Kicking and screaming

This football game included many more graying heads and receding hairlines than they normally do. Players’ birth years ranged from 1966 to 1991. Jeering at the team’s Old Man Winter would turn several heads – if any of them understood you. This game included some slightly unusual cheers, like De-Fense, Go! and Of-Fense, Go! Only one of the teams had a cheerleading squad, whom the announcer thanked after every cheer. Some of these ladies, in their turtlenecks, could have used a couple more rehearsals before the game. With a final score of 47-44, and way way more two-point conversions than normal, it included a lot more points than many games. Conclude what you will about the quality of the defense. This field was shorter than standard, with ten yards between the two forty-yard lines. It included some really low punts and some barely-made extra points. In sum, this was the best football game ever.

On this perfectly sunny day in March – with more flowers and fewer people than football usually sees, too – the Parma Panthers triumphed over neighboring rivals, the Reggio Hogs. The game started with a low wobbly kick and if this seemed to portend the quality of the game to come, the assumption was at once accurate and erroneous. The offense charged forward, converting after almost every play. The Hogs squeezed in a field goal and in no time at all the Panthers responded with seven. Speaking of time and scores, that was up to you to keep track of. When asked where the scoreboard was, I joked that it is in your head. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Well, when each team flies across the field, Parma with its golden-handed receivers and “tiny but swift” running backs, and Reggio with its unstoppable giant of a quarterback, the numbers start to become a blur. At the third quarter, Parma was maintaining a comfortable cushion, closing at 24 to 16.

With the start of the fourth quarter, however, Reggio’s dreaded dreaded quarterback, charged the Hogs forward, dreads flying, to a score of 32-31, moving Panthers fans to start yelling to the hapless defenders, “grab him by the ponytail!” Suddenly, this game that at the start seemed like it would be one of those games where the fans get to calmly love their team was one where you couldn’t look away. If there were an electric current running through the seats, no one would have noticed; they were jumping to their feet with every play. Even worse than the impossibility of remembering the score, whose ambiguous closeness only added to the suspense, was trying to keep track of game time. How are you supposed to avoid delay of game penalties when you don’t have a play clock? How long can fans gnaw their nails when they know the fourth quarter is drawing to a close but have no idea by how much? Maybe Parma could at least invest in a sundial, provided you could convince the sun to stop at the right times. And why wouldn't the sun cooperate? This is football, after all.

A smattering of Hogs fans, seated in the midst of a larger smattering of Parma fans, would not be out-yelled. Mostly, one particular Hogs fan would not be out-yelled. Fortunately, a Panthers-loving young lady brought her drum, with which she rallied her fellow fans – or at least the ones who weren’t busy chain smoking. Other grizzled Panthers fans cheered on their balding buddies, perhaps co-workers, who gave their aged sweat to the team. All kinds of colorful expressions were flying through the air. Spectator mothers gave their benched sons thumbs up. A player ejected from the game earlier on alternated between smoking, pacing, and rattling the fence. Voices were giving out, right and left. Anxious fans were yelling at the announcer’s booth to reveal how much time was left. How much longer did we have to hold our breath? An impossibly long three minutes after five minutes was announced, there were two minutes left on the clock and Parma had the ball. Fans started high-fiving anyone in their vicinity after every successful play. The Panthers locked it down with a touchdown, which put them a point up. The man in front of me did a jig. The Panthers went for the two-point conversion and, after their success, the man in front of us grabbed my dad’s stomach and gave it a celebratory jiggle, before commencing the high-fives all around. It was over! We had won!
Oh wait, it wasn’t. There was still a still unknown but surely small amount of time left on the invisible clock. With a few spiked balls and some solid Hail Marys, the Hogs might still have a chance. The game came down to the wire, and the lackadaisical springtime feelings of the early afternoon were long forgotten. Parma’s defense remembered that they had feet and should run with them and bodies that they should tackle with, and the Hogs were held at bay. Panthers received the ball, spiked, and celebrated. It was a storybook finish, a book come to life. What year is better than one in which I get to have two football seasons?



Infinite thanks to John Grisham's Playing for Pizza for making this possible in my life. For once in my Italian life, I didn't care about being loud and invasively American. This was football!
For more game details visit the Panthers' website
Good luck understanding the botched translation.