The World's Touchiest Football Players

This past Saturday, I witnessed American sports history, right in my own backyard!

My kids teamed up with all their neighborhood pals and argued over a touch football play. “Big deal,” you might say. Well, they quibbled about this one play for more than 37 minutes!

This shattered the long-standing U.S. record of 36 minutes, 54 seconds for Longest Uninterrupted Stream of Squeaky High-Pitched Pre-Adolescent Bickering: Touch Football Division.

And it was only the first play of the game!

In other words, it was a pretty typical touch football game for our neighborhood. In fact, heated disputes usually break out well before kickoff. Like all great athletes, I guess the kids need to tune up their squeaky high-pitched vocal chords for the serious in-game carping. I teased the kids about it once, saying they bellyached so much you’d almost think someone was keeping statistics on who’s the touchiest touch footballer. Turns out No. 5 son (age 5) is.

I’m pretty sure his brothers are near the top of the charts. When the pre-game screeching commences, it’s pretty common to hear the voice of No. 4 son (age 9) rise above the din shouting “No! NO! We’re NOT using THAT football, we’re using MY BALL!” Eventually No. 3 (age 11) will holler “No! NO! WE’RE the Steelers! And YOU’RE the LIONS!” Then they’ll both start screaming at each other “NO! No WAY! Dad’s on YOUR TEAM, I don’t WANT him on MINE!”

As you can imagine, the most common touch football argument involves whether or not the ball carrier was, in point of fact, actually touched. Each kid’s opinion about this is subject to whiplash-inducing change, depending on whether he’s on offense or defense.

Usually the team with the ball thinks that the touch only counts if it’s firm enough to actually be felt by every player on the offensive team, including those on the sidelines.

Whereas the team that’s on defense thinks the touch is valid as long as the tiniest shred of forensic evidence—say, a single microscopic fiber from any garment being worn by the ball carrier—can be gathered from anywhere within a six foot radius of the defender.

Last Saturday’s record-breaking argument had to do with (what else?) touching. Tempers flared over whether one of the neighborhood’s six dozen “J-Kids” (Justin/Jonathan/Jimmy/Jillian/Jordan/etc.) had actually touched another J-Kid.

This fight then degenerated into a spat over which super hero would be the greatest touch football player. Some said Superman, because of the whole “faster than a speeding bullet” thing. Some said Spiderman, because he’d use his webs to catch or intercept every pass ever thrown. And some said Banshee, an X-Man character with an eardrum-shattering voice, which would enable him to utterly dominate every touch football argument.

To finally put an end to this brouhaha, and get their minds back on football, I marched every kid into the house, to watch a little college gridiron action on TV.

I made them watch that week’s Game of the Century, a crucial, life-altering showdown between Sul Ross State and University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (actual colleges, with actual football teams). Before long, they couldn’t wait to get back outside and play. I thought they were inspired by the fast-moving yet controlled mayhem that is American football. But actually, they were just getting grossed out by all the, um, “male enhancement” commercials.

As they raced back outside, they promised any disagreements would be settled quickly and quietly. Almost immediately, a long and unquiet disagreement broke out, consisting mainly of squeaky, high-pitched taunts like this: “WE'RE the BEARS! And YOU guys are MARY HARDIN-BAYLOR!”

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TakefiveT5@yahoo.com