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Old 07-12-2020, 11:33 PM   #15
Pervis_Griffith
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Louisville KY
Posts: 453
Re: In memory of our REDSKINS

Some smatterings of how this is hitting me tonight:

-- I turn 51 in late August. My Dad gave me two choices growing up in Louisville Kentucky. Root for and watch the Washington Redskins, or don't watch football. When you're 6 years old, it's an easy choice. (And looking back -- maybe this should have been considered child abuse ... haha .. but hey ... it's one of the few things my Dad and I can truly connect over. He just turned 80.)

-- I remember being in 1st grade in 1975, and checking out a paperback book from the library only because it had a photo of Billy Kilmer in a Redskins uniform on the cover (along with some other players I couldn't have cared less about). The book wasn't for first graders, but I didn't care. I checked it out anyway.

-- I vaguely remember the QB battles between Kilmer and Theismann. I also wondered why our guys only got to wear one bar face masks, while other QB's wore 2 bar face masks. Like that douchebag Staubach. These are great matters of concern for a 7 and 8 year old.

-- Being in Louisville meant it was a rare treat to get a Redskins game on TV. Usually we got the Bengals, or Bears, or because Paul Hornung was a Louisvillian, we got Green Bay Packers games ... completley annoying. But there's a large contingent of Packers fans here. And of course, the freakin' Cowboys were always on. Man I hate them.

-- On Sundays, I would run to grab the newspaper, to get the TV listings, to see what games were being shown. When I saw the Redskins listed, it sent a jolt of happiness through me I can't describe. I'd watch half an hour of Victory at Sea, followed by NFL on CBS, before the 1:00 Skins game .... and seeing the burgundy and gold, and those iconic helmets with the Redskin on it .... man, pure rapture.

-- I remember losing to Dallas by a point, and crying, and my Mom telling me to grow up, it's just a game, and me telling her she just didn't understand, and I was 10.

-- My love of the Redskins is only surpassed by my hatred of the Cowboys.

-- Life got MUCH better in the 80's. We got on TV more, and we won a lot more.

-- Jack Kent Cooke was godlike to me. And he delivered Super Bowls. God bless that man.


We all know our recent history, and the proliferation of TV showing all the games, made my experience of joy when I got to watch the Redskins disappear. But my love of the colors, the uni's, and especially the helmet, can all be traced to those early days, when I wasn't guaranteed to see them in any given week.


I've been a fan for 45 years.

I'll have to live to age 96, to root for whatever our new name will be, to EQUAL how much I have invested emotionally in the Redskins.

So, no matter what comes, I can realistically say, I'll still be more of a Skins fan when I pass than a whatever-freakin-name-we-get-stuck-with this season.


I want to be able to root for this team ... and see Chase Young, and Montez Sweat, terrorize Philly and Dallas and Daniel flippin Jones.

I just don't know that I will care as much as I did when I was 6 years old, running to check the TV listings in the Sunday paper, in the faint hope that I got to see my Washington Redskins play on TV.



Hail to the Redskins.

Thank you for the memories. I will miss you.
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