Call Tails

It being an 8 PM game, this post will be more foresight than hineysight. Most of us will not be returning to Jay and Anne’s house after the game. We are doing our tailgate party at the house rather than at the parking site due to the heavy rain predicted. As we sat in the TV room at 5 PM waiting for the food to be served, we were trying to watch 4 football games at once. Jaybird is the only one who knows how to work the remote, so he had the job of clicking back and forth between the games. We were trying to catch the Penn State vs Ohio State, NC State vs Notre Dame, South Carolina vs Vanderbilt, and Florida vs Georgia.

It seems that all these games schedule their timeouts at the same time, because whenever a commercial came on, Jay would switch to another channel and we’d be just watching another commercial. We didn’t really see much football. Jay could never remember the channels of the other games we were watching. At one point, he somehow managed to click to the U-verse logo. We sat looking at that on the screen for 10 minutes before he could figure how to get us back to a game. Frustrated, Jay then left to go to the kitchen, and Gos picked up the remote. He was immediately in over his head, though. He was obviously stressing out. He tossed the remote back on the Ottoman where it sat until Jay announced that the food was ready.

We did discuss our upcoming game with Ga Tech. The big question in the room concerned the physical status of Kelly Bryant. Dabo had been saying all week that he looked ready and that he would start. We felt though that at the first sign of gimpiness, he should be pulled from the game. Our defense should keep us in the game no matter who we had at quarterback. I was confident, and I think there was general agreement in the room, that with the strength of our front four on defense, and the speed of our linebackers, Ga Tech would be unable to run against us. And they pass less than 10 times per game, and then only send two receivers out, so we should have no trouble covering that option.

As we got up to go to the kitchen to get our food, out of the blue, Jay asked, “Claude, what’s that song about Jesus on the dashboard of the car?” I have no idea where that thought came from but I began singing it.

“I don’t care if it rains or freezes, ‘long as I got my plastic Jesus,
sittin on the dashboard of my car.
Goin ninety I ain’t scary, ’cause I got the Virgin Mary
protectin me so I won’t go to Hell.”

“Too bad Zeke’s not here so he could join you like old times,” said Gos.

I was concerned about Needle. When he came in he sat quietly, obviously deep in thought. Every now and then I would glance over at him and he was mumbling to himself. It seemed that he was saying,
“Heads, no, no, tails; okay then heads; hell I don’t know.” It was later revealed that he was to be an honorary captain for this game and would go out on the field for the coin toss. He was very distraught over the pressure of that moment. After a while, though, he came out of his stupor and announced,
“I have a question. Actually I have two questions.” We all gave him our attention, knowing that he always has these trivial questions that require deep thinking. Needle has always been a deep thinker.

“First question,” says Needle. What is a Nittany Lion?” Having lived for three years in Pennsylvania while in the Army, I knew that a Nittany Lion was a lion from Mount Nittany. Gos and Jay offered another possibility: that it was a lion with nits on it, a nit being some kind of insect, according to Jay. I informed Jay that a nit was a young louse.

“Well, that’s a terrible thing to have for a team nickname,” said Jay. We all agreed.

“Second question,” said Needle. “If the ball is intercepted in the end zone and the guy intercepting it tries to run it out, and he is tackled with the nose of the ball just over the goal line and the rest of the ball in the end zone, where does the lineman spot the ball?” This question kept us going for about 15 minutes. I insisted that the ball would be spotted as it was grounded, with the nose of the ball over the line. Needle declared, and he was probably right, that the entire ball would be placed outside the end zone, but that the base yard marker would be placed where the nose of the ball had been, thus giving the intercepting team a half-yard advantage. I got him here, though, as I argued that the advantage would only be a few inches, not a half-yard.

“You’re thinking back to when you played football with an 18 inch loaf of Italian bread. If you’re correct about the placement, and you may be right, it’s a bad rule,” I insisted. Bill Price suggested that they could turn the ball sideways or maybe stand it on its nose.

Needle had to leave early to go to the game as he was to be interviewed on the pre-game show. As he drove off, I texted him, “Call tails.”