High School Football: The Gridiron Grump goes incognito
Guess Who's Back – The season's first grumblings and game picks from your favorite cantankerous prep football fan
The Gridiron Grump / Special to Blast Zone Media
blastzonenews@gmail.com
HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL
Just when you thought the decade-long nightmare was over, it happened again. All false hope for common ground and civil discourse was instantly vaporized the moment the dreaded boogieman returned.
That is to say – The Gridiron Grump is back.
And I’ve been keeping a lower profile than usual, because you just never know who might have it out for The Grump. But you can bet your bottom dollar I’ve been lurking around these local football fields a lot longer than you’d believe.
Of course, some will say I’m a liar, but I’ve been back in this dredged swamp land since before Week 1. It’s just that you might not recognize me. Ever since the council passed that pesky ordinance to crack down on camping inside the city limits I’ve been forced to go incognito. So I’ve traded the trusty-rusty ol’ Winnebago out for a van, and I’ve been following that long white line toward the promised land where tubas and fullbacks collide.
It’s that dopamine rush that’s kept me coming back to these parts almost each and each and every fall since before conspiracy theories were true. And as always, I still spend most of my nights down by the river eating sausages from a tin can, but my Friday nights in the fall are still reserved for high school football.
Come to think of it, so are Thursday nights and Saturday afternoon, and sometimes Mondays, if I want to heckle the JV kids away from the spotlight.
Now you may be wondering? “Dear Mr. Grump, if you’ve been here all along why haven’t we seen any grumblings from you yet?”
Well, the answer to that is two-fold, my fine feathered friends. First of all, this is where I’d give you some sort of excuse, but I’m too lazy for all that. In fact, I’ve been working on myself in the offseason in order to free my mind from the tyranny of the editor’s deadline. Rather than feeling bad about where I’m not, I’ve been trying to feel good about where I am. (Which, to be honest, was an irritating sentence to write down just now. I guess I’m not a finished product just yet.)
So when the first round of Friday night lights came and went, I felt no compulsion to put pen to paper. The truth is I just wasn’t feeling grumpy. After all, the only teams from The Blast Zone who lost their openers were teams who had to play other teams from the area. Heck, even Winlock won big and its No. 1 Super Fan was doing a darn good job of letting the lengthy list of doubters know all about it on social media.
It was textbook grumpiness following a win, and I wholeheartedly endorse that vibe. But you’v got to keep the same energy all season long. That’s the tricky part.
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