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This semester I joined a small group of my friends to form a UNLV intramural flag-football team. We named our team "The Felons". We played four regular-season games in the "competitive" division and won only our first game. In fact, I only played in one game (NOT the one we won). Most of the losses were simply because we turned the ball over too much (7 times in the game I played...I was NOT the QB).
However, our fortunes changed in the playoffs. Ranked 14th going in, we played the 3rd best team in the league. Basically, that first game wasn't a contest. We played smart and scored enough points that the refs enacted the "mercy rule" and stopped the game early. The game ended on a 50 yard touchdown bomb to Rivera who has so open he was practically doing jumping jacks in the end-zone.
Last night, we played the 6th ranked team at 7:15 pm. Again, we played smart and beat them handedly; the only points they scored came on an illegal forward lateral that the refs didn't see. However, in order to advance further meant we had to play a second game at 10:15 pm. For a bunch of old white guys this just meant that we were going to be very stiff by the time 10:00 rolled around.
We started off well. Our QB ran well and we almost connected on a long-ball that just rolled off the fingers of our receiver. But the other team, ranked 2nd, quickly showed why they were ranked so high; they were young, athletic and VERY fast. We fell behind by 3 touchdowns early in the second half, and I truly thought that we were done with less than 8 minutes left in the game.
Then the incredible happened. We steadily drove down the field and scored. Then we intercepted a passed and ran it back for a touchdown; then with one minute left we tied the game on another successful drive. We had the chance to go ahead with the extra point, but that bounced off the hands of our receiver.
We went into overtime and I caught a pass or two and we scored, the other team matched us. On to DOUBLE overtime! This is when the our old legs caught up to us. They ran around us to score and on our chance at the goal-line we were sacked and the game ended on a shovel pass that fell five feet short of any of our players (I think it might have been intended for me).
Had we won, we would have had to play tonight. Three games within 24 hours for seven old white guys probably wouldn't have turned out that well. Regardless, we had a lot of fun and will have a story to brag about for at least a few more days.
Here are the members of this infamous team, listed for posterity's sake:
Daniel Lippmann
Matt Dayton
Jared Christensen
Nate Rivera
Matt Orme
Nate Runyan
Casey Perkins
Robb Jones
Kevin Remus
Although this post doesn't do justice to how the game went down, I just wanted to tell the story of a bunch of old, out of shape, white dudes, sticking it to the younger, more athletic foes.
However, our fortunes changed in the playoffs. Ranked 14th going in, we played the 3rd best team in the league. Basically, that first game wasn't a contest. We played smart and scored enough points that the refs enacted the "mercy rule" and stopped the game early. The game ended on a 50 yard touchdown bomb to Rivera who has so open he was practically doing jumping jacks in the end-zone.
Last night, we played the 6th ranked team at 7:15 pm. Again, we played smart and beat them handedly; the only points they scored came on an illegal forward lateral that the refs didn't see. However, in order to advance further meant we had to play a second game at 10:15 pm. For a bunch of old white guys this just meant that we were going to be very stiff by the time 10:00 rolled around.
We started off well. Our QB ran well and we almost connected on a long-ball that just rolled off the fingers of our receiver. But the other team, ranked 2nd, quickly showed why they were ranked so high; they were young, athletic and VERY fast. We fell behind by 3 touchdowns early in the second half, and I truly thought that we were done with less than 8 minutes left in the game.
Then the incredible happened. We steadily drove down the field and scored. Then we intercepted a passed and ran it back for a touchdown; then with one minute left we tied the game on another successful drive. We had the chance to go ahead with the extra point, but that bounced off the hands of our receiver.
We went into overtime and I caught a pass or two and we scored, the other team matched us. On to DOUBLE overtime! This is when the our old legs caught up to us. They ran around us to score and on our chance at the goal-line we were sacked and the game ended on a shovel pass that fell five feet short of any of our players (I think it might have been intended for me).
Had we won, we would have had to play tonight. Three games within 24 hours for seven old white guys probably wouldn't have turned out that well. Regardless, we had a lot of fun and will have a story to brag about for at least a few more days.
Here are the members of this infamous team, listed for posterity's sake:
Daniel Lippmann
Matt Dayton
Jared Christensen
Nate Rivera
Matt Orme
Nate Runyan
Casey Perkins
Robb Jones
Kevin Remus
Although this post doesn't do justice to how the game went down, I just wanted to tell the story of a bunch of old, out of shape, white dudes, sticking it to the younger, more athletic foes.
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