With the much anticipated CCHS football season just around the corner, fans from all over are getting their stadium seats and big finger gloves that say #1 out of the closet and close to the door. Hotdogs, candies and drinks are coming off the shelves faster than they can be restocked; we are getting prepared. However, deep down on the dark reaches of the grid iron are those massive figures, those pillars of the horizontal pyramid, those who get down and slobber for the chance to meet someone face to face in battle like two bears after the same salmon. They are meaner than a blown 383 in a Plymouth Road Runner. They are the Panther Lineman who, for all intents and purposes, will open more holes than a machine gun for the backs and protect their beloved quarterback at the cost of personal pain.
Collectively weighing somewhere close to, if not beyond, 2000 pounds, they will be a force that will sweep each game’s weaklings with the precision of an elfish blade. As Sir Isaac Newton once said, “A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place along the straight line in which that force is impressed.” I am still trying to figure out just exactly what that phrase means to football linemen, but I am comfortable in thinking he had linemen in his mind when he said it. The CCHS linemen have been working so hard in the off season they could rent themselves out for crime fighting. They may not jump buildings, but they sure can knock them down. This season will indeed be very interesting because there is a new mindset in town, a sort of righteous ferocity toward winning. It all begins with a snap at the line, followed by a chaos of grunts and battle cries filling the air and finally bodies hit the ground as flesh and bone crumble on impact. The titans of CCHS football will undermine and dismantle any in their path in order to get the job done, and they will get it done. If you can’t see what I am talking about then you are standing too close to the ground. Come to the games and stand on the shoulders of CCHS giants, the Panther Linemen, where it all begins.
