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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Mud is for playing in,
not slingingHEN it rained for days, as it is doing now, we knew.
When there were jackets, and cold gray days with clouds in the sky and steaming saimin for lunch, the words were spoken. A whisper at first, secretly, but then aloud, and then, gathered together on a field of dreams, yelled.
Mud Bowl.
Mud Bowl.
It didn't happen often, maybe once a year. Maybe twice if everything fell right. These days were special, to be savored. We knew it even then.
Everything had to fall into place.
The weather had to be just right. The field available. The players all there. The mood there, the magic.
Often, it would be raining and gray on Christmas morning, and the start of a Mud Bowl had the same feeling. It felt like Christmas Day.
When it all came together there was football, everyone running through a waking dream.
Mud Bowl was better than regular small kid pickup games. Mud Bowl made anything possible. The moves were better, the catches all great. The defensive stops were epic. The entire atmosphere changed.
The weather did it to us, I think. The rain brought anticipation with every steady drop. The gray heightened the senses. The puddles turned the turf into Lambeau Field.
A regular game was a bunch of kids playing catch. A Mud Bowl was out of NFL Films.
Not everyone was Mud Bowl material. Not everyone found slipping face-first through wet grass exciting. It took a special breed -- the type, for example, who might take an extra few minutes when given that assignment to grab some Tater Tots from the school cafeteria's walk-in freezer: "It's a cold, cold day at Mile High Stadium; Hut! Huuuuuuttt!"
And mothers. Some didn't want their kids coming home cold and wet and mud-stained. You were just asking to get sick, playing around out in the rain. Who knows how many guys were risking lickings being out there.
Mud Bowls were often covert operations. Football coaches frowned on them, too. They didn't want a bunch of punk kids tearing up everything just when those grass fields were most vulnerable.
Maybe they had become too serious. Maybe they'd forgotten the feeling.
That's what Timmy Chang needs, now. He needs to play like he's in the Mud Bowl and it's third-and-long. Let it fly.
And Hawaii fans, too. They need to feel like they're going to watch a Mud Bowl, that anticipation, that fun. Too many fans aren't going to the games for football. They're going for intimidation and anger. They're going because to them Aloha Stadium has become a place for booing and bumping and yelling obscene things.
They've forgotten what the real thing feels like, or perhaps they never knew.
But the rain always reminds me. Weeks like this always do. Football can be about hostility, but at its best it's about joy.
We were reminded again Saturday. "Whieldon was in a zone tonight," Jason Whieldon's roommate, Jeremiah Cockheran, said.
No. It had been raining all day. He'd been in a Mud Bowl. You could see it in his eyes.
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Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com