In Michigan today, football is huge. Two seismic events in the same month: Michigan Wolverines playing for the national, and the Detroit Lions competing for the Super Bowl. January 2024 could be the greatest football month in the history of Michigan.
For some of us, football started when we were very young. As we played in our backyards, we all dreamed of one day playing in the Big House or at Briggs Stadium, where the Detroit Lions roared.
At first, football was a boy’s game (now girls are included), and we started out in our backyards, playgrounds, and our streets. It was the game that came after baseball and before hockey and basketball. It was played in the leaves, which cushioned our falls. In the background, there was always the smell of burning leaves on somebody’s driveway. In my neighborhood, we played touch football on our dead-end street. It was Big Mike and Little Mike, the Marrs brothers, the Fishman brothers, and the four or more Kargula brothers. Big Mike, who was four years older than us and already on the high school football team, taught us how to fake a handoff and how to hit hard.
We always had a huddle where we called the plays, which usually consisted of “You go that way and then go that way and then I’ll throw the ball.” Sometimes, if plays got more complicated, we sketched it out on the back of our hands. In the street, it was touch football. Down the block at the playground, it was tackle. Maybe we had cloth helmets, but most often we did not.
On Sunday, we watched the Lions, and on Monday, we imitated them on the playground. We would each pick one of the players. My favorite was a running back named Doak Walker. Don’t hear too many kids named Doak anymore. Rarely we would watch college football on TV except for Michigan vs Ohio State. We picked heroes there too. Mine was a big tight end named Ron Kramer. Imitating him, I’d dive into the leaves, pretending I was making the winning catch against Ohio State. That team down south featured the much more renowned halfback with the wonderful name of Howard Hopalong Cassidy. The nickname came from a famous TV cowboy.
By the time we were 13, we started playing junior high school football. That’s when it started to hurt. The bigger and faster guys were hitting harder and were impossible to tackle. Anyone looking at a photo of me with the sixth-grade team can see that I was undersized. I had the unique status of being small but slow. Sixth grade was as far as I got on the football team. We were proud that our coach, our gym teacher, Paul Berryman, had been Cassidy’s roommate when they were at Ohio State.
Sixth-grade football team, I am on right back
It was in high school that the regalia began. Friday night games under the lights. Cheerleaders leading the pep rallies on Friday afternoon. Add in the band and the guys fighting in the parking lot after the game, and you could see that it was a true community experience.
My friend, Cheryl Eder Chodun, who was a cheerleader and was on the homecoming court, is still my friend, six or seven decades later. Here’s her note about being a cheerleader. Cheryl went on to become a Channel 7 TV, news reporter.
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Cheryl’s observation: |
Thanks so much, Rob. I will say though (and I remember it clearly) that as cheerleaders both during football and then basketball, we became, I think, an important part of the “play” because we led the crowds with our cheers, and I think the cheers let the players know their school was so behind them. So I wanted to win🏆
On special nights, we would be able to travel on buses to far-away towns, such as Royal Oak, Birmingham, and even Mount Clemens and Port Huron, which might as well have been on the other side of the world. Of course, who could forget homecoming, where the homecoming queens and their dates and parents would drive around the track outside the football field in convertibles donated for the occasion by the Chevy, Ford, and Chrysler dealerships. In my integrated high school, a good proportion of the players were black. The homecoming queens were very white, most of them blondes.
Today I remain friends with Nick Luxon and John Mattson, who can be seen in this picture protecting the quarterback, Bob Super, (that’s his real name). The third guy in the photo is our friend Jeff McDonald, who died a few years ago succumbing to the disease of alcohol.
Very few athletes went on to play college football. Out of hundreds of us who started playing on the street, maybe two or three became college football players. I don’t know of any of them that went to the pros.
Today, there’s a big effort to make sure that college football players are paid for their services. When I was teaching a few years ago at Michigan, they received no pay. If they got hurt, they received no services after leaving college. They called the pros the NFL, which stood for Not For Long. Today, things are changing. Over the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of providing some advice to the kids on the team. I’ve got to know the players and appreciate the game even more today.
My grandson, Bodie, who just turned two has become a Michigan fan. When he watches the game, he yells “blue go”.
