Your formative years

[Zool]

helmets don't make idiot posts, people make idiot posts.

Art imitating life imitating art.

[George Cumby]

"I had 17 foster brothers; my mama taught me how to play football...I grew up a running back. I grew up watching Walter Payton and just the way they finish runs, and Earl Campbell—it's just in me."
-- Ty Montgomery

I love that Ty knows of Earl Campbell, but ECs career was over before TM was born, no?

[Cheesehead Craig]

Played football all the time in the park by my house. The neighborhood kids just knew to be there on Sat afternoons in the fall. Never was a problem having a game of 5v5, sometimes more.

[pbmax]

Played football all the time in the park by my house. The neighborhood kids just knew to be there on Sat afternoons in the fall. Never was a problem having a game of 5v5, sometimes more.

Bunch a fancy pants skill position boys.

[Rutnstrut]

Neighborhood tackle football games in my parents yard all fall and into the winter. We played in the street a lot also, but that was 2 hand touch. Well unless you felt like laying someone out In Junior high we would sneak our helmets and shoulder pads home on the weekends to play weekend games. Funny we seemed to have more injuries when we had the right gear. Although most of us all had the Sears Packer helmets and chincy shoulder pads and pants with hip/knee pads. We rarely wore them. Smear the queer with the ball was a favorite playground game. But so was king of the hill. Just the the mention of such games would send todays kids running for their safe place.

[Cheesehead Craig]

Funny we seemed to have more injuries when we had the right gear.

That's because you were TT-quality soft!

[Harlan Huckleby]

Rough sports like football are made for kids. They rarely get hurt badly. Grown men, pumped up by year round weight training, smashing into each other is kinda nuts. MMA is nuts. Australian rules football is nuts. But I suppose we are descended from a violent species.

Now I like a violent game of ping pong.

[MadtownPacker]

I'm hearing a lot about tackle football played without helmets by future right wing FYI posters.

Dont derail you own thread dumbass cuz you will only have yourself to blame.

[RashanGary]

My best friend/neighbor and I played backyard football seemingly every day. He was a 49ers fan and I a Packers fan. He was always joe Montana during our sessions and I was sterling sharpe. Then, it became a situation where all the neighbor kids played backyard football. Tackle, of course. I'd go home and brag about my bruises. I felt so tough.

Then one day I went to school and got to play with the older kids. My first route was straight fucking Seam route. They left me mostly uncovered. The star quarterback, who looking back, had to be about the size of a full grown Andrew luck Unloaded a deep rainbow in my direction. I turned around, jumped up and got two hands around the ball. The weight of the ball pulled me back. I landed on my back, still holding the ball. It hurt like hell but I pretended I was fine. In today's NFL it would have been a lung contusion for sure, but I shook it off.

All of the older kids were saying, damn, this little kid can play ball. They were all patting me on the back and cheering. I've never felt so damn proud in all my life. I was a total hero.

[Fritz]

Neighborhood tackle football games in my parents yard all fall and into the winter. We played in the street a lot also, but that was 2 hand touch. Well unless you felt like laying someone out In Junior high we would sneak our helmets and shoulder pads home on the weekends to play weekend games. Funny we seemed to have more injuries when we had the right gear. Although most of us all had the Sears Packer helmets and chincy shoulder pads and pants with hip/knee pads. We rarely wore them. Smear the queer with the ball was a favorite playground game. But so was king of the hill. Just the the mention of such games would send todays kids running for their safe place.

This reminds me of something from my own childhood, in the late 60's and early 70's. For Christmas one year, my dad - god bless his soul - somehow got his hands on two very high-quality football helmets for my brother and me. My brother, of course, received a Lions' helmet, and mine was - thank you, dad - a Packers' helment. Where, in the age before the internet and the spread of NFL marketing like the plague, my dad found a Green Bay Packers helmet, I will never know. But he did. It was my prize, my treasure - I kept it in my room on a shelf, and was very proud of the scratches and streaks of silver smeared on it from where my brother and I had butted heads.

But the neighborhood kids hated it when we had those helmets. My parents insisted we wear them when playing games in our very large yard, and of course we used those helmets as spears. Nobody knew anything about tackling or safety; we just rammed kids with our helmeted heads. So there were many injuries, and in today's world, it was not only unfair to the other helmetless kids, but dangerous, too. But back then it was just an advantage we had, and a cool one, too.

The sad post-script, however, is that when (like everyone in Michigan in the late 70's) my brother and I moved to Houston, my mom, who was going through menopause, I think, sold our helmets at a garage sale.

I would kill to have that Green Bay helmet back. Or at least head-butt someone.

[pbmax]

Fritz's helmet story reminds me of a kind of kid I actually didn't meet until college. Always wanted to play safety, even if it was 5 on 5 and everyone else was playing man. He thought he was Gary Fencik. But he was really just an honest cheap shot artist.

Hated that guy so much I used to make a beeline to Barbre his Matthews. And that brings up the part I still don't understand; he thought THAT was unfair.

[Fritz]

But do not forget, PB, that being neighborhood games, my brother and I were taken down, many times, by the facemask. So there were advantages both ways.

One kid used to like to try to swing me around by the facemask. Got him back one day, though. Ran right through and over him.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Dont derail you own thread dumbass cuz you will only have yourself to blame.

I should not have singled out any political persuasion as having played too much football without a helmet. Any tendencies towards brain damage shown in this forum are purely coincidental. I apologize, hope we can move past this.

[pbmax]

But do not forget, PB, that being neighborhood games, my brother and I were taken down, many times, by the facemask. So there were advantages both ways.

One kid used to like to try to swing me around by the facemask. Got him back one day, though. Ran right through and over him.

That kid playing "safety" in a pickup game was simply a prima donna who didn't like to be made a fool of.

You and your helmets would have been resisted in our games. In the end it would only matter how many players we needed.

It was always easier to get kids to play baseball.

[Patler]

Grew up in northern WI farm country, but we could put together 12 farm boys and usually about four pretty athletic farm girls for softball and baseball games in the summer, and tackle football in the fall, all within a bicycle ride of our farm, which was sort of centrally located for the group. Didn't have a single piece of football equipment between us except the football, and we shared baseball gloves because there weren't enough to go around.

The kids covered about a six or seven year age range, and the group varied as the older ones left and younger ones became involved. To get us all together, we would find who would be working the latest baling hay or whatever, and some of us who could would all go over to help so we could get done early enough to have some time to play before dark. Whatever game we played, the older ones would go after each other full go, but involve the younger guys to their abilities. Lob them the baseball, let them catch the pass, fall over "tackled" when the little guy hit you.

Score never mattered, we often never even kept track. Just had the chance to play, and enjoyed it well past dark whenever we could Monday through Saturday nights, or Sunday afternoons that were usually free, unless the family had plans (usually visiting an aunt or uncle for a few hours).

Good guys, all of them. Good times working with them and playing with them. Most never had the chance to play high school sports, because practices were after school, and there were farm chores to do, let alone the transportation problem with the school 20 miles away. A few who had younger siblings to do the farm chores did play sports as Juniors or Seniors, when they could drive the beat-up old wrecks they had for cars. Most who did play excelled at wrestling or football, some at baseball. Tough SOBs who knew how to work, and were much stronger than the average high schooler in the days before high school weight rooms with more than a bench and a set of Sears weights.