Frosty Football, AKA Cold Turkey

Cranberry County Magazine went to not one but two Thanksgiving football games, in Plymouth and Duxbury. We went during record cold, and, as you can see with the young lady here, bundling up was a necessity. It was 17 degrees with a strong wind when I got to Duxbury.

"It's so cold in the D..."

What makes this photo worse is that everyone at the Plymouth game was sitting in the same bleachers.. This was just about everyone.

In case you think I'm lying, this is the other side of the field. Yes, it was windward 

Siberian Selfie by your faithful reporter.

About halfway through the first quarter, I snuck onto the field, pretended to be a coach (I'm a big guy, and have the booming voice of the schoolteacher), shouted encouragement at the kids and stood right in front of the heat cannon. I eventually had to yield to the cheerleaders.

I was hoping for a pic of a shirtless drunk with team color body paint... but like Hall and/or Oates said, "no can do."

Even the ref was cold. You can tell if the ref is cold when A) he's bundled up, and B) he doesn't slow the game down by calling penalties. I mentioned that to him as he walked by, and he said "I call a fast game, Coach." This is when I was still faux-coaching so I could stand near the heater.

North's cheerleaders muscled in on my space heater. I was gonna hang around anyhow, as there is Comic Currency to "Mr. Bowden was arrested as he hung around with 8 cheerleaders who were half one-third his age."

In case you think that only girls and journalists use the heater, here's the Duxbury heat cannon. Duxbury was 12-1 on the year, and beat everyone in SE Massachusetts who stepped up to them. 17 degrees is 17 degrees, though...

Phil Esposito, after a tough Summit Series loss to the USSR, once said, "If you give the Russians a football, they'd win the Super Bowl in a generation." That may or may not be true, but let the record show that Russia has probably seen football, and still chose not to bother with it.