where he showed a penchant
for scrambling...a lot...getting himself out of trouble and
occasionally, deeper into it. He was possibly the best athlete I had
ever seen. But, he hated the single-wing, Elmo's pride and joy. Bob
wanted to revise the offense and move into the second half of the 20th
Century. We alternated between the I-formation and split-backs, a pro
set. Shortly thereafter, we played a game at Grays Harbor Junior
College in Aberdeen. GHC was the home of the Chokers or choker setters,
a logging term. The Chokers were young and quick; many of them had
already been recruited by big schools like the U of W, and Oregon State
among others.
The Chokers broke out to a three TD lead in the
first half. The collegians played with eight in the box the entire
half. The Cavalier offense was limited to 1st and 10, 2nd and 15, 3rd
and 18, and punt. In the second half, however, Bobby Cason put on a
Show! He threw for approximately 350 yards enabling us to escape with a
win. Elmo lost his beloved single-wing for good that night. And, I
lost a starting fullback spot. Cason needed his fullback to be a
receiver. and since one of our DB's said that it looked like my hands
were allergic to leather, it was an easy call. When we ran an
I-formation, I usually played FB, because I dearly loved hitting people.
Let's face it, In an "I", the FB is simply a guard in the backfield.
Larry Thatcher from WSU made an excellent fullback in Cason's offense.
After that, I stopped masquerading as a running back and moved into the
line where I belonged. Jim Olsen
