Fun Facts and Sprint Football: Happy Birthday Jimmy Carter
Pennsylvania Settler Thomas Cornell famously has an exclusive family tree that has branched to the highest reaches of society. Richard Nixon, James Fallon, Stockton Rush, Bill Gates, and Jimmy Carter to name a few. The latter being an avenue into this topic of Sprint Football.
So, what exactly is Sprint Football?
Founded in 1934, Sprint Football is a variation of the sport for lightweight players with a weight requirement of 178 pounds or less. It focuses on speed and agility over brute strength and uses the same rules and same sized field. It prides itself on being a faster paced game that is played by equally talented student athletes who are simply too small for football.
“Eastern Lightweight Football” is what a few white-haired huskies may have called it when they were explaining their version of the sport to me from a humble bar top in Wynne, Arkansas a few years back. Drinking whisky and coke out of Styrofoam cups and talking about nothing and everything with men 40-50 years older than me. Those chilly November evenings. Them’s the good ol’ days.
It’s former President Carter’s birthday today and I wanted to find a sports angle along with mentioning him. This one may be abruptly acute, but it’s an angle–Young James Earl Carter, Jr was a member of the Navy Midshipman Sprint Football Team. That just about covers his sports playing career, but Ensign Carter had bigger plans that involved peanuts and running the Nation for a few years. A true man of the people.
I’d like to share a brief story that hits close to home with me. It’s not my story, but it’s a story worth sharing. The one that shared it with me tragically passed away in the past few years. I know he’d want me to tell it. Only up Friend.
– Years removed from his presidency, President Carter was visiting Memphis and decided to stop at a popular BBQ Joint. This specific place is justifiably popular and boasts a line that wraps around the building daily–People eager to taste the smells that bellow from the chimneystacks.
Upon arriving and seeing the line, President Carter’s security team began negotiating with the Restaurant manager to find a place to allow the former President to sit privately and skip the line. It was jam-packed with people and quite simply, there was no possible way to accommodate him in a special manner. The manager was trying to find a solution, but there only seemed to be one logical one and he was hesitant to present it.
President Carter being a man of the people, spoke up in his gracious southern way and solved the problem. “I’ll wait in line like everybody else.” Against his security team’s advisement, former President Carter waited in line for barbecue on the Memphis sidewalk like he was any other guy.
My friend would have said, “You waited in line just like everybody else, and for that–you Sir have earned the respect already owed.”
So, Happy Birthday to former Midshipman Sprint Football star, BBQ lover, and President, Jimmy Carter. Thank for teaching us to remain humble and to put our fellow man first.
“The measure of society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.”- Jimmy Carter 10/1/24-12/29/24
Thomas Cornell. What a legacy.
A fun fact or two more.
- Another descendent of Thomas Cornell, Ezra Cornell, founded Cornell University.
- Cornell has Six Sprint Football Championships
- They were the first non-service academy to beat Army or Navy.
- Notable players in Sprint Football: Jimmy Carter (Navy), Robert Kraft (Columbia), and Donald Rumsfeld who was Captain of his Princeton team. Oh, and for the “30 Rock” lovers–Jack Donaghy played Sprint Football at Princeton.
Molloy is at Army West Point and St. Thomas Aquinas is at Penn on October 3rd at 7:00. Sprintfootball.com will livestream the game from Penn.
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It’s all football to me. I love football. And Kindness and humility. Jimmy Carter seemingly was both. He left quite an impression on my friend who shared the story passionately more than a couple of times.
The last time I heard it personally from him was Summer of 2018. It came on the heels of a “celebrity” wanting special treatment on a busy Friday night. After my friend explained to this person’s handler that it was primetime on a Friday night and the place was at capacity, in a most gracious way I might add, the handler exclaimed in a snobbish way, “dude I’m talking about Dana bleeping White here. President of the UFC. He gets in anywhere.” To which my friend replied, “Tell him Jimmy Carter waited in line. If the President of the bleeping United States can wait in line, so can he.” Stones. My friend had stones of granite.
The handler huffed out the door and hopped in the blacked-out SUV that was parked in front and sped off seconds later. Guess he didn’t want to wait in line.
When given the choice–be a Jimmy, not a Diva.
Find the Humor and Keep on Movin’
Whit W.