From the Washington Post's Blaine Harden, comes a story about six man football and the slow death of a Montana town:
A cold, nerve-rattling wind, the kind that can make a passer sick to his stomach. That's what the coaches from Geraldine High, whose boys had won 11 straight by keeping the football on the ground, were praying for in the state championship game. As football prayers go, it was reasonable enough. The November wind in north-central Montana often knocks railroad cars off their tracks. But the wind did not blow here on Saturday afternoon, and the boys from Geraldine, halfway through the third quarter, seemed helpless to do anything but lose.They could not stop a strong-armed senior named Tyler Stookey. With eight touchdown passes, Stookey had put Custer-Melstone High ahead by the soul-crushing score of 64 to 32. To rub it in, the visiting band played taps.
In a couple of years, Geraldine High School won't be able to even field a six man football squad. And not long after that, it will probably disappear altogether. Why? Read the story about how well intentioned Federal farm policy is killing life on the family farm.
And make sure you take a look at the photo gallery that accompanies the story, courtesy of the paper's Michael Robinson-Chavez. After thumbing through it, I was sorry that this story didn't run in Sports Illustrated, where the combination of words and pictures could have had a much more profound effect on the reader.
