Get Stoked: Football / Explosions in the Sky “Your Hand in Mine”

I don’t really follow football due to some deep affection for the game itself.  I don’t play fantasy football (jock D&D) and I don’t keep up on every trade,  draft or stadium construction.  I watch the game during the seasons more to drink beer and eat chicken with the homies–and as long as Bill Parcels lives in New England, I’ll always have something to rub in my douchebag friend’s faces.  And that’s nice.

My real interest in Football is that compared to other sports, there is a warlike mentality that is more interesting than just pure individual atheleticsim.  Football is conflict.  And it 22 dudes on a field battling like roman warriors.  And that aspect is what drew me to playing it as a kid.

I grew up in Vermont in the 80s.  To put this in the greater cultural timeline for you, this was the era of being called a faggot everyday just for riding a skateboard.   Also being punched in the face occasionally for wearing pink chuck taylors–which was totally worth it.  Those shoes were fly.  And I can take a punch.

In the movies you find your set in highschool and pretty much hang exclusively with them.  Stoners, jocks, drama nerds whatever.  But I thought that was kind of bullshit.  These future plumbers and appliance salesmen were going to call me a fag?  So I decided to play football.  I liked having blue hair and fucking people up. No I didn’t want to listen to Zepplin in the locker room with them.  And I wouldn’t say I made real friends with any of them.  And I wasn’t very good at football other than hitting people well.  But that wasn’t the point.  The point was to go to war.  The point was to do this thing that they all held sacred–and do it just as well as them.  And then go out and skate afterwards.