It's hard for me to believe, but it has been 50 years since I got acquainted with football on the playground at the Southside Elementary School in Corning, in Northeast Arkansas where I grew up.
I was in my second-grade year, and one of the teachers saw several of us running with the football and tackling each other. But we didn't know the rules, so our so-called game didn't have any parameters. She stepped in and showed us how to line up as two different teams and play, and suddenly we were involved in some form of organized football.
From that moment on, football became important to me, as it did for a lot of young men in Corning, and as I became enamored with the Corning Bobcats and the Arkansas Razorbacks and the Arkansas State Indians (now the Arkansas State Red Wolves) I also started watching a lot of pro games on TV.
Those experiences are a part of what prompted me to write a book called Growing Up with Pro Football, which focuses mainly on games that I remember that were played on Sunday and on Monday night.
I became fascinated with professional football when I was growing up, but it all started at recess in a small Arkansas town.
A lot has changed since then. The Southside school in Corning was destroyed by fire in the fall of 1974. I remember it well because I was in the sixth grade at Park Elementary School in the same town, and to make room for the Southside students on that campus, the school district moved all of the sixth graders to the 7-12 campus of Corning High School. We had classes in the eastern end of the junior high wing of the school, which was right by the high school stadium.
As it turned out, I got to finish my sixth grade year within a few steps of Bobcat Stadium, where many more enjoyable football experiences would occur.
Even though that was a long time ago, and even though the Southside school no longer exists, there are many memories that remain.
The making of those memories is but one reason that I played football as a kid; and the memories are also one reason why I wanted to write about watching pro football games during the time I was growing up.
Here is an excerpt from Growing Up with Pro Football:
"Our family's roots are in a small town in the rural region of Northeast Arkansas and although we weren't wealthy we were doing okay going in to the decade of the 1970s. The United States had been enjoying an increase in the standard of living since World War II and in 1970 our family was managing to keep up. I started following football on television and through the sports pages in the Arkansas Gazette, a newspaper based in Little Rock that had statewide delivery.
The National Football League was born in 1920, the American Football League was born in 1960, and I was born in 1962. In 1970, the AFL and NFL merged. And I merged with them. The two leagues were realigned in to six divisions, all under the NFL banner, and as a studious eight-year-old I embraced the new NFL with great enthusiasm.
In addition, from the small town of Corning, Arkansas, I got acquainted with high school football (the Corning Bobcats usually won) and I became very interested in college football (the Arkansas Razorbacks usually won then too) and, as a second-grader I started participating in football games during recess. The competition with my seven- and eight-year-old classmates was both serious and enjoyable.
One of our teachers took time to teach us how to line up and then get four downs to move the ball. I remember going back to class with the feeling that we had a coach. I felt important. I can't explain it, but playing football on the playground in an organized fashion and being instructed by an adult who knew something of the game, it all had an effect on me, and it piqued my football interests further.
Almost instantly, I became enamored with the real stars of the game that were in the televised games on Sunday afternoons. And in 1970, the team that caught my eye more than any other was the Dallas Cowboys."
Obviously there's a lot more to the book, and I'm glad it could become a reality. But like so many accomplishments in life, it came about -- at least in part -- because I got to grow up in a small town in Arkansas.
-- David Wilson is a 1980 graduate of Corning High School and lives in Springdale. He works as the Communications Director for Transit and Parking at the University of Arkansas. Growing Up with Pro Football is his second book and is available on Amazon.com.
Editorial on 03/04/2020