First, unlikely stuff happens and it can ruin your day (and your life, if we’re talking about your retirement). There are at least two lessons to be learned from the Hail Mary pass as it relates to investing. Discounting the likelihood of Divine intervention, it is a game plan upon which no one would want to depend. The reason? There is NO other option.Īs the college football season began, BYU managed to win its first two games on Hail Mary passes. It exists merely as a fond memory, one they can happily share with their great-grandkids-that time they got a chance to play football.Hail Mary passes succeed just enough to hold football fans’ intrigue but fail so frequently that coaches have only one reason to use them. Despite how much fun they had and a high turnout of friends, family, and alumni, they never expected anything to come from the event. Though the game went on as planned and the homecoming was a success, the girls of Eastern State who played that day never took the field again. Thankfully, they were able to round up some spare uniforms for everyone to play. After five years in storage, apparently without mothballs, the college’s jerseys were rife with holes and most of the pads were literally coming apart at the seams.” They decided, Why not? Roger Holtzmann of South Dakota Magazine wrote of the event, “uniforms presented a minor problem, and not for the reasons that might come to mind first.
With only three men enrolled for the fall semester, the women of Eastern State dared to wonder if they should step in, much like women did in baseball, with the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). What little media build-up and excitement preceded that first exhibition game and the launch of the league fizzled out. The goal was to play a schedule of games throughout the fall season.
The two Chicago teams clashed in an exhibition game midsummer at Spencer-Coals field under regulation football rules. The league was said to consist of eight teams, including the New York Bombers, Chicago Bombers, and Chicago Rockets. No serious injuries were reported but a few jerseys “got red-streaked from some mildly bloody noses.” And in 1941, a women’s professional football league attempted to launch in Illinois. In Montrose, Colorado, a group of eager women got together to hold their own tackle football game in the mud. Wise’s goal after graduation was to coach a girls’ football team. She also threw a few PAT passes and earned an All-State honorable mention as a quarterback. Wise played again in 1940 during her senior year and did more than just kick extra points and field goals. After practicing with the team and showing off her Carli Lloyd–like kicking skills, she made varsity. Coach Andy Edington offered her a tryout, not expecting Wise to actually take him up on the offer. Wise decided to join the team because she and her friends were tired of the “football is man’s game” rhetoric. In 1939, down in Atmore, Alabama, seventeen-year-old Luverne Wise became a kicker for the Escambia County High School football team. For Hyland and the like-and, it seems, the Los Angeles Times- there was no place for women in football.īut women didn’t stop playing tackle football-doctors, Dick Hylands, new rules, and high school athletic associations of the world be damned. Or that both teams continued playing, traveling to different cities to take part in more exhibition games-the Amazons and Hollywood Stars even went abroad to showcase their football skills in Guadalajara and Mexico City.
It didn’t matter how well the athletes played or that, despite the fact that they emerged from the fray with a few bumps and bruises, they were still able to make it home in time to put dinner on the table, as they would have been expected to do by society’s rules. He had made it clear that the game wasn’t important enough for him to cover or take seriously. Perhaps Hyland felt there was no need to actually attend and watch for himself. There was no follow-up column after the game took place. In fact, I’m wondering if the report doesn’t belong in the entertainment pages or over with the crime news.” “I don’t know what all this feminine activity is supposed to prove in the world of sports. “What, WHAT, is the world coming to? The loving, clinging vine now are ‘smashing types and good hard blockers!’” Hyland wrote in a condescending tone.