Slammin' Sammy Mead was in a giddy mood this morning. Well, he always was, but this time his voice had an unusual whine to it, and some words were being slurred. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know that the poor guy was tongue-tied with excitement with the prospect of something that had not been seen in Dillon, Texas for many many years. A true cross-town rivalry. One side bleeding royal and blue, the other red and white. The only football-related item that the East Dillon Lions and West Dillon Panthers had in common with one another was the UnderArmour logo on their gear.
"Man, I forgot just how wild it can get with not one, but two legitimate playoff caliber teams in this great city of ours. A state championship-caliber group on the West side, the talented upstarts that NO one wants to play on the East side. And even better, we have ourselves one hell of a quarterback rivalry, two young men about as different from one another as you can get. JD McCoy. Vince Howard. And I didn't even get into the coaches! Not a whole lot else left to be said, other than that...I LOVE MY JOB BABY! Woot! Caller #1, you are on the air..."
Eric Taylor quietly listened, as he did every year, as caller after caller rambled on and on. The occasional racist and/or classist remark. A mini-debate over which offensive scheme would turn out to be more effective, the run-and-shoot that West ran, versus the option offense Eric put in for this season. He was pleasantly surprised at the ratio of Panther-to-Lion fans. He expected something in the neighborhood of 80-20. It was looking to be about 60-40. One caller captured the emotional conflict best; "I won a state ring at West Dillon. My cousins won one at East Dillon. My eldest won a ring with Coach Taylor at West, and my nephew plays for Coach Aikman now. My youngest son plays at East. I bleed Panther blue, you understand me, I BLEED it. But I love my son as any father worth his salt does. It's high time we stopped the bickering and just enjoy what we have here. Which is two very good football teams with the potential to be great. Neither of us can escape ties to the other side, because we all are caught in the middle on this one. So just sit back, relax, and watch this amazing game be played the way it should be." Wade Aikman was listening to the same broadcast. He laughed heartily when callers referred to his lack of male genitalia, but grimaced when one caller called him Joe McCoy's puppet. He had done what he needed to reinvent himself and come back stronger and better than ever, and thought to himself that haters served an essential function. Slammin' Sammy burst into even further song when it dawned on him that Eric and Wade were virtually mirror images of one another, with nearly identical backgrounds, prolific careers as high school and college quarterbacks, and private tutorship of the two greatest quarterbacks Dillon had ever seen in Jason Street for Eric, and JD McCoy for Wade. To boot, Wade had been the beneficiary of Joe McCoy's meddle job that got Eric fired from Dillon High despite a 5A championship and 2nd place finish in three years, for reasons related and unrelated to football. "How could I have possibly forgotten about that, thank you caller. As if this rivalry wasn't good enough already!"