Let's Go Cowboys!

The game is fixin' to start!



...although that turkey looks more like a Redskin than a Cowboy.

That's all right; I sure hope Dallas isn't a turkey today.

Special Teams Pigeon

From weekend (before last)NFL game

Muleshoe 21, Crane 7

I thought this football game was really interesting. No, I didn't go to it, but while reading the H.S. scores Sat. morning this one caught my eye.

Nothing unusual about the score, but it is the novelty of the town names and the school mascots:

Muleshoe Mules 21
Crane Cranes 7

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My favorite, by far:


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Maybe a Drop Kick

You Are a Two Point Conversion

You are an adept risk taker. You love to go for the glory. You do what others are scared to do, and it pays off! You have no fear, and because of this, you're able to look at the odds rationally. You've taken enough small risks to get ahead in life, even if every risk hasn't panned out.

What Football Scoring Method Are You?

The Fog Bowl

December 31, 1989 game between the Eagles and Bears.

Fog Bowl
by bsap11

Preacher Smith

The Rev. M.B. Smith

PAMPA - The Rev. M.B. Smith, 88, died Saturday, June 14, 2003.

The Rev. Smith was born to Nelson and Ora Sivells Smith on Dec. 28, 1914, in Richland Springs. He attended Richland Springs Schools and graduated from Howard Payne College in 1936. Bro. Smith taught school and coached in several central Texas schools before entering the gospel ministry in 1942.

Following pastorates in Agua Dulce, Calallen and Marble Falls. He married Laura Bentley on Nov. 27, 1936, in Richland Springs. Bro. Smith moved his family to the Texas Panhandle, where he pastored First Baptist Church of Wheeler, Highland Baptist Church of Pampa, Alanreed Baptist Church and College Baptist Church of Big Spring.

For many years, Bro. Smith was interim pastor for many Baptist churches and supplied in Baptist churches in the Pampa area, as well as teaching science at Pampa High School and Clarendon College Pampa Center. According to Bro. Smith's records, he performed 1,191 funerals, 858 weddings and 421 baptisms, most of them during his years in Pampa.

---

I stumbled across this obituary while looking for another. I knew the man had passed away but decided I'd like to do a post about him.

Bro. Smith was a football official back when I played the sport in junior high. Over a two year period, we had only a dozen games, but I bet he officiated more than half of them.

"Preacher Smith" was what we called him ... behind his back/in the huddle/after the game. What I remember most about him was his booming voice, it having the aural texture of gravel on a bumpy, hot tarred road. That, and with his worn, craggy face and commanding personality, he looked what I thought God probably looked like. He was a good official, always fair in his calls.

Being a minister, I suppose he couldn't help but preach to us. "Help him up." he'd tell a boy after a tackle. "Here now!" he'd growl and grab your jersey, pull you close to him. "Don't be hittin' late." You didn't, not again. One warning was enough.

He was always impatient for the ball so he could spot it for the next play and would efficiently pry the players off of a pile-up in search of the pigskin. (the referees were paid by the game, not by the hour) He was a big man, tall, and had no trouble untangling the sweaty, fleshy knot of budding testosterone.

At the time, with my juvenile wit, he seemed to me to be a mixture of the stature of Herman Munster and the kind-hearted wit of Andy Devine (no insult intended), good-natured while we boys were playing a clean game, but a towering stern God with glasses when we'd make him angry.

During one of those pile-ups, I had wrested the ball away from the kid who had it, yelling "Ball, Ball!" as though I had recovered a fumble. I don't think Preacher Smith had seen me steal the ball in the tangle of arms, legs and torsos, but a stare at me and seeing - I guess - the guilty look on my face, he silently took the ball from me, ignoring any change of possession, sadly shaking his head at me in rebuke for my attempt to cheat.

Verily, I say, it is written, woe unto the poor boy who was heard blurt out a cuss word. The dreaded "F-word" slipped out from someone after a hard tackle and he stopped the game and threatened to end the contest if he heard more swearing. He preached to us for a good five minutes, complained to both coaches and kept up his criticism of we foul-mouthed heathens throughout the rest of the game.

I ran into his son shortly after the funeral and I told him my memories of his father, the son laughing when I told the part about cursing and getting an official time-out sermon. "Yep, that was dad!"

Ol' Preacher Smith. RIP

6-Man Football on the Map

View the public schools in Texas playing six-man football thanks to this post at the Google Earth Community.

To view in Google Earth, you will need the software, but it's also available in Google Maps.

Emmy Awards Poll

The most recent poll from StartSampling.

The results don't surprise me and are encouraging. Really, who would want to watch a bunch of Hollywood ultra-liberal elitists honor and congratulate each other?

Especially when the Dallas/Green Bay game was on another channel!

The Night of a Hundred Points

Yesterday was "Chicken Fry" day at the United deli, so off I went to get my fix of the Texas National Dish. I bought the Pampa Sunday paper, already out, plus the Saturday edition of the Amarillo newspaper.

I was halfway through my meal when I flipped open the sports pages, looking for the h.s. football scores. I saw where Pampa had lost, Canadian had won and my alma mater had been involved in a barn-burner, on the short end of a 106 - 82 shootout with the Fort Elliot Cougars.

Rats, I had thought I might go catch that game! Shoulda, woulda, coulda, that's always been my after-the-fact motto. *sigh*

It made me recall a game we played against Turpin; they were the Oklahoma 8-Man champs the year before, but we had them down 28-0 at halftime. I never will forget the screams from their bus during the intermission. (there was no field house at the football field, so both teams generally retired to the busses that had brought them out there from the school)

"You're letting those pipsqueaks beat you!" Stuff like that. It was true, Turpin had always beaten us in the past, but that night we made them pay for their overconfidence.

At least until halftime was over.

We scored a few more times but they scored more, and at the end of the game the score was tied 40-40. I believe, at that time, that was the second highest tie game in football history, some college teams knotting it up at 42-all. As I said, that's what we thought at the time, and a cursory Google search doesn't make me disbelieve it.

We were usually not that good. I remember bein' on the wrong end of some 70-something point ass kickin's in football. We had a few of the other type lopsides, but I don't remember them nearly as well as I do the others.

(I also remember starting to stall just after halftime in a basketball game with Allison; we had to slow the game down, keep them from reaching 100 points...and beating us by 60)

Miami, with their high but lower score, would've had third place in the standings for the state six-man highest score games, but on the same night, Throckmorton squeaked by May by two points and managed to become the number one highest scoring Texas six-man football game of all-time.

From sixmanfootball.com:

(202) Throckmorton 102 May 100 (2008)
(195) Temple Holy Trinity 112 SA Winston 83 (2004)
(189) Amarillo Bible Heritage 102 Northside 87 (2006)
(188) Fort Elliott 106 Miami 82 (2008)(187) Houston Sharpstown 148 Houston Lee 39 (1995)

The Miami Warriors will have to settle for fourth.

Sure wish I had gone to the game.

Vince, The Pack & Mrs. Olsen

I'm sure looking forward to the Packers/Cowboys game tonight. I hope the Pokes can beat 'em, and I think they will. (probably jinxed 'em, right there)

I thought it another one of those insignificant - but cool - coincidences that a day or so ago there was a Vince Lombardi quote on the Quote of the Day feed in the right-hand column. Lombardi was the coach of the Green Bay Packers and is considered to be one of the best football coaches of all time.

I had a coach for the first couple of years in h.s.; he hadn't been out of the Army for very long, had a wife and a young girl. He was fresh off his first coaching job, having some success, so his gung-ho atttitude was still fierce...but I think my home town drained him of a lot of it in the short time he was there.

Anyway...he was fond of Lombardi quotes and had them plastered all over the locker room, a few nicely printed out and framed in his office. There were a few I thought silly, such as

"A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall."

What a crock. So self-serving...of course if your life is football, you'll defend it even with nonsensical "facts".

There were, however, a few that I've remembered all my life and thought them profound then and still do:

"Fatigue makes cowards of us all."

And "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity."

During my sophomore year I injured my knee and was out of practice for a game and a week's practice. My mom bought me Jerry Kramer's book, Instant Replay to read while I was recuperating. I admired Kramer; we played the same position, both of us were pulling guards, but I'll go to my death thinking he beat the snap on the winning touchdown in The Ice Bowl.

(4:27 on the video, it's certainly debatable, I'll admit)



My pop and this coach became good buddies, but that sure didn't curry me any favor with the coach. If anything, he seemed to go harder on me, almost more than I could bear. One time when I was at my breaking point, ready to quit the team crying, he told me "Mike, I wouldn't be so hard on you if I didn't think you had good potential." Looking at it from that perspective, I could see that he didn't spend nearly as much time (especially yelling time) with most of the other boys as he did with me. I think he realized that I was one of those guys who needed to be pushed, but also appreciated. I think most people are like that, actually.

I remember a time when we were playing basketball in Booker; I rode with my folks and we were early by quite a bit, even for my sister's game which came before mine. We rode around the tiny town for a while, then Dad saw the coach and got him to get in the car with us; we drove a couple of blocks away from the school to a burned-out house. Dad pointed at it and with a snicker told him:

"That's where last year's coach lived."

And now for my Green Bay Packers joke:

Mrs. Ollie Olsen, a Scandinavian immigrant to the U.S. was drawing attention because of her size, 6'8", 345 lbs. Reporters were interviewing her, asking her questions such as "Gee, Mrs. Olsen, how'd you get so big?"

"Ah, from eating dot gud Svedish cheese." she replied with a good-natured smile.

Another reporter yelled out: "You're big enough to play for the Green Bay Packers, Mrs. Olsen!"

Turning serious, she grimly replied:

"Nein, I play wid nobody's packer but Ollie's."

Coaching Tirades

A funny look at some of the "best" tirades by NFL coaches.

"Funny", I suppose, unless you were the brunt of the attacks.

Hot practices, Bucks and fawns

Great article on h.s. football on Amarillo.com today.

It mentions my alma mater and speaks highly of the football field. I tried to leave a comment, but it's either been rejected (the story of my online life) or hasn't been approved yet.

I believe I've mentioned it before (and I did in my comment at the website), but the field wasn't nearly as nice when I was playing as it is today. There were so many sticker patches, we named it "Goathead Bowl". Back then, coaches thought going without water would make us stronger (duh, we weren't camels, fer cryin' out loud) and would give us only one water break for a three/four hour practice.

"Drink water, you'll just have to stop and pee it out!" they'd bellow at us.

So many times, when a water break was called, we would all rush over to the irrigation pipe, turn it on and start gulping down water only to have a salamander (or two or three) crawl out (of the hose, not our mouths) after slaking our thirst.

We finally learned to let it run for a while and shake the hose to rid it of any amphibians. I don't remember any "Ewwww"s being said, as most of us boys had quenched our thirst several times in horse troughs/cattle tanks...just pushed away the scum on top and drank our fill.

1970 Miami Warriors

(click for larger view)



Coach would always tell us: "Practice like you play, men."

We did. We photographed the same way, too.

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Welcome to all visiting who have found this post via AOL or Google search.

You *may* be interested in video of the '71 Regional Championship game.

'71 8-Man Regional Championship

There has been such a demand for me to post the video of the game, I decided I'd cut the excess out, divide the file in half (ten minute limit on uploaded vids) and let the entire world see how good we were.

Well, there's been ONE person wanting it, anyway.

"Good" is subjective, I suppose. It's like that old hound dog my pop used to own; the more years since it died, the better the dog got.

Zach Is Back

The Dallas Cowboys have announced the signing of Zach Thomas to a one year contract: 1 million in base salary, a million in the form of a signing bonus and a million in incentives. (not announced, but generally geared to the percentage of plays during the season and/or if he makes the Pro Bowl)

Personally, I was against the signing. Dallas has quite a few pressing needs such as shoring up the defensive secondary and finding a receiver who can stretch the field. (IOW, has "speed") The linebacker spot is one that Dallas is deep in personnel and at first glance, it seems as though Thomas is a "biscuit shy" of being large enough to play an interior LB spot in the 3-4 which Dallas employs.

Still, Miami used the 3-4 over the last few years and Thomas excelled in that alignment, making the Pro Bowl each year except for this last one. Something that has been thrown out in the hundreds of forums discussing this signing is the fact that Thomas has more tackles in his career than does any other defensive player now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Very Impressive.

Another concern of mine is Thomas' age (he's 34, think he will turn 35 before or during next season) He's getting on up there in age where the end of his career is definitely in sight, so I was glad to see Dallas not break the bank or mortgage the future to sign him.

Also worrying many is the fact that Thomas missed most of last season with a concussion (given to him in the Dallas game) and then was in a car wreck with his new bride and suffered from a concussion and subsequent migraines.

Since this was a "bargain basement" type signing, getting Thomas for not much more than the NFL minimum for a veteran, then I will have to give my reluctant approval to the transaction. (not that MY opinion counts for a damn thing)

The funny thing to me is that Thomas' public statements said he was proud to be a Cowboy, but in my conversations with his own grandmother (I sort of know the family, his uncle lives only a few blocks away, but have met Zach only once. More on that later) when Zach entered the NFL draft, I found out that Thomas didn't like the Cowboys and was glad he wasn't drafted by them.

Of course, people can change their minds, but I believe money talks louder than anything else!

His grandmother said the rest of the family would've been happy to have seen Zach with a star on his helmet, esp. since half of his games would've been played in Dallas, fairly easy for his family to attend.

As I've mentioned in here before, Zach's father is responsible for building the Groom Cross, and that's one of the reasons I bring up a football related topic. The main reason I posted this is because Zach is from this area and played his last year of h.s. football here in Pampa.

This article isn't about Thomas' signing so much, but to mention the back-and-forth going on about it all in the football forums. Some are more than pleased with the transaction, while others bemoan that it is the beginning of the end of hope for this current crop of players and that Jerry Jones (DC owner) is once again meddling with the team, forcing it into mediocrity--once again.

I thought of making the following the theme of this post, but decided against it. "Zak is Bak!" was more in line with what I was thinking, esp after this post. (a fair example of the level of posting in football forums...heck, ANY forum)



I'm curious as to just how much money a chicken costs?

I dunno, guess it's just me, but if I don't know the meaning of a word, I don't use it. Also, if I don't know how to spell something, I will go look it up. I'm sure many of us do the same thing - we're all guilty of the occasional typo now 'n then - but I'm anal to the point of being mortified if I let something like "poultry" escape my keyboard into the Internet Ozone, especially if I meant "paltry".

John Lennon, when once asked if McCartney had written the lion's share of their collaborative efforts, replied "That's such a paultry question; I refuse to answer it. "

Where do you hang crooked politicians? Why, from the pol-tree, of course!

I could go on, but won't. Aren't you glad?

Breaking the Tie

From a poll at the Dallas Cowboys website

I cast the tiebreaker vote.

Which means I have doomed the Pats to a loss.

I'm horrible at handicapping ball games. I learned my lesson after losing an entire paycheck on the '78 Super Bowl.

UPDATE: Went back to the website (I visit it nearly every day) and voted again in the poll. (a proud Texas tradition, going all the way back to LBJ; "vote early, vote often")

I don't know why the site allows more than one vote, but it does, or seems to allow it. Be that as it may, it was really strange to see the updated results (regardless if my vote counted or not)

I'm wondering if the bookies are spamming the polls?

I'm not very good at these things (lost the paycheck, remember?) but I will predict a Pats win, 34-14.

You Gotta Be a Football Hero

To get along with the beautiful girls. Needless to say, I didn't get the beautiful girls, but I had my moments. This is a two play in a row snippet of the 1971 8-Man Regional Championship. I'm the middle linebacker.






I'll have more when I get this program sussed out a bit better.

Close the Polls!

This is today's poll on my Dallas Cowboys website; I had read an article, then tried to return to the home page, but the page wouldn't come up. A refresh showed me that the page was being updated and this brand new poll was now on the page and I was the first one to cast a ballot!

Sometimes the poll results are ludicrous, especially as one would think that people who frequent a pro football fansite would probably know more than the average fan.

Anyone who knows anything about football knows that the success of a football team, esp. their success offensively, is directly due to having a dominant O-Line.

So, close the polls. I've supplied the answer.

Composed Cowboys Credit Coach

I couldn't let this article's headline go unmentioned.

Wonder if I could get a job there?

I can see the announcement now:

Dallas Dreads Doofus Debut