Paper Tigers (or pirates,panthers,bulldogs,raiders,hippos,etc.)

So it is Friday football season across so much of the country.  Every High School in America, or at least most, from the class 1A small town, play both ways, to the super/mega 5A High Schools where they have their own security force complete with bomb squad, has spent weeks (and probably millions of $) preparing for these rituals that supersede practically everything.  How many tons of iron have been pumped, how many dummies (the slide things) have been pushed across practice fields, how many swimming pools full of Gatorade have been gulped, how many $40 under-armor shirts have our tax dollars purchased, how many tons of fertilizer and ant poison have been applied to fields of play, how much carbon have we emitted driving to and from away games, how many pounds of artery clogging fat have been gained by consuming chili cheese fritoe pies at halftime, how many parents of teenage girls have dropped a thousand buck on a cheerleading camp and uniform (how so little material can cost so much) to teach their girls a couple of four word cheers,  just to give us the ability to live vicariously some long ago dream of being the town super stud?  But if we didn't put so much into it I suspect we would be bailing out the baton industry about now.

Please don't misunderstand.  I do enjoy Friday football.  My kids play.  At least my 13 year old plays Jr. High ball.  What I don't like the disproportionate amount of time, money, and reverence that is place on the "Game".  Does the world really revolve around the High School gridiron?   What really is the likelihood that your Johnny is going to play in the NFL?  

Enough of that, for now.  What I started this to say, is, that I find it funny that we send our team out onto the field, the field where boys are made into men, where life's lessons of determination and grit are ground into or boys one tackle at a time, through a portal of paper.  The band is playing, the crowd is screaming, cheers are being volleyed at the other stands, and here comes our team, ready to scare the living bageebees out of the other players, sending them into a state of panic.  And what is the culmination of all of this.  They bust onto the field through an enormous banner of paper.  PAPER.  Oh, but it has something clever written on it.  Couldn't it be a sheet of aluminum siding or something?  Something they had to claw their way through.  That would scare the crap out of me.   Nothing says "We're going to be District Champs" like bursting thru a giant sheet of paper.  

El Toro Negro