Frat Life 101: Greek Week Football

During my time at NSU, which was marred by my lack of studying, I only had occasion to play in the Greek Games twice and the first time was during my first year of school. They had this pesky rule about maintaining a good grade point average so normally that left me out. It's not that I was dumb or anything, I just wasn't interested in what they had to offer. The Greek Games was a competition of multiple sports held once a year in which only the Fraternities and Sororities were allowed to compete. Since Sigma Tau Gamma was made up of the dirtbags (and I say that proudly) of the school it's an easy guess that we were not very competitive at all.

Phi Lamb


Sig Tau

Which leads me to the Sig Tau versus Phi Lamb flag football game during my freshman year. Phi Lambda Chi (our mortal enemies) was made up of redneck jocks (at least they had been jocks in high school) and this was looked upon as an easy victory for them, as it always was. This year would prove to be no different. However, we did find a way to a small personal victory during the beatdown that they administered us. It wasn't easy but all the spectators in attendance (there had to be at least ten or twelve) saw it with their own eyes.

After lining up and seeing that they physically larger (and much better athletes) across the board than we were we knew that defeat was inevitable. That notion was proven true rather quickly. At one point in the game we were using very simple play calls since not many of us were experienced in playing the sport for real when we noticed that they were keying on our simplistic snap count. We were tired of getting beat almost every snap of the ball and never actually gaining any real yardage, much less scoring any points. In our huddle somebody had an epiphany, we would change our snap count and everybody understood that no matter what happened we all had to remain absolutely still, as if frozen, for the plan to work.

So there we were, lining up for what the Phi Lambs were sure was another play of lost yardage when our QB made the snap count and nobody on our side of the ball moved. On the Phi Lamb side however their entire front seven came roaring across the line with their ears pinned back in the safety of their knowledge that we were little more than practice fodder for them. Flags were thrown and whistles were blown. Offsides defense, so many in fact that they couldn't name who was first. We walked back to our huddle laughing because for at least one play we had shown them that we were smarter.


As we huddled and laughed instead of coming up with a new play the question was asked "You don't think they'll fall for it again do you?" We decided to see and sure enough, the snap was called, we remained frozen and they came flying across the line. Again flags were thrown and whistles were blown. Offsides defense. We could barely control ourselves now, the laughter was rolling from us and the sparse crowd joined in, even the fans of the Phi Lambs. Once more we asked "You don't think they'd be dumb enough to fall for it again do you?" They were. The snap was called and once more they came rushing at our frozen line only to have flags thrown and whistles blown once again.

This time our laughter was different. Instead of belly laughs now they were more of an unbelieving nature that a team could be so ill prepared as to have multiple players come offsides THREE plays in a row. It testified to their disdain for us as a team almost as much as their lack of intelligence and discipline. They were so angry at what we had done after the first play that they couldn't control themselves and each play after only made them angrier and more out of control. Finally calmer heads prevailed on their team and normal play returned. They finished the mismatch in the expected dominating fashion and moved on in the tournament and sadly we were eliminated.

The more time goes by nobody remembers what the final score was or who scored the points. That information becomes lost, pushed out for more important things as we realize just how unimportant it was in the grand scheme of things. But for the players and the few fans in attendance the memory of how Sig Tau was smarter and a better team lives on. For those three plays at least.

Published by Don Leach