Cup-spellers’ fence is gone!

Friday 26 Sept. 2014: RIP, cup-holding chain links.

Ah, on the afternoon before the Byron Tigers versus Stillman Valley Cardinals game, the cup-spelling fence was defunct. Perhaps this is the end of the cup-spellers’ season? If the fence is being replaced, will it be done in time for playoffs?

Well, for just a couple days this week, the fence said “Beat the Cards,” according to my memory, because I had not yet stopped to photograph it. “Beat” was, while suggestive of savagery, not quite the imaginative “Strip” or “Slay” of recent weeks. Still, when one’s opponent’s mascot is a bird, “Pluck the Cardinals” would surely seem appropriate.

Speaking of football savagery, I had long thought that if there were an on-field death during a football game, that people in general, but particularly high schools, might reconsider participating in football. So I was surprised to read in this report recently that there have been 39 deaths of high school players caused directly by football from 2000 to 2011, and that between 1931 and 2012, “there is only one other year [besides 2012] where there were no direct fatalities in high school and college football.” This cover story in Time describes the details of one young player’s on-field death after he was hit in the head, a hit that one player said was not even a “crazy-hard hit.” But apparently football isn’t even as deadly as it used to be.