{"id":32825,"date":"2025-02-04T10:20:44","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T15:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=32825"},"modified":"2025-04-02T16:34:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T20:34:25","slug":"my-short-football-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/04\/my-short-football-career\/","title":{"rendered":"MY SHORT FOOTBALL CAREER"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nNobody is<\/strong><\/span> tall in my family. I was 5-feet-2 in ninth grade. But I played on the football team! I rode the bench; the coach wouldn’t put me in. He thought I’d get killed. He had me drill with a similar five-foot guy, who also never saw action.<\/p>\n

My parents wanted me to play tennis. Figures.<\/p>\n

I suited up for the Benedictine game. The head coach wanted \u201ca lot of presence,\u201d\u00a0as he put it, so he brought the entire 9th-through-12th-grade team to the game– frosh (including me), JV, and varsity. This was 2002, when Benedictine had Ray Williams, who went on to win the \u201cMr. Football\u201d award for best high school player in Ohio. He signed with West Virginia University.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ray Williams<\/p><\/div>\n

Our coach warned us all year about Williams. About 80 of us got on the school bus for Benedictine. We were a presence. And then in the very first play, Williams ran with it and we knew we were toast.<\/p>\n

Williams<\/strong><\/span> wound up an accessory to a murder, so he never played at West Virginia. He played some at Toledo, but I think he screwed that up, too. And then he played a bit at Shaw University in North Carolina. I wonder what happened to him. There’s a documentary about him, Mr. Football,\u00a0<\/em>but it apparently has never played anywhere.<\/p>\n

All I know is Ray Williams was an absolute beast at Benedictine. I watched him absolutely crush for 40 carries a night. Everyone knew who was getting the ball, every snap, but no one could stop the kid.<\/p>\n

For the record, I’m now 5-feet-9, in my thirties and playing tennis.<\/p>\n

(fiction)<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Nobody is tall in my family. I was 5-feet-2 in ninth grade. But I played on the football team! I rode the bench; the coach wouldn’t put me in. He thought I’d get killed. He had me drill with a similar five-foot guy, who also never saw action. My parents wanted me to play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake-profiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32825"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32857,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32825\/revisions\/32857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}