On Saturday, as I sat in my dorm room putting off reading for class and desperately trying to think of a column idea for this week, I came down with a serious case of football fever.
With my remembrance of the Super Bowl being recently moved from the "new releases" section to the normal "sports" section of the video store that is my memory, and the new football season still several months away, I suddenly found myself craving for some grid-iron action.
Fortunately, there was a cure readily available: Powder Puff football.
It was my lucky day. Alpha Tau Omega and Alpha Chi Omega had organized a 7-on-7 flag football tournament between seven teams from six Ball State sororities.
Granted, flag football was not exactly the type of football I was looking for, but it had to do. Hey, if you are starving to death and really want a steak, and someone offers you a hamburger, are you going to turn it down? I think not.
I hiked down to West Field to check out the action. I quickly learned that this was not a typical football environment. Bleachers were replaced by lawn chairs. An announcer was replaced by constant music. Cheerleaders were replaced by guys in face paint, grass skirts and coconut bras. It was all very different than any other football game I have ever seen. Well, maybe not the guys in the coconut bras, but most of it.
Once I got used to the unusual surroundings, I settled in to watch the games. The experience was...um...interesting.
There seemed to be basically two types of plays, both of which are flag-football classics. The first is the much riskier of the two. I am of course talking about the "everybody go long and pray pass" play. This is obviously more risky because it puts the ball in the air with the chance of it being intercepted. The other is my personal favorite, the tried-and-true "give it to the fast woman around the end" play. Of the two, this was much more effective. Other plays were tried. One team I saw even tried to run the option, but these two were the bread and butter.
Most plays seemed to have one of two results, too: the big loss or the big gain. I did not see a lot of that "three yards and a cloud of dust" mentality.
The women played extremely hard. Every time a woman "tackled" another, she would whip the flags to the ground with such ferocity it could have intimidated even the burliest of men. Okay, maybe not. But it definitely showed they were into the game.
Like all sports, though, money was involved. But this time, it was in a very good way. According to organizers, this event was expected to make more than $4,000 for the two charities it was set up to benefit, A Better Way and The Young Survival Coalition.
The eventual winners of the tournament were the women of Alpha Omicron Pi, but that was really secondary. Everyone turned out a winner. Some students got entertained. Two charities got some money. I cured my football fever, for the time being at least, and I got an idea for my column.
Ah, I just love a happy ending.
Write to Cole at cpmcgrath@bsu.edu
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