Sunday, August 19, 2007
Another Prejudice Gone
Yesterday was the annual "Meet the Bears" day at Floyd Casey Stadium. Basically, they open up the football facilities and people can come into the locker room and meet the players. It's really a nice occasion, and I usually go for at least a few minutes.
One of the surprises this year was that a few of the players, including quarterback Blake Szymanski, were holding tiny little lap dogs as they met the fans and press. The front page of this morning's Waco Trib sports section, in fact, has a big photo of Szymanski with a teeny Pomeranian named Elle, who is wearing a tiny white bow on top of her head.
I'm sure the players will catch some flack for this, but I was really glad to see it.
I love watching football, especially college football, but my memories of football players isn't so great. In high school, they were not pleasant guys. I was a cross-country runner, and even though we were tops in the state (or perhaps because of it), the football players gave us hell. Their favorite epithet, of course, was to call us "fags." They would latch onto any slight aberration from the norm (say, a red sweater), and articulate loudly in the hallways or locker room how "gay" that was. Few if any of them got college scholarships (though some of the cross country team did). They would have jumped at the chance to be in the Baylor locker room in uniform.
I can just imagine what those high school bozos would have done, though, if one of us had hung around the locker room around holding a fluffy little pomeranian named Elle with a white bow on her head.
Maybe it was not a good idea for Szymanski to get photographed with that dog, but it did make me think that maybe football players here are just a little bit more open-minded than I might have thought. If your girlfriend wants you to hold her dog, Blake, you'll get no complaint from me. Sic 'em bears!
UPDATE: Bare Meat now has a photo of the QB, the cheerleader, and Elle the tiny dog, with the dog wearing what appears to be her own tiny BU cheerleading outfit.
Comments:
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It actually looks like that dog is growing out of his stomach-- like in "Alien." That's kind of cool.
# posted by 
: 1:37 PM
: 1:37 PM
They'd be totally at home here, with their little dogs. Maybe not the bows, but definitely the dogs. The Swiss LOVE their dogs, all shapes and sizes, and take them everywhere. Inside restaurants and stores--you name it.
# posted by : 3:01 PM
: 3:01 PM
Hey, it looks like he's wearing those plastic gardening shoes, too. Now that is also cool for a football player.
# posted by : 3:04 PM
: 3:04 PM 
Razor:
You score any signatures? Those are gonna be worth big dollars some day at Treasure City (waco flea market in old drive-in movie theater) on LaSalle.
Red
You score any signatures? Those are gonna be worth big dollars some day at Treasure City (waco flea market in old drive-in movie theater) on LaSalle.
Red
I played tennis in high school, and we got the same treatment from the basketball players. The football players did not notice that we existed, much less call us gay.
My favorite incident occurred when a basketball player was mouthing about how easy tennis was, and he invited himself onto the court to try and return some serves. No one ever served so many aces.
My favorite incident occurred when a basketball player was mouthing about how easy tennis was, and he invited himself onto the court to try and return some serves. No one ever served so many aces.
Wasn't "Elle" the main character in "Legally Blonde?" If so, there's your law school connection...
# posted by : 8:09 PM
: 8:09 PM
That guy is wearing a pair of CROCS!!!!
If I were him I would be more worried about the crocs than the dog. But whatever Hopefully things are not as horrible in this way as they were when we were in HS. At Cranbrook football was not a big deal In fact our senior year, in our homecoming game we lost like 43 to 11 but no one was really even there so no one cared. We had like four anemic cheerleaders and they were not at all popular. I remember the cheerleaders at GP North were like Goddesses and it was like a HUGE deal to be one... The big thing at Cranbrook was the Soccer team and also the Hockey team They were state champs in both BUT I can honestly say that some of them acted like the football team you talk about....
Cranbrook was way different than GPN, but I did not care. People were popular for different things besides what kind of cars they had or if they were a cheerleader or whatever. I am not saying one is good or bad, but it was just really different. People were popular sort of for being weird or being really smart or good at like art or something... weird things... like if you won some award, or your Dad owned Little Caesars, or if you got sophomore standing at Harvard, early admission... because you pretty much NEVER EVER SLEPT. Or for being like editor of the literary magazine, or the editor of the paper...stuff like this. Or if you could recite an entire Monty Python movie... or if you made a movie by the time you were 17.
BUt there are jerks at every school. It is harder to not conform, but in the end I think, even though you get hassled, you turn out to be a better person in life.
If I were him I would be more worried about the crocs than the dog. But whatever Hopefully things are not as horrible in this way as they were when we were in HS. At Cranbrook football was not a big deal In fact our senior year, in our homecoming game we lost like 43 to 11 but no one was really even there so no one cared. We had like four anemic cheerleaders and they were not at all popular. I remember the cheerleaders at GP North were like Goddesses and it was like a HUGE deal to be one... The big thing at Cranbrook was the Soccer team and also the Hockey team They were state champs in both BUT I can honestly say that some of them acted like the football team you talk about....
Cranbrook was way different than GPN, but I did not care. People were popular for different things besides what kind of cars they had or if they were a cheerleader or whatever. I am not saying one is good or bad, but it was just really different. People were popular sort of for being weird or being really smart or good at like art or something... weird things... like if you won some award, or your Dad owned Little Caesars, or if you got sophomore standing at Harvard, early admission... because you pretty much NEVER EVER SLEPT. Or for being like editor of the literary magazine, or the editor of the paper...stuff like this. Or if you could recite an entire Monty Python movie... or if you made a movie by the time you were 17.
BUt there are jerks at every school. It is harder to not conform, but in the end I think, even though you get hassled, you turn out to be a better person in life.
I played Tuba in the band. But we were really good and the football team said we pumped them up. Really....
# posted by : 8:37 PM
: 8:37 PM
Love it.
He looks like a confident man. Cute tiny dog, cute girlfriend, playing college football. He's probably a pretty happy guy. Let him enjoy it, life gets hard enough and complicated enough later (sometimes sooner).
Sic 'em Bears(from a TWU grad)
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He looks like a confident man. Cute tiny dog, cute girlfriend, playing college football. He's probably a pretty happy guy. Let him enjoy it, life gets hard enough and complicated enough later (sometimes sooner).
Sic 'em Bears(from a TWU grad)
# posted by : 9:24 PM
: 9:24 PM << Home
