The year is 2020. For a few reasons I suppose, I just don’t feel quite as young as I used to. I’m not complaining. I’m just speaking the rights.
Yesterday, for a few fleeting moments I felt like a kid again.
As I sat on the couch and watched a recorded earlier in the day Eli Manning retirement speech, I felt a warm metal rail under my chin for just a minute. Under my rear was another rail I was sitting on. I was ten years old and it was 1977. Behind me were the metal bleachers of the Wilmington College Football Stadium. In front of me on the field was # 14 Ken Anderson and my eyes were affixed to every single move this quarterback made as the Cincinnati Bengals were deep into summer camp. Anderson’s straight over the top delivery. His foot work that was text book. Throwing a deep out to Isaac Curtis and how Ike caught up to it when you never thought he could. Waiting to get my autographs after practice.
As my chin was now resting on top of my folded arms, an older gentleman inside the rail meandered over to me with his arms crossed looking ever so attentively at the quarterback play also. He spoke up.
“You really like that Ken Anderson, don’t you?” I responded, “He is the best ever, sir.” The man walked side to side for a moment and said, “I really like him too.”
When I caught up with my Dad, who was in the stands, he asked what Paul Brown and I were talking about. “Ken Anderson. What else?”
And so that was how it was for me growing up as the son of a football coach. Though I could throw a ball over sixty yards once upon a time and make a few good throws around the field in pick-up games, I was center and kicker material. I was not quarterback material. As a senior in high school I saw Ken Anderson start the season opener against the Seattle Seahawks in 1985. He got hurt. So did I. The last time I remember seeing him play on television, he was holding for points and field goals his last season in 1986 on a Monday night against the Steelers. I was in a TV lounge at a residence hall across the rail road tracks from the Thomas Assembly Center at Louisiana Tech begging for another Bengal score so I could see him run out there just one more time.
On June 3rd of 1987 we opened up sports pages and found this. What do I do now, I wondered?
My football rules go like this…Root for the home high school. Root for your favorite college teams. Root for your favorite pro player. I have never been a die-hard pro football fan beyond rooting for my favorite player. Ken Anderson did that to me. When he was done, so was I.
Living in Southern Indiana, I was not even impressed when, as a high school sophomore, the Mayflowers delivered the Colts to Indianapolis. That all changed in 1998. Peyton Manning was now a Colt and I made it a point to get to see him play at least one game a year in the old Hoosier Dome. I have yet to see the Colts play in the house that Peyton built.
A year later in 1999, while in Oxford rooting on the Ole Miss Rebels against the Georgia Bulldogs with Quincy Carter at quarterback in a game the Rebs lost 20-17, my Aunt Barbara and I were watching the team make the walk to the stadium in their suits and ties. Eli was a scrawny little fart. 200 lbs was his weight listed in the program, only if his pockets were filled with biscuits. But there he was. Having been a Rebel fan, given my Southern lineage, I knew this was a big deal. I knew that Archie caught some stupid grief when Peyton went to Tennessee instead of Ole Miss where Arch was and still is a legend.
I was fortunate enough to see Eli play at least one game in each of the seasons he played at Ole Miss. I found my favorite player again. Then he joined the New York Giants and I was able to see him play a couple NFL games in person also. Now there is no reason to think about the NFL Sunday Ticket again.
Both Ken Anderson and Eli Manning played sixteen seasons with the same team. Both were quiet leaders. They are both Hall of Fame guys in my heart and that is where they will stay. In football, as in music (The Moody Blues), I have known how to pick’em.
As I raised up off of the couch to walk away after Eli Manning’s announcement, I realized I will never sit on that rail again. But is sure was fun while it lasted.
Speaking the football retirement rights…
Danny Johnson