Football for Moms and Dinosaurs: A Handbook for Those Who Need to Know More and Those Coaches Who Have Seen Everything

By Mike Moon

Moms are amazing. They run the household, pay the bills, prepare the meals, chauffeur the kids, monitor grades and cell phone use, and probably hold down a job outside the home. They are capable, wise, and understanding. What they are not, though, is football savvy. How could they be? They have no firsthand knowledge of the game (only a fraction of 1 percent of women have played the game), and they see this male-dominated sport through the eyes of a woman. Expecting a woman to know football is l

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644247051

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A Handbook for Those Who Need to Know More and Those Coaches Who Have Seen Everything

Football for Moms and Dinosaurs

Mike Moon

Copyright © 2018 Mike Moon

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2018

ISBN 978-1-64424-703-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64424-705-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Introduction

I’ve wanted to write a book about football for quite a while now, not just the framework of the game, but everything associated with it. I’ve started this project many times, and my efforts have been dreadful. Believe me, I know dreadful writing. In addition to being a coach, I was a high school English teacher for thirty-two years. (That’s why I can confidently use the past tense, stank, to describe my efforts.)

To this point, the obstacles standing in my way have always seemed insurmountable. First, the experts on how to write a book websites all pretty much say the same thing, People aren’t interested in reading about your life. This is a problem. The game of football has been the backdrop for my life, and anything that I offer about the game will be shaded by my perceptions. Second, Edgar Allan Poe said that when you write, establish one mood or tone and stick with it. This is another problem. Football is tragic and uplifting, hilarious and serious, patterned and random, predictable and surprising, and fair and profoundly unjust. It’s a game full of heroes, scapegoats, and scoundrels. Attempting to establish one mood or tone in describing this game would have caused Poe to drink himself to death (wait, you don’t suppose . . . ?). A third obstacle for me is that there is a lot to say on the subject. How can I distill the subject down to a manageable size and still do it justice? Huge problem. Perhaps the biggest concern and question that I have always had is this: How can I possess the audacity to think that I know enough about this great game to write a book about it? These are the compelling reasons for my lack of progress in writing about football, and why my previous efforts have stunk (past participle).

A few things have happened that have compelled me to give it one more shot. Recently, while attending my fiftieth high school reunion, I ducked in to the restroom. I found myself at a urinal next to a school acquaintance whom I hadn’t seen since graduation, and although restroom etiquette prevented us from shaking hands, we had a good visit. He told me that he had never been gainfully employed, but he had written a book. When I asked him the subject (we were still at the urinals, both of us having had quite a bit to drink), he told me that his book was about the history of the trombone. I left the restroom with two thoughts. As I recall, this classmate wasn’t a very good writer. And second, really? The frickin’ history of the trombone? Football is a lot more interesting than that! Later that evening, the same classmate told me that he was working on a second book, and when I asked the subject, he looked at me as though I had taken leave of my senses and told me it was The History of the Trombone, Volume II. I left the reunion thinking that maybe I could write a football book.

A second thing that happened, which caused me to revisit this writing project, was that I was approached by a group of football moms who asked if, since I was retired and had free time, I would present a few short clinics on football so that they might better understand the game. That request got me thinking that, even in this age of gender equity, very few women have firsthand knowledge of the game, and that a football book with women as the target audience could be entertaining and useful for them, and fun for me. I also started believing that my writing about football wasn’t such a crazy notion. After all, if my classmate could come up with two volumes on the history of the trombone and Obama could become president, never having held down a real job, maybe I was more than qualified. Maybe I was an expert.

I’m no Nick Saban (Alabama’s highly successful head coach). I’ve won neither a national championship nor a Super Bowl. I spent my entire coaching career in a small high school in Wyoming. But I have been around the game of football my entire life. As a youngster, I lived for our neighborhood and playground games, and I worshiped the high school and college heroes in the Midwestern university town where I grew up. On Saturday afternoons, before the college kickoff and again at halftime, I would position myself beside the gate that led from the locker room to the playing field and stand there in awe as the grim-faced, determined combatants moved toward the battlefield. They were huge and godlike in their armor, and I wondered if there would ever come a time when I would be fortunate enough to count myself among their number.

In my first organized football game, I scored four touchdowns and got my name in the paper, and in junior high, I was a touchdown scoring machine. In high school, my heroics took on epic proportions. I was named MVP my senior year, and I developed a swagger. In college, my swagger (along with everything else) was knocked out of me, and I found myself a less-than-mediocre third stringer who learned what life was like on the scout team (insiders call it the meat squad). I also learned that the game of football has a much different look to it from a perch on the end of the bench.

As a coach, I have experienced the exhilaration of winning state championships and the despair and frustration of losing almost every Friday night. I have coached extremely gifted athletes who went on to college success, and I’ve worked with kids who had absolutely no athletic ability. I have experienced the challenges and gratification of coaching my own son (a situation filled with just a few land mines) to success in a championship season and have felt the roller coaster of emotions as I turned my son over to his college coach, reducing my role to one of spectating impotence in the stands on Saturday afternoons. Now I’m an old man, still in love with the game, running pass patterns (albeit very slowly) with my grandsons.

In sixty-plus years, I have experienced the game of football from just about every conceivable vantage point. And I’ll tell you honestly, the toughest identity I assumed with regard to football wasn’t young dreamer, or high school star, or college benchwarmer, or struggling coach, or champion. By far, the toughest role for me was that of a parent. That’s where the idea for this book really originated.

When my son was in grade school, I remember looking forward to his getting into organized football when he entered junior high. I was driving by the grade school one afternoon and noticed some of my son’s buddies playing football on the playground. As I drove past, however, I didn’t see Trevor among the players. At supper that evening, I mentioned to Trev that I had seen his friends playing football but didn’t see him. He said matter-of-factly, Oh, I’m not good enough to play with them. I play on the other playground with the cruds and the girls. Not exactly the kind of news a football coach or any red-blooded parent enjoys with his evening meal. I also remember vividly the concern I felt prior to his first game as a high school freshman. His team was playing an away game that I couldn’t attend because of varsity practice. After conditioning the older kids and sending them to the locker room, I recall standing alone in the middle of the football field, praying to God to look after my boy and keep him safe.

If being the parent of a football player was difficult for me as an insider, it was many more times more challenging for my wife, whose interest in and tolerance for football was based solely on her husband’s and son’s involvement in the game, and not based on any inherent love she felt for what I’m sure she saw as a dangerous and barbaric pastime, devoid of any social benefit.

Although I write this hoping that all parents and possibly some old coaching dinosaurs will enjoy my observations and remembrances, I’m targeting women in general and mothers in particular. Here is the situation as I see it. Even in this age of Title IX and gender equity, there are still very few women who have played organized football or have firsthand knowledge of the game. Certainly, there are the rare young women in the United States who bravely jump into the football arena, but they are routinely driven from the game by society, or worse yet, encouraged to become placekickers, a position that will most certainly keep them on the periphery of the game. A second truth I see is that men and women really do perceive things differently (you know, the clichéd Mars and Venus thing), and so much of football is tied to being male that a little insight might be helpful. The whole thing must seem pretty mysterious from the other side of the gender aisle.

Combine football inexperience and a woman’s perspective with a fierce maternal instinct to keep her offspring safe from harm, and you are painting a portrait of someone who might be able to use a little guidance in understanding her son’s participation in the game of football.

I know that I run the risk of offending the very audience I’m trying to reach. I’m not a misogynist. I