Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 21, 1994 TAG: 9410210030
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Ray Cox
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Conrad Dobler would have spit out his mouthpiece along with the teeth that broke off after he took a bite out of the arm of the other team's best player.
Pop Warner may have approved, but what do you expect out of a football coach with such a grandfatherly handle?
Art Donovan would have ordered three more beers to simmer his boiling blood after he heard.
What are we to make of this gesture, when, at the end of Pulaski County's 21-18 comeback win over Salem last week, Cougars coach Joel Hicks and Spartans boss Willis White strolled into each other's dressing quarters to speak kind words to the foe?
You could say that this was some sort of publicity stunt for the cameras except that ESPN isn't in the business of televising high school games.
Hicks and White, two of the state's (really the country's) most accomplished coaches aren't in the habit of playing to the cameras.
Or at least, that's the way it's shaken down to date.
So Coach Hicks, when was the last time you took a stroll behind enemy lines?
"I've never done it at all,'' said he.
Mr. White, sir, can you recall your last visit to the inner sanctum of an opponent?
"That's the first time in 31 years of coaching,'' the wise man of the Salem field house said.
Football, as we know, is not a game for those of weak constitution. This isn't a contest played in short pants, as one veteran of countless National Football League conflicts pointed out.
Football is a game in which you blitz, stick, hit, clobber, steamroll, rack up, bomb, and stomp the other team. You do that and you win, then go on to plot out strategy for the next conquest. If same is done to you, you lose and fall back to fight again another day.
Longstanding gridiron etiquette calls for a handshake between contestants after the dust clears. Judging from the limp, cold-haddock hand slaps seen on many a field Friday night and Saturday and Sunday afternoons, you wonder how much of that is heartfelt.
In the case of Hicks and White, this was no stunt. It was merely the act of those who wouldn't let a minor matter such as football get in the way of being a gentleman.
"I appreciate anybody who works hard and does a good job,'' Hicks said.
"Football needs something positive,'' White said.
Lord knows, White speaks from bitter experience. It was he, after all, who coached a team that lost a state semifinal game one year in part because it played by the rules while the other guys played in a bog in illegal footwear with the approval of their field marshal.
You hear of coaches who cuss opposing players who venture too near the wrong sideline. You hear of players who fling racial epithets in the privacy of a pileup. You hear of fans who shriek ugly insults at coaches and players from their own team who have the temerity to be failing in a game of football.
You hear coaches baiting officials, like this exchange in a game earlier this autumn:
"That's all I have to say until I catch you away from the field sometime,'' one genius with headphones said.
"Are you threatening me, coach?'' said the man in black and white.
Hicks and White had kinder motives.
White spoke of Pulaski County's tremendous comeback from down and out to outta sight.
"It was a heck of a ballgame the way Pulaski County came off the floor like that,'' he said. "You don't often see that.''
Said Hicks:
"Both sides played so well that you hate that somebody has to lose. That was a great high school football game. Mercy.''
Mercy isn't a word often associated with this particular form of athletic endeavor. Once was the day it was said, better to cut off one's own arm and hurl it into the water bucket than use it to assist a fallen foe.
Perhaps that sort of take-no-prisoners mentality is seen more often in the play-for-cash form of the sport, but everybody knows that the pro mindset filters down to the college, high school, and -- heaven help us all -- lower levels of the game.
You don't play football in short pants. You shouldn't play it with a short fuse.
Play hard. Play to win. Shake hands after it's over.
You can't fabricate class. You either are classy or you ain't.
Hicks and White are.
I say, give me one of Art Donovan's brews and hoist a toast to those guys.
And may God bless 'em.
Ray Cox is a Roanoke Times & World-News sportswriter.
by CNB