I was never a football player. Wiry, short, and a little bit shy, I missed out on joining the team, never even considered trying out. It seemed a bit foolish. Why would I want to submit myself to tackling or being tackled by guys at least fifty pounds heavier than myself? I opted instead to become a band geek, banging on the bass drum in a red uniform, complete with a feather in my cap.
Whenever I didn’t play drums, I watched the games from the sidelines. The Falconeers was my high school team and I was never sure what a falconeer was. A falconer trains falcons. What does that make a falconeer? Who knows. Who cares. Our high school team lost more games than they won. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I played a mean bass drum.
After high school I went to Nebraska State. I played drums for the Cornhuskers. That team name made even less sense than the Falconeers. Aren’t team names designed to strike fear into the hearts of the opposing team: Names like Wolverines, Hurricanes, Lions and Tigers and Bears oh my, right? How does Corn Husking strike fear in anyone’s heart? Should the cheerleaders shout, “We’re gonna rip your ears off?”
But the Cornhuskers won more games than the Falconeers had, and I got to wear a mostly-red uniform again as I marched around the field with my big bass drum.
I got to know the team pretty well during those college days, although I only remember their last names. There was Krupke the quarterback, who was tall and lean but could throw a ball half the length of the field. He was a bit of a jerk, lording over us band kids. Jerome Jones was a teddy bear packed into the body of a semi truck. He always corrected anyone who called him wrong. His name was Jeremy Jones, not Je-rome, regardless of how it was spelled. Lincoln was the Defensive captain. Washington ran like the wind and dodged the craftiest defensive lineman. Nixon was their kicker. We called those three the Hall of Presidents.
Yes, we had a winning team that Junior year, until about midseason, when they played the Iowa Hawkeyes.
Don’t ask me why our ear-tearing Cornhuskers would lose to a team named after a bird’s peepers. I guess a corn farmer wouldn’t like hungry birds all too well. Why not just put up a scarecrow? Instead, the Cornhuskers lost to their rivals, 28 to 3. Yes, we got a field goal.
The next few games were dismal. Nebraska went from being the top team to fourth place in the matter of a month. The chance of playing in a bowl moved farther and farther away. Suddenly Krupke wasn’t so rude. Jeremy stopped correcting people from calling him Je-rome, and Washington stopped crossing the Delaware, if that makes any sense.
It was after an away game that it happened. The Huskers had lost to Ohio State, 54 to Zero. How could any team lose to a bunch of tree seeds? Buckeyes tend to lay on the ground until they grow roots, right? When did they start playing football?
Anyway, the Buckeyes had left the stadium and the Huskers were sitting down in their muddy uniforms, nursing their wounded pride yet spoiling for a fight. They didn’t want to start another row with victorious Ohio State, so they turned to us band members. We were just fooling around on the sidelines, trying to play “Hang on Sloopy.”
“Hey Banditos!” Krupke yelled. That was his pet name for us band players. “Banditos!” he repeated, louder this time.
“What?” Joey the trombonist yelled back.
“Get out here! Let’s play a game!”
“What kind of game?” Joey shouted.
“Football you lame brain! What else? Come out here! We need the practice! We’ll play a pickup game!”
“You mean you forgot to bring Candyland? No way! You’ll whip our pants off.” Joey hated football. He had the long hair, granny glasses, and manner of a Sixties stoner. In fact, in his band uniform he resembled John Lennon from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. No, he wanted nothing to do with football. He’d rather spend the time hiding out beneath the bleachers with a bong. He hadn’t yet been caught, but we knew he lived on borrowed time.
“Go on! Get in the locker room and find some uniforms!” Krupke ordered.
“No! You can’t order us around like that.”
“We’re bigger than you.” Jerome Jones, the largest member of the team said this. They called him Bulldozer and he must have weighed over three hundred pounds of pure muscle.
“We have Kat! He can sit on you.” Kat was the largest member of the band, and he played the tuba. He must have weighed the same as Bulldozer, but it was pure fat.
“Ooh, I’m scared.”
“Shut up, Krupke!” Washington stood up from where he had been doing his post-game stretches. He was a bit of a professor type, without the glasses. Washington was an engineering student. He didn’t need football to get by. He said he did it for the chance to get physical.
“How’s about we offer them a reason to play, besides pure pain avoidance.” Washington gave Krupke an accusing side glance. “How’s about we tell ‘em that if they win, We’ll switch places with them for the rest of the season, and if we win, well, nothing.”
“Nothing?” Krupke fumed. “Why would we agree to that?”
“Because we want to have some fun. It’s obvious they won’t win, so why would they agree to anything else?”
“So, what do you mean by switching places?” Spitz asked this question. He was short, skinny and couldn’t tackle a chipmunk. Oh, and he was the only male flutist.
“Yeah, Washington! What do you mean?” Krupke continued to fume.
“I mean, they play our final five games of football, and we will play in the band.”
“We can’t do that, we don’t know musical stuff,” Number 23 complained. “..And what do you mean only five more games?”
Maggie Letzelter, another flutist, scratched her head. “Okay, 23.” She didn’t know his name either. “First you act like you can’t beat us, the band kids, by inferring that you could possibly lose to us and have to know, um, ‘musical stuff,’ then you question the fact that Washington left out the postseason by saying you only had five more games to play, in spite of the fact that you’ve lost four games in a row. So, if you really think you could lose to us and have to play in the band, then how on Earth could you think you could make the postseason by winning against actual football teams?”
“Shut up, egghead.” Krupke sneered.
“We’ll play,” said Maggie, as she straightened the glasses on her nose.
“We? What are you gonna do, Mags? We don’t need cheerleaders and you don’t look the part. I know. You can kick.”
“What are you talking about, Smith? I can’t kick. I was thinking more of offense.”
“You can’t do offense!” Krupke shouted.
“Yes, I guess you’re right. I’m not near as offensive as you. I’m on offense anyway.”
“…But Mags, we didn’t say we’d play.” Ronnie Orono, the tallest bando and a saxophonist, said. The other bandmembers all nodded in agreement.
“What? You’re all gonna leave me to play these bums alone?”
“I’ll play.” I raised my hand as if I had the answer in class. I always had a thing for Maggie. It was the pig tails, definitely the pig tails.
“There you go. Me and Jimmy Dugan, just like that fife and drum painting from the Revolution, marching all over you jokers.” Everyone looked at Maggie strange.
“What fife and drum painting?” I asked.
“Never mind. Who else? Who wants to show these football players who’s boss?”
Hunter Zdozni…. That Hunter kid who plays the trumpet raised his hand. “I’m not volunteering,” he quickly corrected. “I’m just wondering why we would play football against a bunch of football players for the impossible reward of playing more football against other football players. Get my drift? Why not challenge them to a band-off; meet them on our turf, not theirs?”
A number of us banditos murmured agreement.
“That offer’s not on the table,” dismissed Krupke.
“We’ll play,” came a deep voice from the sidelines. The French horn player known as Bruce Washington stepped forward. He was the football-playing Washington’s younger brother and the unofficial coolest guy in the band. If Bruce said he would play, then the rest of us would. It was unstated, yet a known fact. We lowered our heads and prepared ourselves mentally for the mauling.
“Great! You’ll need uniforms.” Krupke grinned.
“Where are we gonna get uniforms?” Spitz asked, concerned.
“I don’t know! Go check the Buckeye locker room!” Krupke shouted.
We all headed to the home team locker room, girls included. We knew the Buckeyes were long gone, out celebrating their win. “Do they leave their locker room unlocked?” someone asked.
Maggie opened the locker room door and marched right in. “Guess they do.”
We took a look around the Buckeye locker room. It was a mess. “When do they clean it?” Monique Dominique, a clarinetist asked. “It smells like B.O.”
“I dunno,” I answered. “Do any of us look like we know the cleaning schedule for rival college locker rooms?”
“I found the uniform laundry cart. Eww.” Spitz held his nose.
“I found the clean uniforms!”
I don’t know if they always do this at Ohio Stadium, but at the time we were looking for football uniforms, there was a room full of them, clean ones, and it was unlocked. We went in there and began trying them on, then figured out sizes as best we could, although none fit either Spitz, Maggie, or some of the other girls. It took us a while to figure out the shoulder pads and undergear, which us boys put on apart from the girls, who threw the athletic supporters aside after making faces. Joey made some comment about the helmets covered with pot leaf stickers. I told him they were buckeye leaves, not marijuana. He said, “that’s what you think.”
We were soon all dressed up and out the door, ready to face our fate.
“Hey! What took you girls so long to get suited up?” Krupke yelled.
“It takes a while to fit ourselves into these things,” June Cardinale, third trumpet yelled.
“No, I meant all of you banditos as girls, even the boys. Oh, never mind. Let’s play. You do know football, right?”
“Hold on! We have to figure out who does what. Oh, and we found some flags in there.” Joey held up a red piece of cloth.
“Flags? Flags are for sissies.”
“Unless you want to pay my hospital bill, we’re playing with flags,” Maggie shrieked.
“Fine! Flags it is, you sissies.” Krupke shook his head in disgust, but he put on a belt with two blue flags on it. There would be no tackling in this game of football. I breathed a sigh of relief. My parents were uninsured at the time and if I rung up a hospital bill, they’d probably kill me personally.
I know we looked pretty stupid, wearing shoulder pads and helmets with red and blue flags hanging from our belts, but I didn’t care. Nobody was taking pictures. We huddled up and decided who would be what.
“I’m offense,” Maggie said again.
“We know,” every bando answered in unison.
We made a quick decision. The girls would be offense, and the boys would be defense with the exception of myself, who they chose to be quarterback. Don’t ask me why. Probably because I wore the number 52 jersey, and number 52 was the Buckeye quarterback. We chose a kicker in Ravi Rajbanshi, another drummer. Don’t ask me why. I think he told us he was a natural at kickball in grade school. We motioned to the real Cornhuskers that we were ready to start.
“Who’s got a quarter?” Washington asked. Someone pulled out a penny and they said it would do. We flipped and won something that day. We would start.
“Yeah! Huskers versus Banditos!” Krupke yelled. But he would be sitting out at first, as their defense took the field against our girls, and me.
We huddled up. “Okay,” I began, knowing I should say something. “Okay, Britney, you go left. Sam, you go right. Maggie?”
“Shut up, Dugan. They haven’t even kicked off yet.” The apple of my eye put me in my place.
Nixon punted the ball and it almost reached our end zone. In fact, it landed right in June’s open arms. She just stared at it as the unprepared Husker defense started running our way.
“Run!” we all yelled. June ran, holding the ball with two arms in front of her like it was a barrel of molasses. She stopped and started dancing left and right as the Bulldozer faced her, also dancing left and right. He’d never tackled a girl before, especially one as hot as June. He soon realized that he didn’t have to tackle her. She had flags. He lunged at one, but she came to her senses, dodged, altered how she held the football, and sprinted like an Olympian. I had forgotten that she also ran in track. The Huskers just stared for a second, then took chase, but it was already too late. The Banditos scored the first touchdown of the game, on the kickoff. June performed the Macarena in the end zone.
I called a huddle but Maggie waved me off. “We’re off the field!” she yelled.
Ravi kicked for the seventh point but missed the goal post.
He ran back and punted, sending the football a full twenty feet in the air, then another twenty on the ground, to rest at the forty-yard line. We had doubts about our kicker.
Washington grabbed up the ball and started running directly by Joey, who reached out and grabbed his red flag. Washington kept running, and our defense, sans Joey, kept chasing, all the way to the end zone. Washington dropped the football triumphantly and taunted us with the chicken dance. Joey just stood there smiling at the thirty-yard line, holding up the red flag.
“Crap those flags!” Krupke screamed.
Yes, this wasn’t their version of football.
The Huskers returned to the thirty-yard line. They huddled up, and us Banditos could see fists raised and words shouted, but the wind had picked up and no words could be understood. I watched our boys get in the line from the sidelines. We were truly a motley crew. Fat Katz stood in the middle, next to tall Ronnie. Joey, Hunter, Bruce, and Spitz made up the front line. We didn’t have a rear line, which I know doesn’t make a proper defense, but this wasn’t proper football and the Huskers had adjusted with only six on their offense, including the quarterback. The cheerleader bus had already left, so the Huskers who couldn’t play remained on the sidelines, shouting cheers. I thanked God they had no pom poms and never attempted a human pyramid.
Following the next huddle, the Huskers were ready. #23 plowed right through Spitz and caught a beautiful pass in the end zone. 23 wasn’t much of a dancer, so he performed a John-Travolta finger-point stance. Nixon kicked the ball directly between the uprights, so the Huskers led seven to our six.
As we took the field I yelled, “Hey! Who’s keeping time?”
Everyone nodded their heads and looked at everyone else, but nobody claimed responsibility.
“If we don’t keep time, then how do we know how long to play and when to declare a winner?” I asked.
“What difference does it make? Y’all are gonna lose anyway!” Krupke chided.
“How do you know that?” Maggie grilled.
“A’ight, we’ll play ‘till the busses come to get us. How does that sound?”
“Whatever!” I replied, just wanting to get the game over with, and wondering why the busses hadn’t arrived yet.
Upon the kickoff, the ball fell in the end zone. Nixon was a much better kicker than Ravi. Monique snatched it up and made it a good thirty yards before O’Brien snatched her flag.
We took the field and huddled up. This time Maggie took charge. “I played pee wee football. My brothers talked me into it. Most fun I ever had. Anyway… Junie, you can run but I’m not sure if you can catch when the ball doesn’t fall directly in your arms. Yolanda, you can catch. I remember how many times you caught losers out in dodgeball.”
“Yo, that wasn’t a football,” Yolanda corrected.
“Just humor me. Anyway, catch it and go that way, June goes this way. Dugan, fake to June, then throw to Yo, got it?”
“Sounds good,” I agreed.
“Good. Let’s go. Hand slap.”
“What?” we asked.
“Hand slap!” Maggie held up her open hand, so we all slapped it. “Good enough.”
“What were we supposed to do?” I asked as we broke the huddle.
“Just take position, Dugan!”
The Huskers all grimaced at us, attempting to strike fear into our hearts. It worked, but we fought the urge to run. Someone blew a whistle and they all headed directly towards me. I faked to June, then threw to Maggie. She missed the ball and shrieked, “Not me you idiot!” I glanced over at Yolanda. She was wide open, giving me a rude gesture.
In the huddle, Maggie said three words only. “Let’s try again.” She didn’t try the hand slap again.
We formed up and this time the Huskers growled. They looked ridiculous. The whistle blew, June stepped back, turned, and raised up her jersey. “Wha? I stammered, staring at her back as her hands held up the front. All the Huskers had stopped and stared. I noticed Yolanda, once again wide open, and threw. She made it a good thirty yards before O’Brien snatched her flag. Apparently O’Brien was much better at snatching flags than he was at tackling.
“What was with flashing the players?” I asked June.
“Who flashed the players? I’m wearing a bra and T-shirt beneath this jersey. They didn’t see a thing.” June grinned.
We took position on their forty-yard line, but that would be as far as we would make it. For the next three plays, the Huskers held us at bay. First they blitzed and grabbed both my flags. Next Lincoln intercepted when I threw to Sam. She was checking her nails. Thank God Lincoln dropped the ball. The third time I saw nobody open so I threw the ball to the sidelines.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bus pull up, so I quickly called for a field goal attempt. Hunter got in position, holding the ball against the ground at the forty-yard line. #23 pointed towards the parking lot, where another bus pulled up, but Ravi ran for the ball, and kicked hard. The ball seemed to sail in slow motion towards the uprights, leaning dangerously to the left. We held our breath as we tried to calculate the arc and Huskers began turning towards the busses, expecting the loss, but the ball was not to be called so soon, and us Banditos kept watching it fly, reaching the upper limit, and beginning its descent, still heading for the left upright, but there was still a chance as it hurtled along. Some Huskers turned to look back, and their mouths fell open. They stared as other Huskers turned to see what their teammates were staring at. The ball moved closer and closer towards the upright, but merely brushed it, and fell between.
Ravi leaped in the air and screamed like a girl. The Banditos had won, nine to seven. Krupke yelled foul, but his teammates quickly silenced him. “You can borrow my flute for the next five games,” Maggie teased.
The Banditos hooted and hollered, then looked around for a way to celebrate. “Let’s pick up the MVP!” Spitz suggested.
Ravi weighed too much for them, so someone yelled, “Pick up 52!” Soon I was lifted in the air and carried off the field on triumphant shoulders. I knew I didn’t deserve it, but it felt good, so I rolled with it.
“Hey! The game’s not over!” Krupke yelled. “It’s your turn to punt!”
But all four hundred pounds of Coach Romanowski were stomping towards us, shouting, “What are you boys doing? Why are you wearing Buckeye uniforms? Those aren’t ours! Get out of those now!”
The Cornhuskers got to play their next five games and then some, because they were a winning team again. I guess losing to a bunch of Banditos, including girls, whipped them back into shape. They lost the Salad Bowl game but by then they had already saved face. No, us Banditos had no desire to play football against rival teams, or to hand over our instruments to a bunch of Cornhuskers, and the coach wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. They gave us respect after that pickup game. We heard no more insults from Krupke, and a group of players even saluted us from the sidelines during our half-time show.
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