There were many reasons to despise the Ohio State football team in the 60s and 70s.
The Buckeyes were the arch-enemies of the sacred Wolverines. My father was a devout U-of-M fan, for some reason (he worked his way through General Motors Technical Institute, now Kettering University, but drove to Ann Arbor for games on Saturdays). In our house, we watched the maize and blue as if we were attending church.
And OSU usually beat the champions of the west.
The Buckeyes’ coach was another reason to hate the team. Woody Hayes was a horrible troll roaming the sidelines. He made Bo Shembechler look like Mr. Rogers.
But the biggest reason to hate those Ohio State teams back in the day was Woody’s football strategy: “Three yards and a cloud of dust.” The Buckeyes made football boring! The more they won, the more boring the game became.
The opposite of that kind of football is the eight-man version.
Many school districts in Northeast Michigan have recently adopted the format, part of a trend across the state. The eight-man option has been out there since 1950, but it has expanded quickly in the last five years, and more than 100 teams play eight-man football.
The number will probably increase in the near future.
The major difference in the rules between the two variations is the width of the field. While both share the objective of driving one hundred yards to the goal, eight-man teams play between 40 yards, while the traditional 11-man field is 53.3 yards wide.
The rules mandate that only schools with an enrollment of less than 216 qualify for the state playoffs. That has not prevented larger school districts from downsizing their football programs. Witness the local 10-team North Star League, where a few schools are too big to qualify for the playoffs.
I attended the season opener between Alcona and Mio and was hooked by halftime, when the score was already 60-36!
There were no three-yard runs, no clouds of dust. Rather, the Tigers went wild with the ground game while the Thunderbolts struck repeatedly with long bombs from the air.
The final tally was 82-52!
That’s a basketball score.
There’s an appealing kind of chaos to eight-man pigskin, right from the opening kickoff, because every kicking play is an adventure. Most kicks and punts have the trajectory of passes, short and shallow through the air, allowing for long returns. With a three-man rush against five offensive linemen, defenses are vulnerable to attack, both through the air and on the ground. Quarterbacks run amok! Rarely sacked, they heave passes and scramble into the secondary. Alcona High’s QB, Garrett Somers, has posted eye-popping stats this season, under the approving eye of his father, Jason, the head coach.
Somers targets Collin Walker for a remarkably high percentage of touchdown passes, and hands off with similar success to Jesse Sheldon, who has a galloping gait when he breaks free.
Running backs are off to the races in eight-man’s wide-open format. Most remarkable among them is 205-pound, 5-foot-11-inches Keagan Bender, of the Au Gres Wolverines, who carries cornerbacks and safeties with him like he’s wearing waders.
Alcona and Au Gres played in Lincoln on Oct. 7, which was a key matchup between the Wolverines, last year’s North Star League champion, who made a run in the 2021 state playoffs, and the surprise team of 2022, the undefeated Tigers.
With Rogers City upsetting Au Gres in the first week of the season, an Alcona win at home would have set up a clash of undefeated teams on the Hurons’ field last Friday.
But the Tigers unblemished season ended on a chilly night–42 degrees at kickoff–when the Wolverines turned a four-point halftime lead into a convincing 50-34 victory.
The home team was unable to rally after the disturbing scene of their star runner, Jesse Sheldon, going down hard at the start of the second half. He pushed his helmet off his head and writhed in pain on his back in front of the Alcona sideline as his teammates and the opposing team’s players all knelt and his coaches attended to him helplessly. Where was the ambulance? There is usually one on-hand at the games, but not that night, a fact noted by my friend, the father of a lineman, during the first half.
After what seemed like a very long wait, an ambulance arrived, stopping in the parking lot, rather than driving out onto the track, and its crew rolled a gurney down the field at what seemed like a saunter while my agitated friend shouted, “Pick up the pace!”
The small, cold crowd clapped in a glove-muffled, desultory way as they finally carried Sheldon away (I’m delighted to report that Jesse did not suffer a concussion or other serious injury and returned to practice last Wednesday).
But, for all practical purposes, that game was over.
The game in Rogers City last week was still important for deciding the North Star League champion. If Alcona managed an upset over the Hurons, they pulled into a tie with them and Au Gres, all with one loss — assuming the Wolverines won, too.
If the Nautical City favorites prevailed at Quarry View Stadium, they will probably take the 2022 title with a perfect record.
The booming popularity of the exciting eight-man brand of football calls for a new division for high schools with an enrollment of more than 215.
And I still hate the Buckeyes!
"exciting" - Google News
October 17, 2022 at 12:31PM
https://ift.tt/GlZg6Pn
8-man football is more exciting | News, Sports, Jobs - Alpena News
"exciting" - Google News
https://ift.tt/CHoMclA
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "8-man football is more exciting | News, Sports, Jobs - Alpena News"
Post a Comment