Mixers! Remember mixers?
R.I.P., Circle House Football!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcook/2013/09/17/why-the-worlds-oldest-tackle-football-league-is-ceasing-to-exist/
Tackle football. Also known as American Gridiron Throwball. A waning way of life in the country that gave it life. Now, as the link in the lede lets us know, the sissie preprogrammed kidsz of the 21st-century are “voting with their feet” at the old bastion of Scot-austere, Presbyterian-inspired residential secondary education. Yup, it’s all about the narrowcasting now. There’s no more shared experience.
Circle House Football. Before there was coeducation, it was Third- and Fourth-Formers occupying Six Circle Houses — Cleve, Woodhull, Griswold, Dickinson, Kennedy, Hamill — all but the last of those evenly spaced around a round area of grass laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted. Ever heard of him? Nope, not the publisher of a bygone racing newsletter, though probably one of his forebears. Look him up.
You ever get thrown into a situation for which you have absolutely no aptitude but you have to do it anyway, a shared experience, something compulsory, where you don’t get to choose? Libertariatsz and preprogrammed kidsz of the 21st-century might not understand the concept, but that’s how we used to have to live in the United States. At the old, austere, severe, Scot-informed, Presbyterian-rooted Lawrenceville, they made you do athletics every day, even if your gross and fine motor skills were virtually nonexistent. The boys with decent coordination played for the school teams, Varsity, JV, Freshman. The spastics like us got shuffled to the intramural teams, including House Football. Boys from Hong Kong, Colombia, South Korea, you name it, were ill-fitted with shoulder pads and hip pads and helmets and cleats and thrown onto the field and forced to fight it out. Football, you bet!
It was good discipline, this House Football, especially the practices. You got to experience some things that would not normally have come into your life. (Surely, nowadays, these kids would not have to set foot on a football field unless they were five-tool prospects.) Yeah, the practices were good for those crazy drills like the three-man tumbling monkey-drill; the spin-around-then-tackle vomit-drill; the open-field tackling drill; the man-to-man, lie-on-your-back ball-carrier-tackler drill; the chop-chop-chop of the linebacker drill. Indeed, the exhortation of “Keep chopping!” from the linebacker drill still comes in handy in the midst of any sort of physical resistance or inertia, like the weekly midlife suburban ritual of rolling wheeled trashbins up a steep driveway: Keep chopping! Who knew!
So, without the shared experience of the House Football, how else would a bespectacled (think 1980s oversized Roger Ebert-style frames, not the sharp hipster frames of the 2010s), undersized-yet-pudgy, lispy geek-nerd have come into contact with the brute force of hat-on-hat (“put a hat on that ball!”), full-contact football? Looking back, in restrospect, we are grateful for that unlikely but memory-filled part of our development.
The games themselves were an ethnic fire-drill. How else was it going to be with 140-lb. eggheads barely 5½-feet high — stuck on the offensive and defensive lines! It was two-way play all the way. You got run over on offense, but on defense you got to do the running-over.
One brilliant Indian Summer Thursday afternoon still stands sharply in the memory. It was Kennedy v. Griswold (House Football, not a legal case) in autumn 1983. Griswold was the Jax Jagwires of Circle House Football in those years. Kennedy was not much better, maybe the Buffalo Bills, but still better than Griswold. Kennedy was ahead late in the game, and Griswold had no option but to pass. Being on the Kennedy defensive line in that game, at that stage of it, was wholly liberating. There was no need to stay at home to defend against the run. It was using both hands to rip past the Griswold offensive line, then, once past, throwing up the arms and screaming “PASS!”, looking to flush their poor scrambling quarterback out of the pocket and down for the sack.
That was Circle House Football back in the day. A bunch of athletic misfits trying to make the best of a shared experience. Thank you for the memories, Circle House Football. Sometimes the roads chosen for you are, in retrospect, not too bad, after all.
P.S. Back in the early-1980s, when The New York Times was regional and not national, and the emphasis was on the Tri-State area, the Circle House Football scores would appear in the Friday editions of the paper.
Free ones: Rundown…
Belmont 4, 7, 8
Pay-side: Today…
Arlington 5, 6, 7
Delpark 4, 6
Louisiana 2, 3, 5, 7
Laurel 4, 8, 9
Remington 1, 5, 9
Today’s Stakes Pageantry: Ah, Bel 5 was a stakes today, before this was posted, and Night Maneuver was a vaunted Triple Threat Horsey, emphasis on the Triple part, owing to a third-place finish. Boo!
Yesterday’s Activity: Dueling Grounds, Kentucky Downs. Racetracks have to change their names, but their essence remains. (Though Parxxx is doing a good job to shed its past image as an antiseptic, 1970s federal/socialist, glass-enclosed, all-purpose mid-lower-tier oval called Keystone.)
So, back to Franklin, Ky., near that state’s border with Tennessee, a state notorious for its lack of any sort of parimutuels. Drive a little bit from Tennessee, and you’re in racing-mad Kennsyltucky. Dueling Grounds, Kentucky Downs. All grass, asymmetrical layout, undulations in the course, real hilly-billy-type racing. Yes! No wonder it was called the Dueling Grounds. This was like Andrew Jackson-style competition! Dueling Grounds!
Full fields and surprise results were a matter of literal course. Even now though it’s called Kentucky Downs, it’s still Andrew Jackson-era Dueling Grounds.
And their wagering schedule has not moved into this millennium, either. You’d think all consecutive two-race sequences would offer daily double wagering, right? Even more so when that two-race sequence is the final two races on the card, yes? Some hipsters call that the Late DDouble. Hipsters! Where are you, Kentucky Downs? Why not a Late DDouble? Hipsters!
Summation: Back-to-back Bonkersmate jacks in the last two at Dueling Downs / Kentucky Grounds, but no LLate DDouble to show for it! Only individuated win mutuels of $15-and-change and $28-and-change available.
Thanks a lot, Dueling Downs! Thanks a lot, Kentucky Groundsz!
WMF Report:
Early
Albuquerque 5f
Fairplex 6f
Louisiana 6f
PennNat 6f
Nocturnal Submission: Please, a moment to pause and remember and mourn and grieve over Circle House Football. Thank you. Perhaps a freestander later, after sifting through the wreckage of the collapse of shared experience and the pre-libertariat common good.
Thank you. Best wishes. “Lower the shoulder and drive with the legs!” Goodbye, Circle House Football.
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First Post: Thursday, September 19, 2013
Mixers! Remember mixers?
R.I.P., Circle House Football!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcook/2013/09/17/why-the-worlds-oldest-tackle-football-league-is-ceasing-to-exist/
Tackle football. Also known as American Gridiron Throwball. A waning way of life in the country that gave it life. Now, as the link in the lede lets us know, the sissie preprogrammed kidsz of the 21st-century are “voting with their feet” at the old bastion of Scot-austere, Presbyterian-inspired residential secondary education. Yup, it’s all about the narrowcasting now. There’s no more shared experience.
Circle House Football. Before there was coeducation, it was Third- and Fourth-Formers occupying Six Circle Houses — Cleve, Woodhull, Griswold, Dickinson, Kennedy, Hamill — all but the last of those evenly spaced around a round area of grass laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted. Ever heard of him? Nope, not the publisher of a bygone racing newsletter, though probably one of his forebears. Look him up.
You ever get thrown into a situation for which you have absolutely no aptitude but you have to do it anyway, a shared experience, something compulsory, where you don’t get to choose? Libertariatsz and preprogrammed kidsz of the 21st-century might not understand the concept, but that’s how we used to have to live in the United States. At the old, austere, severe, Scot-informed, Presbyterian-rooted Lawrenceville, they made you do athletics every day, even if your gross and fine motor skills were virtually nonexistent. The boys with decent coordination played for the school teams, Varsity, JV, Freshman. The spastics like us got shuffled to the intramural teams, including House Football. Boys from Hong Kong, Colombia, South Korea, you name it, were ill-fitted with shoulder pads and hip pads and helmets and cleats and thrown onto the field and forced to fight it out. Football, you bet!
It was good discipline, this House Football, especially the practices. You got to experience some things that would not normally have come into your life. (Surely, nowadays, these kids would not have to set foot on a football field unless they were five-tool prospects.) Yeah, the practices were good for those crazy drills like the three-man tumbling monkey-drill; the spin-around-then-tackle vomit-drill; the open-field tackling drill; the man-to-man, lie-on-your-back ball-carrier-tackler drill; the chop-chop-chop of the linebacker drill. Indeed, the exhortation of “Keep chopping!” from the linebacker drill still comes in handy in the midst of any sort of physical resistance or inertia, like the weekly midlife suburban ritual of rolling wheeled trashbins up a steep driveway: Keep chopping! Who knew!
So, without the shared experience of the House Football, how else would a bespectacled (think 1980s oversized Roger Ebert-style frames, not the sharp hipster frames of the 2010s), undersized-yet-pudgy, lispy geek-nerd have come into contact with the brute force of hat-on-hat (“put a hat on that ball!”), full-contact football? Looking back, in restrospect, we are grateful for that unlikely but memory-filled part of our development.
The games themselves were an ethnic fire-drill. How else was it going to be with 140-lb. eggheads barely 5½-feet high — stuck on the offensive and defensive lines! It was two-way play all the way. You got run over on offense, but on defense you got to do the running-over.
One brilliant Indian Summer Thursday afternoon still stands sharply in the memory. It was Kennedy v. Griswold (House Football, not a legal case) in autumn 1983. Griswold was the Jax Jagwires of Circle House Football in those years. Kennedy was not much better, maybe the Buffalo Bills, but still better than Griswold. Kennedy was ahead late in the game, and Griswold had no option but to pass. Being on the Kennedy defensive line in that game, at that stage of it, was wholly liberating. There was no need to stay at home to defend against the run. It was using both hands to rip past the Griswold offensive line, then, once past, throwing up the arms and screaming “PASS!”, looking to flush their poor scrambling quarterback out of the pocket and down for the sack.
That was Circle House Football back in the day. A bunch of athletic misfits trying to make the best of a shared experience. Thank you for the memories, Circle House Football. Sometimes the roads chosen for you are, in retrospect, not too bad, after all.
P.S. Back in the early-1980s, when The New York Times was regional and not national, and the emphasis was on the Tri-State area, the Circle House Football scores would appear in the Friday editions of the paper.
Free ones: Rundown…
Belmont 4, 7, 8
Pay-side: Today…
Arlington 5, 6, 7
Delpark 4, 6
Louisiana 2, 3, 5, 7
Laurel 4, 8, 9
Remington 1, 5, 9
Today’s Stakes Pageantry: Ah, Bel 5 was a stakes today, before this was posted, and Night Maneuver was a vaunted Triple Threat Horsey, emphasis on the Triple part, owing to a third-place finish. Boo!
Yesterday’s Activity: Dueling Grounds, Kentucky Downs. Racetracks have to change their names, but their essence remains. (Though Parxxx is doing a good job to shed its past image as an antiseptic, 1970s federal/socialist, glass-enclosed, all-purpose mid-lower-tier oval called Keystone.)
So, back to Franklin, Ky., near that state’s border with Tennessee, a state notorious for its lack of any sort of parimutuels. Drive a little bit from Tennessee, and you’re in racing-mad Kennsyltucky. Dueling Grounds, Kentucky Downs. All grass, asymmetrical layout, undulations in the course, real hilly-billy-type racing. Yes! No wonder it was called the Dueling Grounds. This was like Andrew Jackson-style competition! Dueling Grounds!
Full fields and surprise results were a matter of literal course. Even now though it’s called Kentucky Downs, it’s still Andrew Jackson-era Dueling Grounds.
And their wagering schedule has not moved into this millennium, either. You’d think all consecutive two-race sequences would offer daily double wagering, right? Even more so when that two-race sequence is the final two races on the card, yes? Some hipsters call that the Late DDouble. Hipsters! Where are you, Kentucky Downs? Why not a Late DDouble? Hipsters!
Summation: Back-to-back Bonkersmate jacks in the last two at Dueling Downs / Kentucky Grounds, but no LLate DDouble to show for it! Only individuated win mutuels of $15-and-change and $28-and-change available.
Thanks a lot, Dueling Downs! Thanks a lot, Kentucky Groundsz!
WMF Report:
Early
Albuquerque 5f
Fairplex 6f
Louisiana 6f
PennNat 6f
Nocturnal Submission: Please, a moment to pause and remember and mourn and grieve over Circle House Football. Thank you. Perhaps a freestander later, after sifting through the wreckage of the collapse of shared experience and the pre-libertariat common good.
Thank you. Best wishes. “Lower the shoulder and drive with the legs!” Goodbye, Circle House Football.
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About Steven Unite
The unofficial spokesperson for the Boys In The Backroom...