A sub-zero Sunday morning, crushed by the iron gray sky which carries a few flakes, I place my butt on the skinny wooden stands in front of what, without the lines drawn in lime which subdivide it, could resemble a wasteland of 110 yards long. The surrounding landscape breathes sleepy suburbs and ordinary desolation. No trace of the portable drink where an honest father could go to piss his third coffee, which is now as cold as antifreeze in February at the bottom of the thermos cup since, in the rush to leave, the drug addict forgot to microwave your Colombian and forget your hat and gloves. The neighboring aspen grove will do the trick.
On a morning like this, you have to love football, but perhaps it is precisely for mornings like this that you love football above the forty-fourth parallel. It is not only in real football weather that our Harfangs face the Rebels of the Leber school on the latter’s territory. They also play, for the first time this fall, a match on real dirt, covered with natural grass. Earth that turns to mud in the rain, grass that snow transforms into an ice rink.
This is because, even in high school, artificial turf has become the norm. Considered more versatile and easier to maintain, it also notoriously generates a greater number of injuries. A 2020 study shows that in the absence of contact with the opponent, NFL players are 28% more likely to be injured “in the lower body” when playing on artificial turf. The percentage rises to 32% for knee injuries and 69% for foot and ankle injuries. Based on these conclusions, the Players’ Association called for the return of greenery to the 13 NFL stadiums which were then equipped with an artificial playing surface.
Maybe at twelve years old you’re a little less likely to twist an ankle or dislocate a kneecap than when you’re a 30-year-old. And I wouldn’t ask for anything better than to feel reassured, but there is my girlfriend who, always on the lookout, shows me these scientific studies on the carcinogenic effects of artificial turf. That Sunday, my favorite cornerback missed a few pass coverages due to slipping in the snow, but when he joined us after the game, I took a satisfied look at his gold uniform and purple stained with mud.
In such weather, after having, moreover, paid our people in the caliber of Benjamins, we feel fully justified in struggling all afternoon in front of the epic lounge combo concocted from the dozen matches delivered any autumn Sunday in our dear Ennêfelle. And what could be more natural than going from a yellowing and muddy field to the east of Sherbrooke to the legendary Lambeau Field in Green Bay (nickname: the Tundra), where, from the lawn to the snow banks which surround the field in January, nothing of anything is synthetic, apart from the strange wheel of cheddar with which the team’s supporters wear their hair.
It’s hard to believe today that I was once one of those Packers fans, minus the cheese hat. Around 2011, like this character in a play by Larry Tremblay who wakes up speaking English in Chicoutimi, I got up one morning to discover that I was a Green Bay Packers fan. They had just beaten the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl, and I liked the way their center, a certain Aaron Rodgers, had, on the decisive touchdown, completely fooled the Steelers’ star safety, Troy Polamalu — yes, the one about stupid shampoo ads with Patrick Mahomes.
Please take a moment to remember these Packers: Rodgers in his prime with his space arm, and the Jennings, Driver, Finley, Jones and Jordi Nelson to catch his passes; on defense, a Clay Matthews who looked like he was putting something bionic in his morning cereal. No one, then, could guess what a formidable new-age slap-head their quarterback would become.
It’s still weird when I think about it. I would frequent the team website, memorize the starting lineups — the “ roster ”, as they say in the City of Lights. Did my ancestors who interacted with the Chippewas and traded furs near Stinking Bay – as the future cheese capital of the United States was called in the seventeenth century – have anything to do with it? Did I really receive, at middle age, for my birthday, a to post laminated headliners from the “Pack”, similar to those that adorn the walls of teenagers’ bedrooms? There are witnesses.
“To feel passion, you must first play it,” said Sartre. This is the most logical explanation: I was playing at being a Packers fan.
But as a partisan, I’m the fickle type. Not like those old Bills fans who endured the quadruple affront 30 years ago and who still believe that Josh Allen is going to lead them to the Promised Land. My patience has limits.
From the Packers, I moved on to Peyton Manning’s Broncos, then to the Chiefs of the pre-Taylor Swift era. That Sunday, in Green Bay, I was rooting for the Vikings, because I am also capable of embracing a lost cause, or even an accumulation of disappointments of historic proportion. I wanted Kirk Cousins, who is an outstanding passer, but an even more interesting human, to finally make it to the end. Instead, “Captain Kirk” tore his Achilles tendon. Finished for the season. And it happened on the natural grass of the Tundra.
His kids will love him anyway.
Novelist, independent writer and atypical sports columnist, Louis Hamelin is the author of a dozen books.