Playing for Fun: Nerf Football in the 1970s

A little more than a decade ago, the NCHS Athletic Director Vin Iovino and I talked about a project designed to remind sports parents about why their kids were playing sports in the first place. We talked about a book of personal essays built around the theme of “Playing for Fun,” with the intent of collecting pieces from teachers, parents and coaches.

Well, it wasn’t the highest priority in the athletic department at the time, and it sort of fell by the wayside, but not before I wrote a piece titled “Nerf Football.” In this post and the next, I will present the essay in two parts:

Part I: The Games Kids Play
Part II: Frank Longo’s Excellent Birthday Party

Before I proceed, one little clarification: it may seem like I’m bashing the Poux brothers for their lack of American football skill, but the reality is that the years they spent living in France had given them European football skills that none of us could match.

The Games Kids Play

I got a football helmet once for Christmas, Jets or Giants I can’t remember, but it was more the decorative kind unsuited for preventing any serious cranial damage in the event of collision. I might have gotten shoulder pads to put under my number 38 Bob Tucker jersey too, but that was more for cute childhood photographs than for protection on the frozen tundra of sundry White Plains football fields. The truth is, I was prohibited from playing organized football, from banging pads with the other boys, drinking water through a facemask, standing on the sidelines praying that the coach wouldn’t put my scrawny self in against those big kids on the other team.

“They’ll knock your teeth out,” my mother said.

It’s a good thing she kept my brother and me from playing a sport that involved protective equipment and adult supervision. That way, we were free to beat the heck out of each other on makeshift fields dotted with extra defenders masquerading as trees. We could play kill the carrier, two-hand touch, first and ten or just plain ol’ fashioned rock-‘em, sock-‘em tackle football without anyone around to make sure we did no injury to each other.

Good thinking, mom.

The problem with organized sports is that you need an even number of people to play a game. Not so any game left to the whims of children. If Frankie has to do his homework and you’ve only got five people until 4:00, you play two-on-two with an official quarterback. If you’ve got a good three-on-three and then John and Steve Poux come, you start a game of kill the carrier, because neither John nor Steve can throw nor catch (soccer guys, ya know?), so nobody wants them on their team.

Our football field was the side yard of the Church in the Highlands. A huge oak tree in the middle of the north end of the field marked one end zone, and a beech at the south end marked both out of bounds and the opposite end zone. The other oak was stationed perfectly at midfield on the same side as the beech, and the hedges along the sidewalk marked the only consistent boundary on the field; in wintertime, you’d get about two more inches of running room along the hedges. Our little stadium looked just like a home plate cut in half, with the midfield oak sitting right on the angle. At the narrow end of the stadium, Francesco, the caretaker who seemed to spend half his life chasing us from the field, planted another beech tree that loomed like the old goalposts did before they were moved to the back of the end zone.

Jack Delee was Pete Banaszak or Dave Casper, depending on how many guys we had and if we could play with running backs or not.  Frank Longo was Frank Longo; he had a pretty healthy ego.  Jeremy Garment; Cliff Branch or Fred Biletnikoff, depending on the route he was running. The Poux brothers didn’t know enough about football to pick a role in our afternoon dramas. Bit players with short-term contracts came and went, leaving little in terms of a legacy on The Churchyard. For my life, I can’t remember who my brother or I were supposed to be, since we’d been taught to cheer only for our hometown teams and the Jets and Giants were mired in the Seventies. If I were official quarterback, though, I was always Darryl Lamonica, because the Raiders were good and I liked the name Monica.

We’d play, we’d get mad, we’d yell at each other, but we never fought. If tempers raged out of control, we’d take out our frustrations on one another in a game of kill the carrier. The objective in kill the carrier is, well, there is no objective. Maybe it’s to show how tough you are. Maybe it’s to act on the childish impulse to hit and hit and hit. Basically, the rule is that everyone tackles the guy who has the ball. There is no scoring, no “base” to provide safety from the snarling, rabid eight year-olds chasing you around aimlessly. There’s just tackling. If we only had four or five kids, we played on the front yard of the church, a much smaller field bordered on three sides by sidewalk and featured evergreen bushes in front with tiny branches strong enough to poke your eye out if you were unfortunate enough or stupid enough to get tackled near them.

Next Week: Frank Longo’s Excellent Birthday Party