Football Week - Glory Days 2 "Interior Line"

In my never-ending uncool series about my high school glory days, I would be remiss if I did not mention my compadres on the Calvert Hall offensive line. We went by many names: "Homecoming Wrecking Crew", "Interior Line", "Argh", and a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

In a bid to build a little unity for what we felt was an unappreciated unit, we came up with the idea of the interior line symbol (from trigonometry class). We started off by taping the symbol to the front of our helmets right on the front above the face mask. I was sure that coach Miceli would make us take 'em off as soon as he saw them, but he seemed to get a kick out of it so we kept them on there. Eventually, Coach Konka bought us some hats and Coach Lamb bought us some shirts and the whole thing kind of took on a life of its own.

We all pitched in and bought an ad in the Calvert Hall/Loyola game program, talked our interior line trash, and had a fun senior year.

Football Week - Glory Days 1 "Football Letters"

I've been trying not to go the 'old high school football' glory days route, but I can't seem to contain myself this week. I think we have the rest of the clan talked into flag football so that will mean 5 Rhodes boys playing some form of football this fall. So in the uncool spirit of Al Bundy (does anybody remember him?) I will recount some of that old glory...

If one is lucky enough in high school, one gets on the recruitment mailing list. Once gotten on, a young high school senior is in his glory. Letters from all over the nation from people I've never met saying that they want ME to help them win the national championship. Now even then, I had no illusions that I was the missing piece in any national championship run. I always had a sinking feeling that if they ever really met me, then I was a dead duck. So for the most part, I filed the letters in a three ring binder, bragged to my friends, and waited for the inevitable let-down.

I got the most letters from the biggest schools. Again, not because of my abilities, but I suppose because their mailing budget was bigger.

I finally got a few visits, started to get a good feel for where my abilities could take me, and went from there. All leading up to the terror that would be my short stay at the United States Military Academy. That of course, is another uncool post altogether...