OT: I Fail At Flag Football

So I managed to get drafted into a friendly little of football between a group of Chinese students and Korean students this weekend.  In theory my innate gingerness should disqualify me from doing beside coaching such games, but the Koreans have opted to grant me honorary citizenship whenever they want a guy they can chuck jump balls too (who needs athleticism when you're 4 inches taller than most of the DBs...).  Basically my eligibility goes like this:

Chinese Kids: Hey why is that white guy warming up?

Koreans: What white guy?

Chinese: The big red haired guy.

Koreans: Oh him, he's our outside WR and Safety.

Chinese: Yeah…and he's clearly not Korean.

Koreans: Of course he is.  See he has a Korean girlfriend, he eats kimchee, he speaks Korean.  Hey CRex say something in Korean.

CRex: An nyoung ha seh yo (basically Hello, how are you?)

Koreans: See.  One of us.  He's just vertically gifted and pigmently challenged.      

Chinese: This is bullshit.  

So this is a nice friendly football game, in theory at least.  Co-Ed, flag football that's just being done to pass the time and teach some of the international grad students the rules of American football (so they can understand it when they see it at The Big House).  So we're playing the game at kind of a slow speed.  After a play, people from each group will explain to the international kids what just happened and we had a ref who would occasionally call a penalty so we could introduce them to the concept of pass interference, holding, false starts, etc.   As the game goes on the pace kind of picks up once things like downs, the forward pass, etc have been covered.  While it's mostly friendly, bragging rights are still at stake.   

Midway through the third I'm just lurking there in Cover 2 and see their QB wind up to a post.  The CB is actually on the deep side of the WR so I cut in and jump up to snag the ball.  Pulled it down and down start to head upfield.  I'm kind of cruising at half speed, looking upfield and trying to get the LBs to shift over and start throwing blocks for me when suddenly I see this blur on my right.  One moment there is a little black haired blur, the next moment I'm airborne, both my legs cut out from under me.  As I land I barely managed to get one hand out, so I kind of half face plant instead of a full on face first dive into the grass.  I also manage to land in such a way that the ball jams up under my ribs, just because hey, why the hell not?  

As it turns out the little 5' 3" girl that was playing slot ninja was the one who blindsided me into the next year.  In theory was supposed to go my flags, but instead as she comes she breaks down in what must have been near perfect form and lowered her shoulder right into my legs and cut them right out from under me.  My friends told me it was a lot like when Graham got Winston in the backfield.  One second you're trucking along, the next second hello ground.   

I'm on the ground and she bounces up and throws up the peace symbol before a round of high fives with some teammates and walks away*.  So I'm lying there basically thinking "Fuck" and seeing black spots in my vision when the other safety jogs over, offers me his hand, looks at me and goes "If you're going to get your ass kicked like that, you can't be Korean anymore."  I think my reply was something along the lines of "Shut up and help me dislodge this football from my ribcage."  The best part though was as I get up and start to take stock of the situation, I realize the girl did get both my flags.  In face as she stripped the entire belt off, she kind of half pantsed me, so I had a good inch of plumbers crack showing to the crowd as I lay there.

I saw a doctor on Sunday and the official report is that I have a mild concussion and a bruised lung, likely from when I jammed the ball into it.  The slot ninja walked away unscathed.  On the plus side I got to call in sick today since I'm supposed to lie around on my ass until the swelling on the lung goes down a little.  On the downside, we're almost out of ice tea.  I wonder of Krogers delivers.  

The moral to this story, is I need to convince a certain girl she wants to be a walk on DB for the team.  If she can hit like that in pads, we'll have the second coming of Marlin, I had to have at least 80 pounds on her and she dropped the boom on me.  Let her roam around in the secondary and knock the hell out of anyone who makes it past the LBs.  

*Once she realized she actually did some damage she actually came over and apologized to me and apparently feels really guilty judging by the apology and massive amount of vegetable fried rice she dropped off.  Her basic train of thought was "He's so much bigger than me, there is no way I can injure him."  Also I'd stripped the ball from her early in the game, so she was coming in to even the score and boy did she get it.   Also if we'd been in pads it would have totally been a legit hit on her part.