I was never into sports as a young person. I wasn't good at anything physical except exercising my fingers on a typewriter. (But that's another story.) I do remember, though, the one and only Delano High School football game I attended. I don't remember why I went there; it was entirely outside of my "rat-trails." None of my family were sports fans. It must have been that my friends were excited about it and talked me into coming, too.
Up in the stands where I sat, it was cold and dark. I had no idea what was going on down on the field. I could barely see the players down there running around. I didn't know who was on "our" team and since I was surrounded by screaming fans, I couldn't ask questions. No one wants to explain the complicated game of football to a high school freshman girl, who 1) can't hear over the noise, and 2) really isn't all that interested anyway. I don't even remember if we won or lost. I have to admit, though, that it was "fun" to just be in the excited crowd and yell when those beside me were yelling, and feel like a part of the fun and excitement.
Walking home to our house on Cecil Avenue, about four blocks from the high school, in the dark with my brother Jim and his friends, I who have always been a talker, couldn't talk.That night my throat was so sore, I couldn't speak above a whisper for a day or two. And I never attended another football game since then.
That was my only experience with football back then. I didn't know any of the boys on the team, nor their girlfriends. I didn't have a desire to learn the rules of the game. It seemed a bit silly to me. It looked like they lined up facing each other, squatted down nose to nose, paused, and then, for no reason I could see, they all fell in a heap, or scattered and ran all over the field while the crowd was yelling furiously. It just didn't make sense in the winter of 1959-1960.
Fast forward to the winter of 1994-1995. My first husband, Dave Goins, had died two years before, and I had brought our twelve-year-old daughter Beth to San Diego to experience her dad's large extended family. She had been born and raised in Alaska, where football is pretty much only a television experience. Up there, people who like football watch it on TV and root for their favorite team. Most do not mind if their friends have different favorite teams and the rooting is light hearted. There is no National Football League or home team anywhere in Alaska.
Before we moved to San Diego, Beth had decided the Miami Dolphins was her team. Therefore, she rooted loudly for them when watching games on TV. Big surprise, she found that her new friends in the condo complex in Lakeside were life-long Charger fans and did not take it lightly when she boo'd the Chargers. They had all been watching a TV out in the common area one Sunday afternoon. Beth came inside to watch the game after awhile. I could see she was upset. She felt she had been banned from her circle of friends because of disagreeing with them over whom to cheer.
I should thank them. Today I enjoy watching football because to comfort Beth I watched football games with her, asking a lot of dumb questions. Beth explained to me the rules of the game and what was going on when they "fell in a heap" or ran wild all over the field. Of course it helped to have a home team for which to root. Note 1995 was the year the San Diego Chargers went to the Super Bowl. Winning over the Miami Dolphins (Beth's team) was a key in sending the Chargers to the Super Bowl that year. Even though the Chargers lost that Super Bowl game, I became a football fan, thanks to Beth and many other patient people who explained to me what was going on in games from time to time. (I'm smiling...)
The difference between football in Delano High School in the late fifties and high school, college, or national football of today is technology, especially television in high definition. I am not sure when they began to broadcast sports on television. It could have been in the fifties or sixties. In those times, though, TV was mostly black and white, and there were not a host of channels to watch. Most families had TV's with rabbit ears that picked up three fuzzy channels in black and white. If in color, it was still quite fuzzy. There was no cable. There was no satellite.
Baseball was the American sport. It was broadcast on the radio. Or, people would sit in the sunny ball field and watch the games. It was the kind of game where everyone could see what was going on, with hardly any possibility of a dozen guys falling in a heap. It was much simpler. If you missed the game, the results were recounted in the local newspapers sports sections.
Today, widescreens and high definition lends itself to images of the coaches pacing up and down and cursing, and the helpers squirting Gatorade or something in sweating football players' mouths. Cameras focus on the action, and usually if you miss something, it will be something that happened in the part of the field where the ball wasn't, or it will be immediately replayed several times from different camera angles.
Which is the best? Definitely, watching football on television today is better than shivering in the stands surrounding the Delano High School football field. On the other hand, what goes on in the lives of those who are watched today, the players, coaches, even cheerleaders, is probably a lot more pressured and complicated than in the olden days.
What do you think?
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