21st Annual Turkey Bowl a success on Thanksgiving Day at Guilford College:Haddad had MVP numbers, Cooper in the clutch

We held the 21st Annual Turkey Bowl Football Game today at Guilford College on the field facing New Garden Road….

Who would have thought this game would still be going 21 years after its very humble start, amongst a large group of Mormons, at Claxton School back in 1992…

The game moved to Guilford College back around 2003 and it was held one year at Western Guilford, in the outfield, on the Hornets’ baseball field….

In most the recent years, Guilford College has been most gracious and has let us use their football practice field and that has served our purpose and met our needs to the max….

Today, with the 2013 edition, Endad Haddad was taking it to the ‘max’ as he lead Team Grayson over Team Jamir, 12-10…We hit for 12 TD’s and were done by right at 12 Noon and that still gave everyone time to get home in time to enjoy their Thanksgiving turkey….

A very big game for Greensboro Reds and Greenboro NABA leader Endad Haddad, as he found the end zone on numerous occasions and with his defensive eye, he was able to pick off four Team Jamir passes and with this type of performance, Haddad had a big hand in the Team Grayson victory and you just about have to go ahead and hand Enad the MVP award….

Another memorable effort by Scott Cooper, who showed that if he does not get to Cooperstown for his baseball name and numbers, he has to know that Canton/Cantonbury(home of the pickup football Hall of Fame) can not be out of reach, with his career still on a roll and he probably has at least 10-15 more Thanksgiving Day games within his body…

Haddad and Cooper were true Team Grayson playmakers and the ‘G Man’ Grayson Holland, was very pleased to know that his team will be taking home the proverbial trophy this season….Grayson had a few calls that some of the players were questioning, but when his calls were putting points on the board, nobody really had a comeback for what Grayson was bringing to the Thannksgiving Football Table and to the field, on the Guilford College campus…

Grayson challenged his teammates and one of those kids that really stepped up his game was a newcomer by the name of Dylan and this 16 year-old Western Guilford student was playing like a ‘grown man’ out there today….I kept hearing some high school girls at a basketball game repeating that line the other night, “That guy is playing like a grown man” and it does fit, when you apply it to Dylan….This kid, who is out there and playing like a ‘grown man’, needs to be on the field for the Western Guilford Hornets next season….

Scott Cooper had on his favorite Pittsburgh Steelers jersey today, but it was Steeler fan Kevin Colvin, who was wearing the big smile on his face after the game…Colvin was glad to be on the winning side again this year and is one of the few that can go back all the way to the Claxton School days, when the ‘Turkey Bowl’ was still in its infancy….

Grayson Holland was wearing his Cam Newton Carolina Panthers’ #1 jersey today, but he had his growing hands full in his matchup on the inside and outside with Jamir, the team manager/owner of Team Jamir….Jamir and his dad Chuck hooked up on several key passes and you can see Jamir growing with his game every year and Chuck was a high school football star back in the day, back in California and still has his game and he has not lost it over the years, Chuck can still ‘chuck it’ and he kind of reminds you of a Chuck Foreman in the backfield and that makes him a threat to run the ball at any time and he has a very good eye, just ask Jamir, as Chuck found him open a couple of times and he hit the Team Jamir captain, while Jamir was laying on the ground….Jamir almost made you think of Dave Casper, when he was hauling in the low passes and you thought he was down, but he advanced the ball for additional yardage…

They are almost like a couple of brothers when they line up on the same team and on the same side, or at the wideout spots on opposite ends and I am talking about ‘Turkey Bowl’ veterans Doug Brown and Joey Kirkman….TheY make you think of the Holt Brothers, from Eastern Guilford and N.C. State…They just keep making the big grabs, with Doug like Torry and Joey a lot like Terrence….Hope I got Torry/Tory’s name spelled right this time, we usually add an extra ‘R’ or leave one out, but at least we are honest and that is something new we are trying this year too….

Doug ran so hard today he was just about out of breath, but he still had enough left in him, to give it the old ‘Tim Tebow Try’……And he did, but he just could not handle some of the roadblocks that Grayson Holland and Team Grayson were throwing at him….He ran out of air and nothing to say on one play, when Dylan from WG was able to slow down DB and then Grayson came in cleaned up the pileup and kicked around some of the trash….The kids, Jamir and Grayson, were ‘bringing it’ today….

Doug Brown, the aforementioned DB, brought along a new playa today and he was wearing a Dallas Cowboy jersey and he drew several comparisons to former Cowboys Robert Newhouse, Timmy Newsome and even Walt Garrison….This Thanksgiving Day ‘Turkey Bowl’ participant was doing the warmup job for Dallas and he thought he was bringing back the more recent era of Darryl ‘Moose’ Johnston before today’s game was complete and before the Dallas game had even started…

Team Jamir also had a receiver/QB/LB that had me thinking I was seeing/looking at the former Oakland Raider Ted ‘The Stork’ Hendricks and this guy was not a kid, but he had lungs that worked like they had just been re-built and he ran the field like Ted Hendricks, taking his que from Jimmie Hendrix and then flying to the end zone like one of the drivers for Rick Hendricks….

The older gentleman(Mr. Hendricks) had to leave early, probably had a Thanksgiving Hall of Fame banquet to attend, but he was replaced by a new stud that had people re-calling the name of former Philadelphia Eagle Harold Carmichal…Carmichal had a 6-inch edge in height over all of the defenders on the field representing Team Grayson….

If Ron Jaworski would have been in the house, he would have sworn that his old teammate/friend from Philly had returned from retirement and that he was back for the ‘Turkey Bowl’ tradition…..

The truth of the matter is that Ron Jaworski was not with us and we didn’t see Jim Nantz, Phil Simms, Joe Theisman, Boomer Esiason, Kirk Herbstret, Troy Aikman, Taylor Zarsour, Mark with a ‘C’ James, the QCB, Ed Hardin, Brian Formica, Danny Harnden, Kevin Connolley, Kenny Beck, Mike Solarte, Steven A. Smith or any other of those big-name celebrities, but I do think with this ‘Turkey Bowl 2013’, we were able to accomplish what we set out to do….

Get outdoors, continue the 20-plus year tradition and bring together Thanksgiving Days foes that enjoy getting together each year to renew their love of the game and as Mr. Kevin Colvin put it so aptly today, “keep on getting in the game while you still can” and you better do it while you still can, because the day is coming when you won’t be able to find this same group assembled on a football field on Thanksgiving morning…..

But until then, keep it comning baby and the next big challenge will be getting out of bed and hitting the street running tomrrow morning…

I did go and shoot basketball at three different outdoor courts after the game today, with the hopes of the hoops keeping me loose, as we approach that 7:30am road call on Friday morning….

This may be the longest post/write-up ever on a basic Thanksgiving Day pickup football game, but what the heck, we better keep writing about games like this one while we have the burnig desire to let the local world know what we were doing on Thanksgiving morning, while the rest of local world was sharpening their knives, in anticipation of carving out their niche and special piece of that Thanksgiving Day Turkey and that extra slice of Mrs. Filbert’s pumpkin pie…..

Unitl next year and ‘Turkey Bowl XXII’, remember the snap count is always on two, when two local teams get together and the final score reads like an advanced/classic copy of a Steven King novel:

Team Grayson 12
Team Jamir 10

All 2013 ‘Turkey Bowl’ copyrights belonging to GreensboroSports.com and promotion considerations paid for the following….

Jim Modlin
Bruce Bullington
Greg Johnson
Al Thomy
Jack Bullock
Keith Colvin
Tom Lomax
Betty Lomax
Davey Welborne
and Tom Palumbo, the Athletic Director at Guilford College who made today’s game/adventure possible……

2 thoughts on “21st Annual Turkey Bowl a success on Thanksgiving Day at Guilford College:Haddad had MVP numbers, Cooper in the clutch

  1. Another successful year at the turkey bowl, funny how when you start getting older success starts taking different forms. The only measure for succsess I have is no major injuries to me or any of the participants, with the possible exception of cam newtons foot! We will have to wait for the MRI scheduled Friday morning to determine his next few games. Right now he is listed as questionable for Turkey Bowl XXIII, With an additional questionable tag for taunting on the game! We will have to wait and see if the commissioner is going to step in and do anything about this blanent lack of sportsmanship. I do however wish we could have closed out the Game the way we started, but we will have to wait till next year for our revenge. Time to head back to the war room and start drawing up plays and strategies for next year…

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