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Did you play football, at any level?


Ray Stonada

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7 minutes ago, Ray Stonada said:

 

I think I'm missing the joke here...

commercial from several years ago that implies his knowledge of football came from staying at a hotel, because you apparently have to be smart to choose to stay at that hotel, so you apparently become an expert at other things vicariously....   On second thought, you're right, it makes no sense...  ;)

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2 minutes ago, Ray Stonada said:

 

That's pretty cool. Makes sense that they play games in London now... I wonder if they're seriously considering putting a team there.

 

I think that was the long term plan. Who knows how the world settles down after all this. I wonder if flying sports teams all around the world quite as much as we did is going to be considered a good idea. We have a crazy situation in soccer where Liverpool played a German team in Hungary last night, Arsenal are playing a Portuguese team in Greece it is all over the place. Complete mess. 

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7 minutes ago, teef said:

i played pop warner all the way through high school.  i think the football that kids get in high school if far more advanced that anything we ever learned.  whether that's a function of the team i was on, (the coaches were the math and science teachers) or the times, i have no idea.  

For some reason I have this image of a high school aged teef running around and throwing little kids aside as he scored a touchdown - AGAIN!

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1 minute ago, GunnerBill said:

 

I think that was the long term plan. Who knows how the world settles down after all this. I wonder if flying sports teams all around the world quite as much as we did is going to be considered a good idea. We have a crazy situation in soccer where Liverpool played a German team in Hungary last night, Arsenal are playing a Portuguese team in Greece it is all over the place. Complete mess. 

 

Yep, good point. Staying closer to home might be the rule for the next few years. The soccer leagues confuse me, I never understand all the different leagues teams play in... it feels like if the Bills were in the NFL but also two or three other competitions running at the same time.

 

Sounds like your experience in the university league was similar to mine playing intramural. Weirdly, my friends who played serious college football seem less interested in watching it than I do.

 

 

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Played TE/DE on Varsity in HS. I was only 180 lbs.

Broken hand half way through the first season.

We used to crush our heads in practice and games all the time.

Would get my "bell wrung" often (likely mini concussions)

Have back problems to this day and blame football for it.

I think that downward impact did something to my spine.

 

My kid stopped playing after 6th grade. I'm glad he did.

 

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40 minutes ago, DD4Bills said:

Played youth football for a couple of years when I lived in East Amherst in the early 70s, then played a couple of years in Canada. Stopped playing when I was ~12...wasn't very good and focused on hockey instead.

Just out of curiosity, when Canadians play sandlot football do they play with 3 or 4 downs?

 

Soccer in HS here, intramural flag football in college and some organized flag in my 30's and 40's.

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I played organized football in grade school and junior high. Pretty simple schemes, so it didn't help me understand football at the NFL level. It does, however, help me to appreciate a good open-field tackler, as that was one of my weaknesses.

 

 

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I played in the youth league starting at 9 years old through HS when I graduated at 17. Had the opportunity to play at a Division III school in college at Randolph-Macon here in VA, but chose not to go to college instead because it would have been as a walk-on. Didn't want to go into debt myself or put my family in any more debt than they already were either.  

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16 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

I think that was the long term plan. Who knows how the world settles down after all this. I wonder if flying sports teams all around the world quite as much as we did is going to be considered a good idea. We have a crazy situation in soccer where Liverpool played a German team in Hungary last night, Arsenal are playing a Portuguese team in Greece it is all over the place. Complete mess. 

I was always assuming it would be the Jaguars that moved to London, but now that they will have one of the "premier" young QB's in the league, it seems a bit more unlikely.  

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5 minutes ago, buffaloboyinATL said:

I was always assuming it would be the Jaguars that moved to London, but now that they will have one of the "premier" young QB's in the league, it seems a bit more unlikely.  

 

In principle I agree but it depends if the people of Jacksonville come out and support them. Thought I suspect covid had delayed any thought of a London team anyway. Can't see any progress in the next decade.

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By the way, regarding the original question, I played for 3 years in High School.  It was tough starting in 9th grade because many of the guys on the team had already been playing for several years and knew the game, blocking techniques, etc. much better than I did and it took a couple of years to catch up.  I had the "intangibles" to be a good QB (6'4" roughly 200 lbs., strong arm etc.) but when the coach tried me there, it was obvious that I did not have the game knowledge at that time to be a QB, so they threw me on the line because of my size, but I was never really that good.  Ironically, my strength and knowledge of the game caught up when I got to college, but by then I wasn't playing any more. I always wondered if I would have been better if I started earlier.  (My mother was a nurse and never let me play before HS because she said she didn't want me to get injured)  

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2 years JV.  1 year Varsity.  Was battling the 5’9 140lb (I was 6’2 190) coaches son at QB as a junior and lost the competition....as we went 0-11.  I played some TE and LB.  I had a heart to heart with the coach prior to my senior year where he told me it would be an “open competition” in which he received every 1st team rep, and 90% of the reps through the first 2 weeks of camp.  Realizing I was wasting my time trying to play QB, I talked to the soccer coach and he took me on after not playing soccer since middle school.  Started at sweeper all season and we placed second in section.  Had a blast.  The football team went 0-11.  
 

 

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1 hour ago, JohnNord said:

Through middle and high school.  Wasn’t good enough to play at a college level

I was good enough, but not good enough for the recruiters to give me a scholarship to play (Colgate).  So I didn't as I was pretty banged up coming out of HS (DE, OT) and could see myself getting blown up pretty good by much bigger guys at the college level ( I was young and lighter for my grade).   Would have been fun to try to earn the scholarship after 1 year, but glad I did not.  

 

Pro game is very recognizable to me albeit executed with so much more size, complexity, speed and talent.   The game is still pretty much the game.   

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