Monday, November 12, 2007 | by nathan

Death and Football

I’d been looking forward to Saturday for awhile now. Nothing special, really; Brian and I had tickets to the OU-Baylor game, and it had been a really rough week; I just wanted to relax at the game and have some fun.

In the middle of the second quarter, someone near us shouted "Doctor!" Soon there was an uproar around us, everyone in eyesight was turned around, focused not on the field or the players but on a point just above where Brian and I were sitting. Our seats are in Section 9, and everyone in our section was shouting at the Highway Patrol officers that line the field during a game. Murmurs seemed to emanate like ripples on a pond through the crowd; someone had collapsed.

"Does anyone know CPR?"

"Where’s a doctor?"

"He’s collapsed. He’s not breathing."

After what seemed like forever a crowd of highway patrol, police and paramedics rose up through the ramp and started moving people aside. Everyone immediately near the scene was cleared out completely. We were allowed to stay, but were moved away from the aisle. Standing on a seat, I could see what was happening.

An old man, probably in his 70’s, had had a heart attack, right there at the game. Paramedics did CPR for 4-5 minutes while waiting for a stretcher to make its way up to us. He wasn’t breathing on his own, and when they finally got him on the stretcher and took him past us, he was a deep shade of purple, and he still wasn’t breathing.

The game rolled on, no one in the press box or on the sidelines any wiser as to what had happened. I turned around, my head spinning with fears and possibilities, and suddenly it seemed almost impossible to cheer when we got a first down. I looked back to where the man had been sitting only moments before, with his family, enjoying himself. Everyone in our section was in tears. It was almost the end of the second quarter.

"Let’s go," I said to Brian. "I don’t really feel like being here anymore."

He felt the same, and we stood to leave. As we walked down the ramp a roar like an explosion erupted above us; DeMarco Murray was running 91 yards on a kickoff return for a touchdown. We got to the bottom of the ramp in time to watch the replay on the screen above the snack stand.

I felt a little bummed that we’d missed it, and bummed that that old man hadn’t gotten to see it either. It’s an age-old question, isn’t it? Death is inevitable, and so what do we do when it happens? It felt dirty and wrong to be up there cheering loudly when this man’s life was changing forever - possibly ending. But then I thought, "You know, if it was me, I’d be okay with dying at a Sooners football game." But that didn’t make me want to go back to our seats any more. Instead, we went back to my mom’s house and watched the game with her. She made spaghetti, and we drank wine and talked about how much we hated George W. Bush.

Still, I can’t get that old man out of my mind. I’m not sure if he died or what, but I’d love to know. I’ve been scouring press reports of the game and the Norman newspapers, but I can’t find anything. In lieu of information, I’ll send up a prayer.

Sunday, October 28, 2007 | by nathan

15 Laterals

If you follow Division III NCAA football, good for you. My little brother played for the Trinity Tigers for five seasons, so when I saw this, which is probably the single greatest play in the history of college football, I have to say that I was incredibly proud of the team we followed around the country for years. Seriously, this is really, really awesome:

Sunday, October 7, 2007 | by nathan

He’s In Dallas

Just got back from Dallas about an hour ago. It was a great, restful weekend, if not a whole lot less eventful than I’d anticipated.

We rolled into DFW Friday night, stopped at Centennial for some Buffalo Trace (two bottles plus a bunch of the tiny little ones), then checked into the hotel. We mixed the whiskey with some Coke, thinking vaguely that we’d get happy and go out. Instead, we rented "The Simpsons Movie" on the hotel pay-per-view and fell asleep.

Saturday we got up about 8:30, and I went for a run in the hotel gym, albeit a short one. We left about 10:30 for the Texas State Fair. It took us over 3 hours to actually arrive near the fair, and once again I’m left to wonder WHERE THE HELL PEOPLE IN TEXAS LEARN HOW TO DRIVE BECAUSE SERIOUSLY? YOU’RE ALL FUCKING CRAZY. At any rate, we got to our seats about 5 minutes before the 2:30 kickoff. So, to recap - that’s twelve miles in FOUR HOURS. Luckily we’d brought several of the little whiskey bottles with us, which we mixed in our Cokes, but it was like a sauna in that crowd. By the third quarter we were all pretty miserable, except there was a fantastic football game going on, so we stuck it out.

Sooners kicked some Texas ass, in case you missed it.

It started raining right as the game ended, and there was a thunderstorm approaching, so that put the kibosh on our plans to hang out at the State Fair for awhile. We returned to the hotel to shower and change clothes, thinking we’d grab some Chipotle and head out to the bars later. Instead, we mixed a bunch more whiskey and Cokes and got real tired, talking ourselves out of going out and feeling really great about it.

This morning we went to Cafe Brazil for breakfast, then up to Grapevine Mills Mall for a few hours until I had to drop Brian off at some giant hotel in Grapevine for a trade show he’s attending tonight and tomorrow. He’s flying to Kansas after that, so I won’t see him again until Tuesday.

I drove home listening mostly to sad country music, missing Brian but holding it together because I make it my strict policy never to cry in Texas. When I crossed the Red River I thought I might lose it. However, perched atop the first overpass in Oklahoma were fifteen to twenty people, dressed all in crimson and cream, holding signs that said "Go Sooners!" and shouting as the cars passed underneath. I gave them the upside-down Texas sign and smiled, and I didn’t shed a tear the whole way home. 

Saturday, September 22, 2007 | by nathan

Not-Notre-Dame #1 vs. Not-Notre-Dame #2

I’m glad to see someone else was as pissed about the press coverage by ESPN2 of the Oklahoma-Tulsa game as I was last night.

Could we please, like, um, call the game we’re watching, instead of spending ten minutes talking to Lou Holtz about Notre Dame, blocking the entire screen off with Notre Dame’s schedule, and letting at least 3 penalties go unexplained because we’re too busy talking about Notre Fucking Dame?

The press coverage of Oklahoma has always been biased; during the Miami game two weeks ago they stopped calling the game to take five minutes to talk in detail about each of the Miami players and their relationship with their coach. Last night was far, far worse, however. Anybody else want to throw their beer through the TV, and only didn’t because - how sterotypically Oklahoman would that be? We don’t need another incident like this one. 

Monday, September 17, 2007 | by nathan

Like A Sad Country Song

Brian’s headed to Austin tonight for business; he won’t be home until late tomorrow night. Meanwhile, I’m going to be at home by myself fighting the mother of all allergy attacks alone. He gets to hang out at Katz’s and Underground Records while I’m at home riding the Afrin pony. Zah!

Also, at the OU-Utah State game this weekend I got what will hopefully be my last sunburn this summer. My grandparents were in town, and so after we left Norman, Brian and I headed to mom’s house to finish watching the game and to watch Texas come THISCLOSE to getting beat by Central Florida. That would’ve been nice, but I suppose once I get down to the Red River Rivalry it’ll make for better drama if both teams are undefeated.

First weekend in October, Dallas. Anyone wanna meet up at the Texas State Fair?

Thursday, September 6, 2007 | by nathan

The War of Moore

People from Oklahoma City tend to think of my hometown, Moore, as the white-trash suburb. It’s an apt description, because while there are certainly worse places you could live in the Oklahoma City area, Moore has the special distinction of not only being the most countrified place in the greater metropolitan area, but also it’s the hometown of one Toby Keith. You might’ve heard of him. The jingoist country singer who couldn’t find his asshole with both thumbs and a flashlight? That’s the one. Also, we were the ones who got the worst part of one of history’s worst tornado outbreaks. Amember that?

Moore, the town, is a small suburb of about 50,000 that was birthed during the Land Run of 1889 and grew exponentially during the "white flight" era of the ’50’s and ’60’s. Back then, Oklahoma City wasn’t providing educational access to the people living in the far southern parts of the area as they were, at the time, out of the city limits. So Moore came along and extended its school district to cover basically the entire southern third of the city.

Then, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, south Oklahoma City became a new suburban haven. It’s still one of the most economically expansive regions in the country and the zip code I lived in during high school, 73170, is still, technically, one of the richest zip codes in the state. This does not mean I’m rich; it happened by a miracle of zoning: residential areas went up so quickly that people seemed to forget - oh! Right! Commercial! We need a grocery store! It’s almost ALL HOUSES. 

So eventually Oklahoma City wanted that land - and those property taxes - back, and Moore told them to eat it. So now, Moore, a city of 50,000, has a school district of well over 100,000. My high school, Westmoore, is known colloquially as the "rich" high school, though I can assure you that most everyone there is but a generation away from poor white trash themselves. They only have that reputation because most of the houses in their part of the district were built in the last 20 years, and they have no FFA, which, when you think about it, is a shame.

Moore and Westmoore have a vicious rivalry that goes back to 1988, when Westmoore first opened. Their annual season-opener football game, Moore War, is one of the most well-attended and notorious high school games in the nation, with attendance well over 30,000 people every year. We lost it every year I was in high school, and every year my brother (who played on the Westmoore football team) was in high school.

Westmoore and Moore share a stadium, and so every year a different team gets the "home" side. The game always happens on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, though this year marked the first year it was ever played in August. 

This was the last real "Moore War." Next year a new high school is opening up in Moore, and the rivalry will be a three-way one. I wanted to go to commemorate the event, to watch that giant crowd gather one last time, split neatly down the line between two schools. In a way I’m really going to miss Moore War. 

Brian and I arrived about 30 minutes before game time, off-roading my truck into a field beside the stadium as there was no parking there, or at the Homeland across the street. We stood in line for most of the first quarter; by the time we got in Westmoore was up 13-0. 

At Moore War the stands fill up quickly, and people begin to congregate on the hill in the west end zone, so it looks like some kind of freaky Woodstock of high school football. The best part? They had mowed the grass THAT DAY. We stayed as long as we could, but I had to leave in the 3rd quarter because my allergies were going crazy. I’ve been having headaches ever since. Still and all, it was good fun, Westmoore won and apparently the 4th quarter was quite a nail-biter.

I wasn’t one of those people who hated high school. I knew pretty much everything we were doing was stupid, and I figured everyone else knew that, but I also knew that to get into a non-state school like Wake, which was my unhealthy obsession at the time, good grades and lots of extracurriculars were needed. Thing was, as I did all that stuff I grew to enjoy it, and I remember high school as being a mostly happy time. I’m glad we won.

Click the photo at top for more photos @ Flickr.