Apr 09 2007
Finding New Ways to Play Football
Over the weekend, I stumbled across this YouTube video about a small town in Texas playing something called Six Man Football. It’s a gridiron variation that was designed in 1934 by Stephen Epler, a high school coach from a small town in Nebraska who didn’t have enough kids to field a full-sized football team but still wanted his kids to know what it’s like to play high school football. The scores, as you might expect, resemble the average Arena Football game.
The subject of this video is the Blackwell (TX) High School six man football team. Blackwell has a population of less than 500 people, and the six boys that make up this team mean even more to this community than any high school football team I’ve ever seen — including Permian High in Odessa. It’s a reminder of why football, in whatever form, is the most popular sport anywhere on our lonely little planet.
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Ha! Six-Man is great! Living in Texas, it’s one of those things that warms the heart every time you see the scores go by. If you liked the movie or TV show Friday Night Lights, you’ll probably like the book “Where Dreams Die Hard” by Carlton Stowers (they sell it at sixmanfootball.com). If you’re more a fan of the BOOK Friday Night Lights, you might find that Mr. Stowers has a touch that’s a bit TOO soft and sentimental, but it’s a very interesting look into the six-man culture. The wife and I are hoping to catch a game this fall, and last year we detoured through several of the (almost indescribably tiny) German/Czech towns south of the DFW area where they field 6-man teams.
Both rugby union and rugby league have their own small squad version of their codes, seven a side.
Rugby sevens is played for a shorter duration, 15 minutes a game, instead of 80 minutes, however; but it is played on the same sized pitch (field) as the full 15 a side game.
The IRB (rugby union) has its World Cup rugby sevens and World Series rugby sevens; I saw some of this on American TV recently, on Versus.