2002 Week 3
September 10, 2002
Well, we're finally heading into the meaty part of the college football schedule, with great in-state matchups like Tennessee vs. Lower Middle Tennessee Tech and Ohio State vs. Kent State.
My good friend Herb Street kept on leaning over to me during the latter game and saying "I bet Kent State's fight song is 'four dead in O-hi-o'", then he started giggling. I don't understand Herb at times.
We also got to enjoy some excellent intersectional matchups, like Western Virginia at Wisconsin. The Badgers won the game, but the Mountaineers won a major victory themselves when their mascot was allowed to use his musket after each of his team's scores.
Of course that banjo-playin' Western Virginia mascot had a very unique use for his musket, and, given the way Brutus the Badger was squealing afterward, I don't think anyone in Madison is going to forget what they saw.
Perhaps the best intersectional game was Oregon vs. FSU. Bobby's boys really game Oregon a run for their money, but they couldn't quite pull out the win. That's a long flight back from Cornwallis to Tallahassee.
Oregon has continued its tradition of having "favorite sons" play quarterback. Last year it was Joey Heatherton Junior, the son of the famed actress. This year it's Jason Fife, the son of noted TV actor Barney Fife.
The Beavers do a good job attracting players with well-known names. Their running back, Ontario Smith, is probably the most famous football player to be named by his parents after a state since Joe Montana.
I received several e-mails from some of you fans wanting to correct an error I made last week. Normally I don't even bother reading past the opening line of many of yours letters, as the letters often open with something like "you bloated gasbag".
I admit that when I make a mistake about something it gets people up in arms. For instance, the time I said that my good friend Lee Corso liked to wear leather sundresses. The reality is that Lee doesn't wear leather sundresses; he likes the plaid cloth ones, so I had to apologize to Lee, to ESPN, and to a number of sundress manufacturers.
That being said, I do want to thank those of you who wrote about the Rams.
I'm sorry that I confused the NFL's St. Louis Rams with the Colorado State Rams during Colorado State's game against Colorado last week. The uniforms and nickname are pretty similar, so I just assumed the color was different due to a problem with my tint control and that I was watching the St. Louis Rams playing an exhibition game.
So I am now straightened out--when it's a green and gold team with rams' horns on the helmets then it's Colorado State. I did enjoy watching their late-night slugfest last Saturday night, in a game that went down to the wire.
I just don't know why Colorado State wasn't playing a college team. Instead they played that new NFL expansion team, the Los Angeles Bruins.
The strangest play of the day took place in the Illinois vs. Southern Mississippi game. Illinois sacked the Southern Miss quarterback, causing a fumble. Then one of the Illinois defenders picked up the ball and spiked it in celebration. The ball bounced around before one of the other Illinois players figured out what was happening, picked up the ball, and ran toward the end zone for an Illinois touchdown.
Spiking the ball after a good play has a long history in college football. We've seen it evolve from the early days when Glenn Blanchard and Doc Davis would score for Army then spike the ball, do a boogie-woogie dance, then leap into the arms of the fat cats sitting in the end zone (the famous Green Bay tradition came from the West Pointers--the Limbaugh Leap).
The dances and spikes were made illegal after coaches got tired of the Sanders brothers, Dionne and Barry, and their flashy behavior after scoring. So you don't see dancing and spiking nearly as much anymore, which is why it was such a pleasant surprise to see the Illinois players bring back the tradition.
Spiking the ball wasn't originally an act of celebration. It actually was an unforeseen consequence of World War Two.
Back then many factories were converted to multiple uses. So you'd have an automobile factory that now made both automobiles and tanks. Or you'd see car parts being made at a factory that formerly only made prophylactics (and let me tell you, those tires, even the ribbed ones, don't have a tight fit at all).
The same was true in the field of manufacturing footballs. Before the war they'd just take the pig carcasses, strip the skin, and make the footballs. Once the war started they didn't want to waste the rest of the pig.
One Marine official, Captain Scott P. A. Mathis, came up with a way to use the rest of the pig parts so as to get maximum use out of the factory. So, prior to the 1943 season, the pigskin factory began using the pig innards used to stuff the football.
In the 1943 season opener, Columbia faced off against Fordham. Columbia's top lineman, Fred Gwynn (later famous as the father on "The Addams Family"), was revved up and ready to go. Captain Mathis, proud of his idea of using more of the pig, was in attendance.
Early in the game Gwynn hit a running back, knocking the back to the ground and freeing up the ball. Gwynn swooped in, grabbed the ball, and ran toward the end zone.
As he got closer to the end zone the poorly sewn ball started coming apart at the seams. The interior of the ball, a disgusting mixture of pig gonads and gizzards, started to leak out and his hands began to get full of the entrails.
Gwynn held onto the ball until he crossed the goal line, then as soon as he scored the touchdown he wound up and threw the ball at the ground just to get rid of the grotesque mess.
The crowd, not knowing why Gwynn threw down the ball, went wild at the exciting finish to the play, and the tradition of spiking the ball was born.
Captain Mathis realized his mistake and the factories for building his new product were immediately separated from the factories that built footballs. Captain S P A Mathis' name lives on, however, in the name of his product.
You should know what I'm talking about--the former football stuffing, the mixture of pig organs and gristle, became known to troops all over the world as "Spam".
And now you know the rest of the story.