This humorous piece explores the unique traditions and unwritten rules of pick-up football in the snow in Alabama, drawing from personal experiences and cultural observations. It highlights the state's quirky relationship with snow, from the casual disregard for safety to the emphasis on bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred gameplay.
The best thing about pick-up football in the snow is that there are snow rules.This is the “Official Alabama Guide to Playing Football in the Snow,” and if you don’t know what “kagging” is then you probably got off pretty easy during your childhood years. For the rest of us, we learned how to time our kag-escaping jumps on the football field before the age of eight years old.
I can’t speak for every enclave and hamlet in Alabama, but back in Irondale the front yards were off limits in the snow. That’s why everyone went to the park. “Messing up” someone’s snow in their front yard was punishable by death.When it snowed, the place to be back in Irondale was Beacon Park. That’s where everyone went. I was in eighth grade in 1993, the year for what James Spann calls our generational snow-in.
No less than 50 kids, one ball and no rules — football the way it was meant to be played. We were all wrapped in five layers of clothes, so it’s not like any of us could get hurt. I think even some kids from Mountain Brook showed up. The secret to pick-up football in the snow is don’t even try to pass. Passing is for the uninitiated. Passing is for people who maybe own gloves. We had double socks on our hands and triple socks on our feet. Just full-on power run and maximum fun every play.
Culture Alabama Snow Football Culture Traditions
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