What Should Have Happened After That New Yorker Article On Oberlin’s Football Team
by Griffin Larson-Erf, Staff Writer
I have been a sportswriter for over twenty-three years (a career I worked hard for, considering I’ve only been alive for nineteen.) Yet never have I seen such football as Oberlin played on Saturday, September 5. What I saw at Bailey Field was beautiful and staggering, a testament to the highest capabilities of humanity. I’ve had to pause several times in the writing of this article — thinking of that day still makes me emotional.
For the first time in decades, the Bailey Field bleachers were filled to the brim. Students of every year huddled next to blanket-swathed families from the town. Of the twenty people I interviewed, all answered the same when asked why they had shown up:
“Because of that New Yorker article.”
“Not,” I asked, “…THAT New Yorker article?”
“Oh, yeah. THAT New Yorker article.”
As readers may recall, Oberlin’s football team — and the student body’s opinions of it — was the subject of a piece by Jesse Dougherty in that esteemed magazine, published earlier on Saturday. Once released, the piece spread through Oberlin like wildfire, reaching nearly every student and City resident by game time. The question lingering in the article’s final sentence lingered likewise in the minds of all who read it: would this be the game that the Yeomen finally won, with a home-field advantage and a final acceptance of their intractably odd position at a liberal-arts school? Could the last team to defeat Ohio State rise from the ashes of the years?
When the Yeomen took the field, they were greeted not with the customary cheers and salutations, but with an awed, rapt silence. Nobody moved. Almost nobody coughed. When the Hiram College Terriers, Oberlin’s opponents, took to the field, their traveling fanbase made a lot more noise.
At the calling of the first “Hut,” Oberlin center Ollie Taboyledshoe snapped the ball to quarterback Marvin Murdleback. The QB faded back…back… back into Oberlin’s side of the field. Hiram’s defense pursued him, then tapered off in confusion as he picked up speed. It looked for a moment as though Murdleback, cracking under pressure, was actually trying to score a touchdown on his own team.
The young man was not fifteen feet from Oberlin’s endzone when he suddenly turned and hurled the ball towards receiver Givitt Tomey, unnoticed by Hiram or by either team’s fans during Murdleback’s distraction. A sound like a howitzer hitting the air erupted from his fists. The pigskin gained velocity as it went, flying, streaking, squealing, bursting into flames over the 50-yard line. Spectators screamed; a brief, faint cry of “Oh, the humanity!” sounded. And yet Tomey paid no mind to any of it. He kept running, glancing up, tracking the blazing ellipse, watching it slowly succumb to gravity, seeing it arc and plunge to the field…and then seizing the ball in a perfect catch. The fire spread up his arms, which were covered in rather inopportunely-thick amounts of hair, but Tomey hardly seemed to notice; he reached the endzone and threw the ball down. As Tomey, now a smoking husk, collapsed to the ground, Oberlin fans rose to their feet and screamed with equal parts disbelief and elation. For the first time in many of their lives, Oberlin had scored a touchdown.
On the following play, Taboyledshoe handed the ball to running back Nathaniel “Nanny-Nanny” Bousbous, who proceeded to charge straight into Hiram’s defensive line. He had fought his way through nearly every defender on the field until one man, a true behemoth, a mountain on two legs, moved to block Bousbous’ path with a menacing growl. It looked as though the Yeoman would have no choice but to run towards certain doom — but he didn’t. Instead of moving his feet, he dropped to his knees…and pulled out a wedding ring.
The Hiram defender covered his mouth with his hands, tears forming in his eyes. Several thousand fans went “Awwwwwww.” Too emotional for words, the defender nodded his answer: yes, yes, he would marry Nanny-Nanny. He proceeded to scoop up his dearly-beloved and carry him in his arms toward the Hiram endzone, where Bousbous lazily dropped the ball in what the referee declared was a touchdown. From there the two just kept walking, making it off the field and out of the stadium; they were last seen being married in a quiet yet touching ceremony at Oberlin City Hall.
By the end of the final quarter, the score was one that led many in the stands to fall to their knees and weep with gladness: 101 points for the Yeomen, none at all for the Terriers. Several of those points came in the fourth quarter, when the team briefly called a “time-out” in order to wheel their secret weapon onto the field: a literal catapult, into which Ollie Taboyledshoe snapped the ball after the “hut” was called, allowing it to be mechanically hurled towards the Hiram endzone and bypass the Terrier’s defense completely. Despite Hiram’s protestations, the ref found that the catapult did count as a legitimate member of Oberlin’s team, pointing to the small-seeming uniform nailed to the side of the contraption, as well as the helmet affixed to the top of it.
All of that was September 5. That day is over and done with now, and aside from the happily-married Bousbous, none of the people who played in that game have been seen again. Neither friends nor family nor irate professors who had just given them an extension on a paper have caught a glimpse of them. All, it seems, were no longer content to keep living in the mortal world, and have immediately left it in order to dwell in History. No one, however, has notified the numerous fans who still have not left Bailey field, but simply stand at the bleacher railing, staring, rapt, telling anyone who asks that they just want to look at it for one minute more.
