We’re taking a timeout from hurricane coverage to talk about something that is really important — high school football. Yes, it’s that time of year already. Jock straps are off the locker room shelves and nary a cliché is safe from overuse.
Now I happen to like high school football. It sure beats the hell out of watching tennis. And I like to follow the fortune of my hometown Eagles who are the top-ranked Class 2A team in Texas and they’ve yet to play. Why high school football is a religion in Texas. So much is it a religion, that it is about the only entity that the Holy Rollers don’t get worked up over because you call it a religion. Can I hear an Amen? That is because the Holy Rollers are down with the rest of us heathens watching the game from the stands. You also don’t hear them use a lot of words like “smite” when they are watching the glorious battle on field. More commonly you hear them screaming the same four-letter words used by the rest of us sinners.
What I like almost as much as watching high school football is hearing the after-game interviews with the coaches on the local TV stations. Many of these coaches are grand wizards — oops I don’t guess I should call them that around these parts where a few Kluxers remain — at the mastery of the cliché . Here is my all-time favorite:
“They beat us like a rented mule.”
I don’t know if a practice existed at one time where people beat rented mules. For that matter, I don’t even know for sure if mules were routinely rented. I would think the only thing worse than renting a mule was renting a pimped-out ’76 Ford Pinto. Believe me on that one. Why if mules were rented and beaten nowadays, I’m sure you would soon have a nekkid girl from PETA show up outside your business. And rightfully so.
Then there is always is this jewel:
“We gave it 110 percent.”
Why just 110? Why not 2.2 million percent? Were the team to give it 111 percent, would the coach get kicked out of his state coaching association?
And this tried but true chestnut:
“We are going to take the season one game at a time.”
So that means you have no clue whatsoever as to what you will do if the team appears it might lose all of its games? You’re not even going to send out resumes to other schools in the very possible event that you may be without a job at the end of the season? No, no, no. One game at a time. Boys you don’t need to practice! We’re taking it one game at a time.
I don’t mean to insult football or other coaches. They do have a tough job. And they are a great source of entertainment on the late Friday night sports shows. Especially if your side lost because some jackass coach decided his team wouldn’t have any master plan to win and instead decided to take it one game at a time.