Greatest Fall of All (eBook)

Ed Tonore (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
406 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-5786-0 (ISBN)

Infos

It began as a tribute to his father. Every weekend for an entire season, Ed Tonore set out to attend the highest-rated college football game in the country. Not only did his national quest remind him of the history and traditions of American football, but it taught Ed how great the people in America are and how important it is to cross things off of your bucket list. Having documented his journey on his blog, Ed pulls from those posts in this compilation of sights, sounds, tailgates, traditions, and the history of each university he visited during the season. The icing on the cake is a bonus section of recipes from the most popular restaurants in these college towns. Many of these "e;must-visit"e; restaraunts shared their signature recipes with Ed. Entertaining, informative, and witty, you don't have to be a football fan to enjoy the ride!

Textauszug

Prologue

As I stood to leave the stadium with two minutes left I looked up in the nighttime sky and something magical happened. Looking towards the lights I saw what I had waited sixty-one years to see. Snowflakes! I had always dreamed of seeing a college football game in the snow. Okay, so it was inside the two-minute mark, and I was leaving my seat, but still I took it as an omen.

Something good was in the air for this 2017 college football season. I don’t know that most people feel the same way I do about watching snow fall during a game, but being from the Deep South, it’s a dream I’d had my whole life. As I left the venerable old stadium I could hear the band and remaining fans singing that song again. The most famous fight song of all.

Cheer Cheer for old Notre Dame, Wake up the echoes cheering her name…

I am a longtime LSU fan, but growing up in a Catholic family with many Catholic aunts, uncles and cousins we also always pulled for Notre Dame. I’ve always been an LSU fan, but I’m even more of a college football fan and this is my story, the story of a college football season, and how this fan enjoyed it.

Sports is one of the most influential dynamics of our lives. We play it, we watch it, we experience emotional ups and downs because of it. Whether you’re nervously watching a loved one play, reminiscing about when you were on the field yourself, or just following your favorite team, sports is undeniably woven into the fabric of our existence.

Man has invented many sports to play and watch, but for me crowds, the color, the pageantry and traditions of American college football cannot be matched. One fan fact is that most people are knowledgeable about their favorite university’s football traditions, but have only a passing understanding of the wonderful traditions at other college football programs from all over the country. Until you sit in Brigham Young stadium with the Wasatch mountains as a backdrop, tailgated on a boat in the Tennessee river before a Tennessee matchup, or watched and listened to the horn section of the Notre Dame band play under the Gold Dome, you can’t fully appreciate what game day wonders are happening all over our great nation. The passion and intensity that college football fans pour into the allegiance to their teams is only matched by international soccer.

But, answer me this: Do soccer matches have a live tiger in a cage rolling around the field before they start? Or a live buffalo charging onto the field? Do soccer teams have huge precision marching bands to stir the imagination pregame and perform intricate formations at intermission? Do soccer teams have beautiful cheerleaders? Do they have midnight yell practice with 80,000 screaming fans? Do soccer matches have tailgates lowered and tents raised with carefully prepared cuisine fit for a king? I know the answer. It’s NO!

And don't get me started on how exciting a 1-0 soccer game can be. About as dull as a dollar pocket knife. By the numbers, international soccer may be the world’s most popular sport, but American college football is the world's greatest game on any field of play. Wait, someone said just asked, “What about PRO Football?”

Never head of it. Didn't know it existed.

If I had to guess, we’re probably talking about a bunch of spoiled rich athletes who won’t stand for our national anthem, nor even know the words to it. Probably all about “show me the money” and team loyalty is synonymous with “long gone.”

Okay, so I do know pro football. And, sure, not all the players are like that, but, lately those who are have been their own worst enemy. Nope, college football is the “bomb” and this means “really good” in today’s jargon.

I originally discovered my love for college football when I was seven years old. My mother and stepfather took me to a Louisiana State University (LSU) game in 1957. My stepfather got tickets to the LSU/Mississippi State game late in the year when his boss at Yawn Manufacturing Company, a steel fabrication company in Baton Rouge, gave them to him. Seems the boss’s nephew was playing for LSU and he had player’s tickets. When I asked who the player was so I could follow him, my stepfather said some sophomore by the name of Billy Cannon. Since freshmen couldn't play back then, this was Cannon's first varsity season and he had been doing very well. Mississippi State won 14-6 but that didn't dampen my spirits. To me the crowd, the band and a tiger in his cage on the sideline were more exciting than the Zephyr roller coaster ride at Pontchartrain Beach in New Orleans.

Cannon went on to win the Heisman Trophy award in 1959. He became my hero after we were invited to his house and he threw the football to me and we took pictures. The Heisman Trophy is given each year to the most outstanding college player. That’s taking the top spot from some 20,000 plus college football players. Cannon was still my hero even after he got busted and served time for counterfeiting money. After all, he said people got him into bad investments and he needed money for his family.

Forty years later at an LSU booster club meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, where Cannon was the guest speaker I thanked him for that day. With a lump in my throat, I stood up and described how kind and generous he and his wife had been to me when I was nine years old. The assembled crowd oohed and ahhhed, and said, How nice. But Cannon’s response to my story was not well received. “Man,” he said, “I must be getting real old when some old gray-haired dude says he was a kid when I won the Heisman.”

“Hero no more, Counterfeit Cannon!” was what I thought. But I kept it to myself, so he could have his comic moment before the crowd.

After the LSU Tigers only broke even in 1957, winning five games and losing five, not much was expected from the team in 1958. But when my Tigers began winning game after game, the whole hometown of Baton Rouge, where I lived, and the rest of Louisiana began hyperventilating over prospects for a shot at the national title. It would be the first time in fifty years. The excitement was contagious and my father came down with a good case of Tiger Flu. Now he wanted to go to every game, and he began taking me on the weekends. He usually brought a cousin my age, and we would meet my uncle Louis Tonore and his wife, Aunt Virginia. Uncle Louis was my godfather, and I always felt like he was my second father.

I might nowadays forget things I did yesterday, but I’ll never forget those ballgames and everything I did with my dad on those weekends. My father lived five hours away, but I was seeing him almost weekly. Funny, how I still remember the smallest detail about every visit these sixty years later. Our favorite pregame place was The Pastime Lounge where we would devour the best pizzas and po-boys in Baton Rouge. The adults drank bourbon over ice or with water and we youngsters sat in and soaked up their stories about what was happening around the country in college football. Maybe I’d hear some radio announcer over the speakers in the restaurant say something like, “SMU beat UCLA today,” and I’d say “Wow cool!” It didn’t matter that I had no clue what those letters stood for. To me, the announcement sounded cooler than a coke float.

My father never had tickets in advance. He always waited and bought them from individuals standing around outside the stadium. He would hold up two fingers, which meant he was looking to buy two tickets. And he would only buy them below face value. Just when I’d think we were ready to go in and get our seats, he’d hold up the tickets, raise the price, and resell them for a profit. The process was nerve wracking to me. I was afraid we’d never get in. But, he’d work his magic, and we’d have great tickets and he made enough money to pay for our concessions and his gas for the ride home. He also took the time to teach me how to patiently find tickets, figure out the value based on availability, and how to negotiate the price down. This childhood exercise in gridiron capitalism would serve me well later in life.

It was during our wonderful time together at football games that I began to hear my father talk about how before I was born and shortly thereafter, he and some other guys would sometimes pick out the best college football game in the South that was in driving distance and they’d go to that game. They went without tickets but always got in and also made sure they checked out the best eating spots in that town.

When I was in middle school, I began selling programs at LSU games and my dad didn’t come to as many games. When I graduated from law school and opened a practice in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, across from Hal & Mal’s restaurant, I could afford to buy season tickets to the LSU games. But I couldn’t get Big Ed to go anymore. Despite my best efforts, no matter how I tempted him, he said his couch was more comfortable. Plus, he could watch more games.

Also, he had remarried and had another son twelve years younger than me. He was growing up in Dad’s house. He had responsibilities to my younger brother, Ronnie, and the pull to meet me for a game had diminished. The years of our game day weekends quietly melted away. But those wonderful times when Big Ed and I did have together at the football games were indelibly etched in my mind. And, when Dad got...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.1.2019
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Sport
• ISBN-10: 1-5439-5786-2 / 1543957862
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5439-5786-0 / 9781543957860