Goodman: Alabama’s official guide to football in the snow
This is an opinion column.
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The best thing about pick-up football in the snow is that there are snow rules.
Which is to say, no rules at all.
Anything goes, and I mean AN … E … THANG.
Horse collars, yes.
Leg drops, yes.
Pile ons, yes.
Pile drivers, yes.
Tripping and/or “kagging,” yes to both.
Forearm shivers, yes.
Snowball decoys, yes.
Snowballs to the face, yes.
Forward pass, good luck with socks on your hands, but yes.
Lose teeth? Ignore it until the snow melts.
Tackling children, yes.
Tackling girls, yes.
Tackling after the play, yes.
Tackling before the play, yes.
This is the “Official Alabama Guide to Playing Football in the Snow,” and if you don’t know what “kagging” is then you probably got off pretty easy during your childhood years. For the rest of us, we learned how to time our kag-escaping jumps on the football field before the age of eight years old.
The snow is coming to the Deep South, or so they say. It rarely snows in Alabama. If and when it does, God help us all. Something clicks in our brains, and it’s not good. People revert to a primitive state of consciousness ingrained somewhere deep down in our cerebrums from the last ice age.
It’s not our fault, though. That’s just how we were raised.
We’re Southern folks in the snow. Ice is called snow. Freezing rain is called snow. Sleet is called snow. We hoard food, but don’t shovel or plow because we want the white stuff to last as long as possible. We use trash can lids for sleds. We throw snowballs at every moving car including the mail trucks and the cops. We call beanies by their proper Southern names, toboggans. We cover our hands with anything but actual gloves because who the heck owns gloves? We wrap our children in five layers of clothes before letting them step outside. We instinctively make chili and soup and then exclusively live off hot chocolate and whiskey.
But why?
For many of us, the debased savagery of snow rules in the Deep South began with pick-up football games in vacant lots, parks and open fields.
I can’t speak for every enclave and hamlet in Alabama, but back in Irondale the front yards were off limits in the snow. That’s why everyone went to the park. “Messing up” someone’s snow in their front yard was punishable by death.
Who’s front yard would have snow last? That was our biggest concern when we were kids.
When it snowed, the place to be back in Irondale was Beacon Park. That’s where everyone went. I was in eighth grade in 1993, the year for what James Spann calls our generational snow-in.
But we didn’t stay indoors in Irondale. Heck no. We all went to Beacon Park for the most epic game of pick-up snow football in the history of Alabama.
No less than 50 kids, one ball and no rules — football the way it was meant to be played. We were all wrapped in five layers of clothes, so it’s not like any of us could get hurt. I think even some kids from Mountain Brook showed up.
Our friends from the Brook might already have known how to play football, but the Irondale crew taught them how to “kag” that day.
The secret to pick-up football in the snow is don’t even try to pass. Passing is for the uninitiated. Passing is for people who maybe own gloves. We had double socks on our hands and triple socks on our feet. Just full-on power run and maximum fun every play.
And no one keeps score or time in the snow either. Punting? Against the rules. Field goals? No way, nerd.
There’s also no out-of-bounds. Hills are in play and so are streets.
Games last all day and into the night depending on how long the snow sticks around. No one stops to eat. No one stops to rest. Only stop to throw snowballs at the cops. And if you go home to thaw out, then chances are pretty good that your mom isn’t going to let you back outside.
So never go home.
The snow is coming, they say. It’s time for a new generation to earn their stripes. It’s time for pick-up football in the snow all day and into the night.
No video games. No iPhones. No rules. Send your kids outside, moms, and lock the doors. Alabama, make us proud.
If you can’t feel your face or hands at the end of the game, then you did it right.
BE HEARD
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Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”
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