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 Richard Frisbie Author, advertising and publishing consultant, former editor of Chicago and other magazines, former creative director of Campbell-Ewald and other advertising agencies. For more information, click here. Or see Who's Who in America or www.midlandauthors.com, Margery Frisbie Consulting editor, historian, poet and author of several books. For more information, click here or see www.midlandauthors.com. The Uncommentator BLOGS and GLOBS: I have been writing a blog since 1966, only I didn't know it. In those days, it came out in the form of a newsletter on paper. Remember paper? It never got lost in cyberspace, although if it got wet enough blog turned into glob. I called it The Uncommentator, and tried to make it amusing. To read some of my favorites, see contents. Recent Books by the Frisbies. NEW: Life Together: Poems by Margery Frisbie © 2012 by Richard Frisbie |
(THIS SITE IS BEING TWEAKED) The Uncommentator Story of the Day: Points Before Touchdowns February, 2012--With Super Bowl month wrapping up the season, critics are expressing concern about the future of football. Professional players are suffering multiple concussions and consequent brain damage. High school and college players have to contend on their own with the aftermath of any serious injuries. Football in general has a corrupting influence on university administrations. Some kind of reform is overdue. I remember a player who suffered a concussion in a game on the day of his 16th birthday. At his birthday party that night, he didn’t feel well enough to celebrate and went to bed while the rest of us partied. Later, I had a friend who hurt his knee at practice in the beginning of the season and had to walk with a pronounced limp the rest of his life. And yet, in this age of overly protective parents, I look back with gratitude on my own high school football career. I was a kid who would rather pick up a book than lift weights. I didn’t mind that the position I played was "scrub." I got onto the field for games only a couple of times when our coach didn’t want to embarrass the other side with a lopsided score. That was unusual because our team often was lucky not to be losing. St. Ignatius was a small school that didn't aspire to be a football power. Our coach, who once played tackle for the Chicago Bears, was a Ph. D. who also taught me geometry. Although he really liked to win. he had patience for players like me. At another school, I would have been cut from the team at the outset. I liked blocking and tackling (if ineptly). Once, during summer practice we scrimmaged with the team from another school. All the players rotated. Playing defensive end, I found myself trying to evade a block from a fullback who later became an All-American at Notre Dame. Splat. I was like a bug on a windshield. That was a level of play I wasn’t used to. I confess that towards the end I was partly motivated by wanting to earn a football letter. Wearing a sweater with a football letter sewed on was thought to impress girls. The irony was that, with World War II still on, all the seniors went to summer school so we could be sure of graduating before we were drafted. I did get my letter, for perseverance rather than achievement, at the end of my fourth season. But, not yet having been called up, I immediately started college, where wearing a high school football letter sweater would have branded me as clueless–especially at the University of Chicago, which had dropped football years earlier as unworthy of a center of learning. I couldn’t disagree. Even so, while football seldom got me off the bench, it did get me off the couch and physically active for a lifetime. Richard Frisbie To read back issues, click here
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