In my hometown on one of the college's football teams, the Wildcats, there was a quarterback...
I love traipsing into word jungles and then trying to worm my way out of them...
...but anyway whaaaaa? this quarterback's name was Ted Sitton.
That was when the T-formation had just come into football, and Ted Sitton worked out of the T...
A few years before that when the T-formation was really new, the Wildcats had a running back named Vitamin (real name Verda, or something like that) T Smith. Vitamin T Smith was a running back (a halfback) out of the shotgun formation, where the quarterback stands back 5 yards or so behind the center where the center then snaps the ball to him on the correct signal-- in the T-formation, V.T. would be in the fullback position (running back) about 8 yards in back of the quarterback who in the T is right up dog-style behind the center, taking the snap from the center's crotch...
And at about the same time, late 1940s early 1950s, as Vitamin T Smith was a running back for the Wildcats, across town at one of the other colleges, their team, the Cowboys, was a quarterback named John "Model T" Ford. And the Cowboys were a higher-ranked football (1A) team than Vitamin T Smith's Wildcats (2A) and Model T Ford for a brief moment was the leading quarterback in the USA, leading the country in passing and total yards...the Cowboys having the distinction of holding the NCAA record for number of post-season (bowl) games, 4, in one year, 1948. This caused the NCAA to make a rule that a college team could only go to one post-season game a year.
Vitamin T. Smith went on to play with the Los Angeles Rams NFL team--the 1950 team that had Bob Waterfield, Glen Davis, Tom Flear--setting a pro-kick-off runback record that still stood in 2005--Vitamin T. left the mortal coil in 2000.
All because of the T-formation--how the "T" got in their names--the formation still used in football today--it's hard to innovate off the T. The T's just a perfect American football formation. Yes, there's the I formation, but its the T without the crossbar, what used to be called half-backs are now boiled down to running backs. The current crop of young pro coaches is experimenting constantly--even using two quarterbacks, one in the fullback (running back (old tail back)) position--straight behind the quarterback about 8 yards...and some young coaches are putting a running-back-quarterback in that slot (the Steelers's coach, for instance), the big-time quarterback taking the snap then handing off to this fullback/quarterback and he has several options: he can run with the ball; he can pass the ball; or he can shovel it back to the big-time quarterback who can then try a Hail Mary since their pass protectors would be...oh shit...that's too damn much already.
L Hat recently wrote an interesting post at www.languagehat.com about reading and trying to understand without knowing the game a book explaining the Brit sport of cricket, from which the Brits brag baseball is a derivative, and they perhaps are correct, though baseball is a much finer and more beautifully wrought a game, based on the fairness of a diamond-shaped infield and a fan-shaped outfield--from dirt to lawn--a game you must concentrate on and not be wandering around the lawns drinking gin rickeys and "I sayin'" conservative crap with your old college chums while a long boring test match is going on in the field--all Brit sports, soccer, rugby, tennis, golf (actually a Dutch sport (Kolf) the Brit's now take credit for inventing) are interminably long in terms of time and endurance--it's that Brit determined White Man energy--ah, the glorious empire--and the irony here--ah sweet irony, old chap, and the irony to which I'm cutting against the grain of my overbearing mind trying to get to comes after the Brits took boring cricket out to its colonies during the heyday of the glorious empire to impress the "savage natives or slaves" (the woolly boogers and woggies) as to how truly STRONG and determined the WHITE MAN is, in spite of the White Man's Burden, at sport, war, and rule, that strength enforcing the Brit civilization and Anglican-Catholic divine rule and laws and orders on these untamed savage beasts just out of the jungle (evil Nature)--next stop after Nature is Hell, the core of the earth--remember, that place Captain Nemo journeyed to! The irony I was meandering to get to: check it out, the best cricket teams in the world now ain't no more in Mother England--they're now in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the Caribbean (especially Jamaica), and evil Africa ("I say, the Dark Continent...and the Lordy Lord told the White Man to take The Light into the World whether the Heathens god-damn liked it or not")...
Part of that evidence is the etymology of the word "golf" itself. "Golf" derives from the Old Scots terms "golve" or "goff," which themselves evolved from the medieval Dutch term "kolf."
The medieval Dutch term "kolf" meant "club," and the Dutch were playing games (mostly on ice) at least by the 14th Century in which balls were struck by sticks that were curved at the bottom until they were moved from Point A to Point B. Sounds a lot like hockey, doesn't it? Except that it sort of sounds like golf, too (except for that ice part).
The Dutch and Scots were trading partners, and the fact that the word "golf" evolved after being transported by the Dutch to the Scots lends credence to the idea that the game itself may have been adapted by the Scots from the earlier Dutch game.
Something else that lends credence to that idea: Although the Scots played their game on parkland (rather than ice), they (or least some of them) were using balls they acquired in trade from ... Holland.
From this jolly golf-info Website: golf.about.com/cs/historyofgolf/a/hist_golfbegin.htmThanks for letting me get my Anglophobic bitterness out of my system.
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I was listening this morning to John "Nutjob" McCain claiming Barack Hussein Obama's a Socialist! McCain's idea of Socialism is tied up in what Jowl-shakin' John calls "a redistribution of the wealth"--taking money away from the rich and GIVING it to the poor! Oh what a dastardly way to think! Jowl Shakin' John's really meaning "Liberal"--but that's a used-up negative now that Americans are turning back left due to the Repugnicans having fucked up their Neo-Conservative "Drive to the Bottom" Plans. So a redistribution of the wealth from the filthy rich down to the struggling poor (struggling because the rich have stolen all their jobs, their productive worth, their unions, their rights, and their paychecks), that's Socialism to Jowl Shakin' John. HEY, JOWL SHAKIN' JOHN, nationalizing the banks and nationalizing the debt of banks and financial institutions, you dumbass son of a bitch, that's Socialism--and that makes you a Socialist, too, you dumbass...
A serious Socialist is for nationalizing industry--like France took over Renault Motors rather than let it fail after WWII--restored Renault to a profitable company. National Socialists are Fascists.
Does Socialism come from Britain? George Bernard Shaw was a Socialist and a promoter of a world language--like Esperanto (ESP--yes, and all the texts on ESP recordings back in the late 70s (Albert Ayler was on ESP; Bud Powell in Paris right before he died was on ESP) were in both Esperanto and English).
Socialism in its "utopian" form should truly take from the rich and spread that fallow wealth out equally among the workingclass, the means of production--bring these people up to high-productive state...fuck the lumpenprolitariat!
But, hell, I'm just a stupid blogger. I love the way commercial television totally puts down blogs and bloggers; yet, the truth is, all these networks and newspapers and shit all have blogs--check 'em out on Google's blog search.
I listened last night to Allen "One-Foot-in-the-Grave" Greenspan denying he had anything to do with this Wall Street mess--a mess he actually created--with the help of Robert Ruben (Goldman-Sachs/CitiGroup), who is now one of Obama's top advisers. Obama said in his book that he admired Wall Street investors, etc. Another hypocrite, but what the hay...
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The hammers have begun hammering on yet another New York City Friday morning! The hammerers also jabber loudly between themselves as they hammer. Yapping and hammering--
This noise is a factor that has to be faced if you live in New York City these days...the citizens of New York City count for nothing according to our little-man, billionaire, pompous-ass mayor--the current citizens of New York City are scumbags to this mayor--we don't make enough money for his rich ass. You know what, and check out the mayor's track record as a wealthy motherfucker in the Forbes Rich-Boy List--he was the 65th richest man in the US when he took office as mayor back after Rudi "Mussolini" Guiliani, Captain Courageous and Genius Crime Fighter (he swept through black and Latino neighborhoods and put every son of a bitch that got in his SWAT teams's way in prison from 25 to Life or they were convicted to death on the spot by pumping 46 bullets in their suspicious asses) got thrown out of office--and that bastard was sayin' this city needed his ass, too, and had to give him a third term--Rudi was just declaring he wasn't leaving office--as a result of the rightwingers in this City loving Rudi then put billionaire little-man Bloomingidiotburg into power since the citizens of NYC decided to not let Rudi have a permanent mayor job--and since our billionaire mayor has been in office--GUESS WHAT? This little developin'/rezonin'-fool asshole has risin' from 65th richest man in America to now the 8th richest man in the US. He was mayor during that time--bragging about how he took only one dollar a year salary--which means this bastard only pays W-2 taxes on $1 a year--something fishy there isn't there? Why shouldn't we the citizens of New York City be shown just how this billionaire bastard made so much money while he was supposedly working hard as mayor--rezoning and ruining neighborhoods--allowing a huge block of city-private-developed land to be sold to his development-mad buddies (like good ole tacky-haired Donald "Pompous Hick Asshole" Trump)--I'm spittin' in the wind, I know! It did give me a thrill though seeing protesters railing at the little-man-billionaire-mayor's ass as he walked, he thought triumphantly, out of the City Council meeting that had just illegally given him permission (and them too don't forget) to run for an illegal third term (the vote was close--29-to-22)--and the little bastard gets so pissed off when people rail at him and boo his pompous little ass--he demands worship--he's RICH and he's PRIVILEGED and he's a member of the POWER ELITE--whether he runs again and loses or runs again and wins, he's already CHANGED New York City into a traffic-tied-up crazy (the mayor's crosstown traffic plan a total failure) metropolitan DisneyLand with tacky tour buses and phony rubberwheeled streetcars and fast-food garbage strewn all over most of the streets in Manhattan--a place where high rents, taxes, and hotel rooms are driving the cost-of-living in New York City now through the fucking roof--only a billionaire mayor and his billionaire cronies can afford to live here--a place that used to be full of jobs because all the industries were headquartered here and there were plenty of front-office and back-office jobs with great benefits (health care was considered an incentive to interest the best workers into applying for your jobs--incentives included health care, a 35-hour work week, two weeks' sick leave, two weeks' vacation --increasing the longer you stayed with the company--and, yeah, you stayed with companies your whole careers in those long-forgotten now and good ole then days--and I guarantee you, folks, young or old, that was the best time ever in the history of New York City--a good times that started in the mid-sixties with the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-All-War Movement and lasted until the AIDS epidemic hit us in 1982! Free at last attitudes all around in the city then--blacks, Latinos, Asians, whites, Jews, Arabs mingling--and then along came Reagan and AIDS and that was the end of the secular humanist party. And what plans WE had for this country--unisex fashions and styles, feminists going braless and wearing miniskirts and Gays and Lesbians coming eagerly out of their closets to join the fun in this town...
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One good thing I've read by an upstate NY pundit, out of Rochester, was that he's saying rent controls will have to be reinstated in New York City to save affordable housing in this economic-disaster crisis that G.W. "Dumbass Rich Boy" Bush and the Bush Family Empire got us into and out of which this little crooked self-pleased asshole will come out of free as a bird--
Americans are scared to death of rich people--and they should be. The biggest terrerists in this world are the wealthy, the Plutocrats, the biggest terrerist organization in the world is our own Military Industrial Complex--we depend on WAR for our economy...
How nice it is to disappear under my awesome stereo earphones and get lost in music still relevant even though some of it is 100 years old now--still calming--still cooling....
theluxuriouslyrelaxedgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
Check Out the Hardin-Simmons University Records in 1942 and 1946--1946 Model T Ford Was Their Quarterback:
| 9/21 | vs. | McMurry (non-IA) | W | 31 | 0 | ||
| 9/28 | vs. | Kansas State (0-9) | W | 21 | 7 | ||
| 10/5 | vs. | San Jose State (non-IA) | W | 34 | 7 | ||
| 10/18 | @ | *New Mexico (5-5-2) | W | 49 | 0 | ||
| 10/26 | vs. | *Arizona State (2-7-2) | W | 46 | 6 | ||
| 11/2 | @ | *Arizona (4-4-2) | W | 19 | 8 | ||
| 11/9 | vs. | *West Texas A&M (5-5) | W | 28 | 7 | ||
| 11/16 | @ | *Texas-El Paso (3-6) | W | 20 | 7 | ||
| 11/23 | vs. | Howard Payne (non-IA) | W | 33 | 0 | ||
| 11/30 | vs. | *Texas Tech (8-3) | W | 21 | 6 | ||
| 1/4 | vs. | Denver (5-5-1) | W | 20 | 0 | @ San Antonio, TX | Alamo Bowl |
11-0-0 | 322 | 48 | |||||
1943-1945 - not rated
| 9/19 | vs. | Howard Payne (non-IA) | W | 12 | 0 | ||
| 9/26 | @ | Baylor (6-4-1) | W | 13 | 6 | ||
| 10/3 | vs. | North Texas (non-IA) | W | 34 | 0 | ||
| 10/10 | vs. | Southern Methodist (3-6-2) | W | 7 | 6 | @ San Antonio, TX | |
| 10/17 | vs. | Louisiana Tech (non-IA) | W | 47 | 13 | ||
| 10/24 | vs. | *Arizona State (2-8) | W | 21 | 0 | ||
| 10/31 | vs. | *Texas-El Paso (5-4) | W | 39 | 7 | ||
| 11/7 | @ | *West Texas A&M (7-2) | W | 40 | 0 | ||
| 11/14 | @ | *Arizona (6-4) | W | 34 | 26 | ||
| 11/21 | @ | *Texas Tech (4-5-1) | T | 0 | 0 | ||
| 1/1 | vs. | Second Air Force (Washington) (non-IA) | L | 7 | 13 | @ El Paso, TX | Sun Bowl |
9-1-1 | 254 | 71 | |||||
Note: An asterisks before a team name means they were in the Border Conference (New Mexico, Arizona, Arizona State, West Texas A&M, Texas School of Mines, Texas Technological College (Texas Tech) and HSU--only 7 teams in that conference; later New Mexico State came in to make the 8th team). Texas-El Paso in those years was the Texas School of Mines; later it became Texas Western (won the NCAA basketball championship under that name); West Texas A&M later became West Texas State (it's in Canyon, Texas); Howard Payne was a small Baptist college in Brownwood, Texas--they used to have tough football teams and world-champion cross-country track teams, plus Baptist colleges were obligated by divine intervention to play each other; McMurry was a small college in Abilene, Texas, a Methodist college. HSU being a Baptist school wouldn't play the other Abilene college, Abilene Christian College, because it was a Church of Christ institution opposed to Baptists and Methodists in their fundie-side religious beliefs, but ACC had some great NAIA football teams--undefeated in 1950--played Gustavus Adolphus in the Refrigerator Bowl in Indiana that winter/Abilene Christian had one of the world's best track teams in the late 50s--the great 100-yard-dash and relay-team champion (he won 3 gold medals in Melbourne Olympics) Bobby Morrow went to ACC).
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