With football season already present, it is a perfect moment to remember the great inspirational speech of my football coach, the late great Coach Casivance Swackhammer. Coach Swackhammer was an inspirational English teacher by hobby and certification, since he could not coach unless he also taught, but his real profession was coaching and oratorical inspirations in the locker rooms and on the sidelines. He wasn’t one to cuss, and he didn’t appreciate foul words from any of us, but he could raise his voice to a decibel, such that a good cussing would have been a blessing, and he could make you feel so bad about your delinquent playing that you found yourself wishing that you had been born a stray dog.
I never shall forget that big Guard, Hiawatha Tadlock, when in the first half against Grimsley High School, he got pushed all over that field like he was a shopping cart, and he walked to the locker room at halftime begging the coach, “Please Coach, don’t talk to us, please Coach Swackhammer, anything but a talking to.” It "weren't no" use. Coach already had his explicatory remarks in the front lobe of his brain, and he let old Hiawatha have it like he was Abishag, who’d been caught asleepin' with King David. Poor old Hiawatha cried like a baby and then played the second half like he had Cummings 903 diesels for thighs. He plowed up so much dirt apushin' the other team around, that Coach Swackhammer brought in a load of topsoil on Monday and made Hiawatha repair his divots.
But the 1971 preseason inspirational speech of Coach Swackhammer, to the varsity and the junior varsity teams, was one fine example of motivational logic that I now pass on to you for your own inducement. As you read this most memorable speech, it is best to hang some old dirty socks around your neck while standing in a storage shed in the noonday sun with the door shut, (a duplicate setting to an August high school locker room), raising your voice to a higher volume and pitch while increasingly waving your arms and shaking your fist in the air as you read further into the speech.
Coach Swackhammer began the ’71 season with this speech: "Men, there’s one word to describe the game of football and that is, ‘You never can tell!’ And I want you to remember this every moment of every day of every football game. Because the game will be decided on an equal field, and you have to be careful, for if you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there.” (The other coaches formed a choir behind him in a line with their arms crossed, nodding their heads in approval and holding back tears from this first great truth.)
“We ain’t going to be aplayin' no teams wearing lavender and cream this year. They ain’t going to be children of decent people. They won’t be asippin' no Slimfast on the sidelines and aworrin' about the carbuncles on their knees, noses and necks. A kindergartner could count their teeth. They gonna look biggern' a grizzly bear with bouffant blow-dried fur. They gonna make Haystack Calhoun look like the runt pup of the litter. And they gonna be faster'n old Tadlock hereagettin' to the table when his mama’s turned the grease into gravy.
"Men, you had better get your heads adjusted, that we are going to win only because we are smarter than they are. There comes a time in many a man’s life, and I have had many of them. For you can observe a lot awatchin', and we will have to fake a bluff and bluff a fake and use our heads for something other than a helmet holder, allst the while staying one step ahead of them like we were a shadow walking into the sun.
"Now you be honest with yourself and truthful too. For if you hold back a smidgen, you won’t be no betterin' old Annanias and Saphira when they gave only what they could do without, when God asked them for everything. If you don’t give your everything out there, then that field will be the place where the rest of your team will become fertilizer, and your mama will hang her head in shame. The grass may grow a little greener, but your name will be forgotten. Your laziness and putrid attitude will culminate into a condition not unlike a run over animal on the road…like sawing the branch you're asittin' on, the better you saw it, the harder you will hit the ground.
"Old Bobby Frost once wrote, ‘I came to a split in the road, and I took of the split that was less traveled.’ Well men, you had better take the one that is the most traveled, and you had better run up it like it was downhill to Myrtle Beach, or your daddy will be ashamed of you and the day you was born. And when you go out there to play. I don’t want you ahurtin' nobody deliberately or nothing, 'lessen of course, it's a conference game, or a playoff or something.
"Now I'm not too smart, and I don’t pretend to know much about nothin' except football and your need to be determined to play for me like I was butterin' your biscuits, and I don’t know how to say 'adios' in Spanish, but I do know this, if you play the best you can play and forget about sleeping in between cool sheets in your little bed at home with your mama awashin' your pajamas, and you tell that cheerleadin’ girlfriend of yorn that you ain’t gonna do no kissin 'til the basketball season, and you stop your smokin’ and start chewin’, then this town will not be ashamed of you, and we will play great at home cause we will have the best home record of any team in the league, because we will lead the league in home victories and do good on the road, too. Now put on your helmets, and get your rear ends in gear, and forget about drinking water, take your salt pills, and get out to the practice field, and make your mama and daddy proud."
If this kind of speech can excite a bunch of football players to win ballgames, how much more will the truth of the word of God move us into holiness and salvation. Coach Dan says, “Read your Bible and pray regularly, and the Lord will save your soul and teach you to love everybody, ‘cept of course them football officials and them sinners that drag others down with ’em.”
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com
I never shall forget that big Guard, Hiawatha Tadlock, when in the first half against Grimsley High School, he got pushed all over that field like he was a shopping cart, and he walked to the locker room at halftime begging the coach, “Please Coach, don’t talk to us, please Coach Swackhammer, anything but a talking to.” It "weren't no" use. Coach already had his explicatory remarks in the front lobe of his brain, and he let old Hiawatha have it like he was Abishag, who’d been caught asleepin' with King David. Poor old Hiawatha cried like a baby and then played the second half like he had Cummings 903 diesels for thighs. He plowed up so much dirt apushin' the other team around, that Coach Swackhammer brought in a load of topsoil on Monday and made Hiawatha repair his divots.
But the 1971 preseason inspirational speech of Coach Swackhammer, to the varsity and the junior varsity teams, was one fine example of motivational logic that I now pass on to you for your own inducement. As you read this most memorable speech, it is best to hang some old dirty socks around your neck while standing in a storage shed in the noonday sun with the door shut, (a duplicate setting to an August high school locker room), raising your voice to a higher volume and pitch while increasingly waving your arms and shaking your fist in the air as you read further into the speech.
Coach Swackhammer began the ’71 season with this speech: "Men, there’s one word to describe the game of football and that is, ‘You never can tell!’ And I want you to remember this every moment of every day of every football game. Because the game will be decided on an equal field, and you have to be careful, for if you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there.” (The other coaches formed a choir behind him in a line with their arms crossed, nodding their heads in approval and holding back tears from this first great truth.)
“We ain’t going to be aplayin' no teams wearing lavender and cream this year. They ain’t going to be children of decent people. They won’t be asippin' no Slimfast on the sidelines and aworrin' about the carbuncles on their knees, noses and necks. A kindergartner could count their teeth. They gonna look biggern' a grizzly bear with bouffant blow-dried fur. They gonna make Haystack Calhoun look like the runt pup of the litter. And they gonna be faster'n old Tadlock hereagettin' to the table when his mama’s turned the grease into gravy.
"Men, you had better get your heads adjusted, that we are going to win only because we are smarter than they are. There comes a time in many a man’s life, and I have had many of them. For you can observe a lot awatchin', and we will have to fake a bluff and bluff a fake and use our heads for something other than a helmet holder, allst the while staying one step ahead of them like we were a shadow walking into the sun.
"Now you be honest with yourself and truthful too. For if you hold back a smidgen, you won’t be no betterin' old Annanias and Saphira when they gave only what they could do without, when God asked them for everything. If you don’t give your everything out there, then that field will be the place where the rest of your team will become fertilizer, and your mama will hang her head in shame. The grass may grow a little greener, but your name will be forgotten. Your laziness and putrid attitude will culminate into a condition not unlike a run over animal on the road…like sawing the branch you're asittin' on, the better you saw it, the harder you will hit the ground.
"Old Bobby Frost once wrote, ‘I came to a split in the road, and I took of the split that was less traveled.’ Well men, you had better take the one that is the most traveled, and you had better run up it like it was downhill to Myrtle Beach, or your daddy will be ashamed of you and the day you was born. And when you go out there to play. I don’t want you ahurtin' nobody deliberately or nothing, 'lessen of course, it's a conference game, or a playoff or something.
"Now I'm not too smart, and I don’t pretend to know much about nothin' except football and your need to be determined to play for me like I was butterin' your biscuits, and I don’t know how to say 'adios' in Spanish, but I do know this, if you play the best you can play and forget about sleeping in between cool sheets in your little bed at home with your mama awashin' your pajamas, and you tell that cheerleadin’ girlfriend of yorn that you ain’t gonna do no kissin 'til the basketball season, and you stop your smokin’ and start chewin’, then this town will not be ashamed of you, and we will play great at home cause we will have the best home record of any team in the league, because we will lead the league in home victories and do good on the road, too. Now put on your helmets, and get your rear ends in gear, and forget about drinking water, take your salt pills, and get out to the practice field, and make your mama and daddy proud."
If this kind of speech can excite a bunch of football players to win ballgames, how much more will the truth of the word of God move us into holiness and salvation. Coach Dan says, “Read your Bible and pray regularly, and the Lord will save your soul and teach you to love everybody, ‘cept of course them football officials and them sinners that drag others down with ’em.”
