A Tradition that Keeps on Giving:Playing Football on Thanksgiving Morning

After missing last year due to Covid, we were back at it again today, for The Turkey Bowl 2021…It is a tradition like no other, brother…Playing pickup football on Thanksgiving morning…

We have played at Claxton School, Guilford College, on the baseball outfield at Western Guilford High School, and today we returned to the site where I played my first organized football, some 51 years ago…

Short-term goals for this game:Be sure to play again next season…Long-range goals for this game:Play it for another 17 years, and let’s just see how that goes….

Goals for this game going into the game on this Thanksgiving Thursday:Stay off of the ground…Try and not get hit so hard that you end up hitting the ground(That ground was hard as a rock, due to the lack of recent rain)…And for this goal, for today, Mission Accomplished…

Lots of players out there with us today…We had 7 on 7…Fourteen wayward souls looking for their football fix, and I do believe they all got their money’s worth today…Seven on Seven and plenty of good competitive football, and game time, covering around two hours…

The final score of the game was somewhere right around 12-11, and that is twelve TD’s, to 11 TD’s…The New York Bunch came out on top today, and as far as an MVP goes, I would give that award this year to Doug Brown….

Doug had a great game, as he was on the receiving end of several touchdowns, but his real role was that of recruiter extraordinaire….Doug was responsible for us having the New York Bunch show up today, and they were a ready-made team, rolling in there to the field, seven players strong….That makes your game work…You need bodies, and those bodies were big and important today…Good to have the numbers, and Doug had the connection to the New York Bunch…..Hoping to get their names all up here later on, and we put in request to get them to E-mail us the names of the New York Bunch players, and I think we will seeing that list of names in here soon….

Most Improved Player was Grayson Holland….Grayson got going in this game back when he was eight or nine years old, and now he is right at sixteen years old…He was always a good receiver, runs good routes, gets open and hauls the passes in, but now since he has gotten older and bigger, he can also play quarterback, and run the offense…He knows the game, and my feeling is he could be the next Bristol Carter, at Northwest Guilford High School, if he would connect with Coach Wallace, and get on that Vikings’ team over there on Northwest Guilford School Road…Grayson is growing up fast, and he is definitely immersed in the game of football, and he is a pretty good golfer too…(Today most catches and most TD’s in the game, plus solid defensive secondary work, for Grayson Holland.)

Thanks to his dad, Scott Holland for getting Grayson and Scott to the game today…..Thanks to Kevin Colvin for making the trip to the game today, taking the time to get in some game time, before heading out for the Holidays…Thanks to Enad Haddad for hitting me with that touchdown pass today…Kept my streak of catching at least one touchdown pass in every game going for the past 27-plus years…Good to keep that streak intact…Also thanks to Enad for posting our team photo on Twitter…That allowed me to grab the photo, and bring it here to the site…Thanks to Joey Kirkman, fresh off of his trip to Los Angeles, California, for being there again today…Joey and Doug Brown have been with us since back in the Claxton School days in the 90’s, and that is when we used to meet at the George’s Pizza on Randleman Road, and drive in a car caravan to the Claxton School, for the game…Kevin Colvin was with us back in those early days too, and today marked sort of a new era of the game…

It was a different dynamic that got the game moving today….Last year, the game got killed by the Pandemic, and today, with the new life that the New York Bunch brought in, we sort of saw the game take on a whole new life…From this day forward, we will strive to maintain the integrity of the game, and most importantly, try to keep it going forward at all costs…The New York Bunch has given us a new spark, and let’s hope they can bring a few more people/bodies with them in 2022 for The Turkey Bowl….

We have a new name that has been integrated already, and that new name is Giacomo…Giacomo’s might just become our Game Day sponsor for our future Turkey Bowl contests…There are already talks about having game jerseys for next year’s event…Maybe Giacomo’s can become our Game Day sponsors for those new jerseys…Giacomo’s might be getting ready to be a big part of what we do with the Thanksgiving Day Football Game…If we can’t get Giacomo’s, then maybe we can get Danny’s Restaurant on board…Something tells me that Billy Thanos is still helping his dad Danny, over there at Danny’s…

We must move forward with this NIL/name, image and likeness procedure…This Turkey Bowl Game has been going on long enough that we need to go viral…Lots fun with the game, and I’m sure we need to keep it on that level, and make it a point not to go overboard…

Not a lot of talk about the old days in this year’s Game Report, but more about today’s game, and moving forward…This game has become a favorite part of several people’s Thanksgiving Day routine, and I am very thankful that we have been able to keep it going…That is a major part of the purpose moving forward with the game…Try and make sure it does not die, and that the game continues…

One part of looking back at the old days of the game, it was always fun to be announcing a local high school football games on Friday night, and then turn around and be playing against some of those same kids, on Thanksgiving Day….

Good game, and good to see The Turkey Bowl tradition continue….More to come, when we get the names of the New York Bunch, and we will get those names posted here…

Happy Thanksgiving Day to all, and stay tuned for more info about the “Tradition Like No Other, Brother”…Playing Football on Thanksgiving Morning…