If
the Elizabethans had played the gridiron game, the dialogue would have gone
something like this:
TO
YOUR TEAMMATES WHEN THE OPPONENT FUMBLES – Hasten good fellows! Pounce upon the
spheroid lest those of careless prospect seek to retrieve it.
TO
A CHEERLEADER – Fie! I revere your womanliness too profoundly to hurl you
skyward, perchance to drop beauty’s own projectile. Dos’t thou bounce? I fear
not.
WHEN
A COACH SEEKS TO INSPIRE HIS PLAYERS – They castigate you as layabouts. Faith
tis better said of the craven sluggards across the greensward. To them belongs
calumny, to you glory. Now go forth and commit slaughter with heroism’s own
impugnity.
WHEN
A PLAYER LEAVES COLLEGE EARLY TO JOIN THE PROS – Better to embrace the prose
than the pros. This noble campus offers you the poetry of education – that
which sustaineth when empty stadia confront your diminished talent.
ORDERING
A HOT DOG - Hail yeoman vendor!
Four dogs, that I may consume three and still extend charity’s mite to my
abstemious colleague. Mustard atop, and lavishly applied.
CALLING
A PASS PLAY – The coach offers a suggestion: Hurl the piggish projectile
downfield then snatch it from the sky. Speaketh the coach: On fourth down with
thirty yards yet untraveled, what in hell’s own dominion can we do?
ON
HAVING YOUR PASS INTERCEPTED – Weasel! Marplot! You take unto yourself that
which is vouchsafed to another, my boon companion, the wide receiver. Take from
me my wife, my stead, but never my football. Drat! The noble quarterback now
victim of my own folly!
THE
COACH, AFTER ENDURING A KOOL-ADE DOUSING – Jackals! Douse me in defeat if you
must, but not in my moment of triumph. If a headcold attends this treachery
then may jeopardy attend your scholarships.
THE
CHANCELLOR, SPEAKING TO THE TEAM AFTER A L OSING SEASON – As I watch our season
harden to the consistency of a soufflé, I calculate that brigands of the high
road could triple your quotient of dexterity.
TO
A PRIZE RECRUIT – Well done, wrestling those bears. Would’st consider an
academic alternative to the bear pits?
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