Game of the Week: Flag Football

My exposure to the game of football as a kid...and after that I never played it...was in elementary and high school when we would play it as flag football in physical education class (or "recess" as they called it in the younger years).  Unlike tackle football with players geared up wearing pads and protective helmets designed to shield them from hits and tackles, flag football removes most of that hard contact as each player wears a belt around their waist, with a long, removable plastic strip attached by Velcro on each hip.  During any play in the game, any player holding the ball can then be brought "down" by pulling off one of his or her flags. The only actual instruction I ever received in football at school happened during our opening session at Nova Elementary School in the 4th grade in the late summer of 1965 when our P.E. teacher, Mr. Tilton, gave the assembled boys a brief clinic on how to punt a football.  Nothing about the actual rules of the game, which to me would have helped since I had never played it before...coaches in classes like these tended to show off a kind of phony bravado, acting all military-like and presuming everyone in the class was an athlete already well-versed in whatever activity was on the agenda (and if you were weren't athletically inclined then you were a nobody).  Although I was one of the fastest runners around and NEVER dropped a football when it was passed or kicked to me, I rarely got to be a receiver, instead being repeatedly told to "block" on each offensive play.  So I quickly became a preferred defensive player since that part of the game placed fewer limitations on what I could do with my talents...I tended to be a team leader in "tackles", i.e. pulling off the opponent's flag...often by simply chasing down whoever had the ball...and was known to stand in the way and intercept passes as well.  Since kids tend to cheat and contest calls, I'm glad we played flag football instead of the touch variety, which involved the defensive player having to place a hand on each of the ball carrier's hips to bring him down...enforcing such a rule without an third party referee constantly monitoring the action and calling each play would have required more of a sense of honor than many kids had (and probably still don't as adults).  I looked for photos off the Internet I could include here of flag football, but they seem to mostly be of "official" looking games with stripe-suited officials and uniformed teams on yard-marked fields...I never played any football game on such a level.  The last time I played a flag football game was in September, 1973 in a high school P.E. class...I had caught a pass and was running for a touchdown when the desperate defender pushed me down from behind when he saw he couldn't get to my flag in time. I fell on my hands which miraculously weren't broken, but I never returned to play this game that could have been fun had the players not acted like such jerks...