By Clint McElroy
HQ 112 | WINTER 2021
Rob Whisman squinted, staring at me through the bars of the football helmet’s face mask.
“What’s that black crap all over your face?” he asked.
“It’s eye-black, man,” I answered, somewhat defensively. “Like the real football players use to cut back on glare!”
“It’s supposed to be under your eyes. You’ve got it above yours.”
“I look like Groucho Marx!”
“You look like a moron.”
I have loved football for six decades. I watched THE Ohio State Buckeyes on television with my dad. I fell in love in 1968 with the brand-new Cincinnati Bengals because of a tight end named Bob Trumpy. I was in the stands of Tanks Memorial Stadium screaming, “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar!” for the Ironton High School Fighting Tigers. I took advantage of my Marshall University student ID to freeze my tuchus off in Fairfield Stadium rooting for the Young Thundering Herd. I have seen every Super Bowl, including the first two, before they were even called Super Bowls.
So, yeah, I loved football. I understood football. I knew football.
I didn’t know squat. Why? Because I had never played football. Oh sure, I had played touch football in the street with my cousins (the action only stopping when somebody yelled, “Car!”), some pick-up tackle football with the Roaring Rhinos during my high school years and intramural flag football at Marshall. But never in pads, on an actual football field, with plays and referees.
In 1981 my fellow Huntington Jaycees arranged a full-contact football game against law enforcement officers from Cabell County as a fundraiser for the family of fallen Huntington police officer Clemmie Curtis. This was my big chance; I eagerly said, “Count me in!”
Every evening for two months we met at Memorial Arch Park and practiced football. There I was, side by side with fellow Jaycees like the aforementioned Rob “Pops” Whisman, his brother Mike “Garage Door” Whisman, Kevin “Ohmygosh” Linville, Terry “Terry Hatton Guy” Hatton, Terry “The Other Terry Hatten Guy” Hatten and of course my co-worker from WKEE, Steve “Traipsin’ Man” Hayes.
I realized we needed somebody who actually had some football knowledge, so we recruited in a trio of Roaring Rhinos: Rick “Main Man” Mayne, Joe “The Toe” Lutz and Jim “Hack” Hacker (clearly we were running out of creativity when it came time to give Jim a nickname).
The weeks passed. We practiced and practiced hard. We ran actual plays. We had actual positions. I was put on the defensive line because I was, well, not skinny. Or, as my Mom used to say, I was “husky.”
The Jaycees borrowed everything we needed. We got jerseys, pants and pads from Milton High School and helmets from Huntington East High School. We met under the lights at King Field in Barboursville for the big game. There were friendly conversations with the various officers from the Cabell County Sheriff’s Department, Huntington Police Department and West Virginia State Police. They expressed their appreciation for the fundraising event.
Then came the kick-off, and things escalated to unfriendly in very short order. Hayes called somebody a “dumbass” after he hit Steve high during a kick return.
The guy responded to that with, “You’re Steve Hayes, right? And you live on Skyview Drive?”
“Yeah, what about it?” Hayes responded.
“I’m going to remember that comment,” the officer said as he walked away.
As for me, on the very first play from scrimmage I had stepped into a gap in the line to tackle their running back and sprained my thumb. My thumb! Are you kidding me? For two months I had been going to practices, running and lifting weights to make sure my body was ready for full-contact football. What weight lifting strengthens your thumbs?
“Yeah, happens all the time,” said the trainer as he taped up my hand. He suggested taping the thumb down; but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to tackle properly, so I talked him into taping it into a thumbs up position. I missed a couple of plays before sprinting back to the line of scrimmage where somebody stepped on my other hand and sprained my other thumb!
Two plays, two thumbs taped in the up position. As the trainer was fixing the newly damaged digit, Mayne took a look at me and said, “Ayyyyy, looking good, Fonz.”
The Jaycees ended up winning the game 14-6. We raised some money for a very deserving cause. We made some friends. And my love of football was forever changed.
I never again took for granted how hard football players work, or the pain they endure on every snap, every hit. It takes a lot of skill (and guts) to be able to remember plays, strategies and assignments when somebody across the line of scrimmage is trying to knock the bejeezus out of you.
I also learned to not micromanage when being taped up by a trainer. After all, if I had kept my mouth shut I wouldn’t forever be known by my buddies as Clint “The Fonz” McElroy.
*Special thanks to Steve Hayes and Rick Mayne for helping with this and many other stories that will NEVER see print.
