A Football Life

A little update about football and life for you this week, as I take a break from ranting about measurement, fair agency compensation, and anything to do with a certain U.S. presidential nominee. Small ‘p’ intentional…

Yesterday may have been close to a perfect day for me. Why? My life is surrounded by football and my football is surrounded by my life. I’m lucky enough to work in marketing football, to volunteer in football, and have an unquenchable appetite for consuming football. I probably watched seven full games this weekend…

So you can understand that it’s not hard for me to come to work when we do so many cool things in the sport. Yesterday, I was chatting with one of our interns who just returned from executing some Nissan Kickoff Project events at high schools in Abbotsford and Calgary. It was her first time overseeing a live execution so it was satisfying for me to hear her relay both her nervousness and her sense of accomplishment. Earlier in the day we announced at our weekly team pep talk (staff meeting) that our impressive field coordinator, who has been overseeing the Argos Tailgate program, has been rewarded with a full-time role at T1. Later I was getting an update on Grey Cup activation plans for one of our clients.

But my real joy lies on the field. Right now, a typical weekday for me is a day like yesterday. At 6:30AM I printed out my practice plans for the two teams I coach. During the day I exchanged emails with a few coaches. One had feedback on the practice plans. A few others were weighing in on last week’s Player of the Week selections. At 3PM I left work for Lawrence Park to coach my senior team from 3:30 to 5:30. We worked the crap out of them. I loved it. We need to push these kids harder. At 5:35 I left LP to race home and grab my 13-year-old for the 35-minute drive to northwest Toronto for a 6:30 to 8:30 Toronto Jets practice. I ended up running it a bit late, so it was 8:53PM before we got out of there to do our traditional post practice stop at South Street Burger, for my son’s chocolate shake and french fries. Feel free to judge me. I dare you. At 9:35PM I was on my couch with my microwaved leftovers and a glass of Riesling, ready to watch Minnesota inexplicably go 4-0.

More than once during the day I checked online for past scores of this week’s Panthers opponent (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), as well as my Jets’ opponent in two weeks (Hamilton Jr. Tiger-Cats). I do that far too often. Check on scores. Check on standings. See how our future opponents did against our past. Extrapolate what that means for us. As bad as a predictive index that it is, I somehow believe the numbers speak to me. They shed insight, they communicate and elaborate. I know it’s crazy but I have always felt that way. The results of a game. The statistics of each team, each player. The inputs and factors that may have caused that. Numbers don’t lie. They just don’t predict. Maybe some day I will learn that. One week the numbers (vs. Philadelphia) say my Steelers suck, the next week (vs. Kansas City) the numbers say they are world-beaters.

My two teams are also an interesting story told by numbers.

Story one is my Lawrence Park Panthers. You may recall that this past winter the team faced near death and was dramatically saved by a group of earnest parents and community supporters. Many of whom don’t even have kids on the team. This little crisis actually resulted in some amazing and unexpected chemical reactions. Out of the crisis, new friendships, fundraising groups, and relationships were born. Personally I met some amazing folks who stepped up on the team’s behalf. A fundraising effort has been started, though equipment wasn’t the primary issue, and we are raising thousands to secure the program’s future. But of all the numbers, the most important one is on the field.

For years we have struggled to field teams with more than 24-26 players, which meant that on any given week with 5-6 absences due to work, school, or injury we couldn’t run proper scrimmages, drills, etc. But the threat of extinction resulted in many kids coming out of the woodwork and we now have a pool of 36 players. Which seems small to many powerhouse teams, but is a godsend for us. It also makes it much more fun for the kids and builds their confidence. Coming to practice with ten players, which has happened to me, is a killer.

At the other end of the number story, is my Toronto Jets bantam team. Up at 5:30AM on Saturday (guess hockey isn’t so bad after all), we packed a whopping 16 players on a school bus for a rainy trip to Brantford. There we were joined by three more players, to face a Brantford squad twice our numbers, and many times our skill. While the “Good Sportsmanship Police” froze the scoreboard at 21-0, the real damage was 62-0. That puts us at 0 & 5 for the season, with 44 points scored and 218 against! Remember the quarterback I told you about previously? The hidden gem. Well he quit two games into the season. He didn’t like losing. He’s right, we are losing.

But what the standings don’t show is this. Every kid on my team loves football. In the dressing room after the game I had 19 smiling faces. That’s the real scoreboard. I have 19 kids, and four dedicated coaches, who love this game. I have 19 kids who would rather lose 62-0, than not play at all.

We have one more regular season game. We are playing at Tim Hortons Field. The kids are thrilled. A real CFL stadium. None of them have seen it. My son played in the old Ivor Wynne once, wait till he sees this new gem. Last night they thought I was serious when I joked the game would be on TSN. They laughed when my son said, “yeah, TSN Collingwood.” But for a moment they really thought, we had hit the big time. No TSN, maybe some home movies. The numbers will show that we are going to lose this game. The numbers don’t lie. Hamilton dumped us 39-6 last time we played and I am pretty sure they eased up on us around 18-0.

But losing won’t quell my love for my Football Life, nor will it quell it for my Jets.