Storytime

So, the cheerleaders tell me they're going to the "tunnel." "What tunnel?" I ask. "Oh, we make one. They run through it." You have to understand that I know nothing about football, and I didn't know what they were talking about until they and the band formed two converging lines, and held a banner at the end.

I'm making my cultural anthropology shots in this exotic scene, and having a great time. I'm wandering up and down the lines, and I work on this wonderful image, of a cheerleader holding the banner, and it's backlit like a big white screen with parts of "Homecoming" in big backwards letters.

"Hey cameraman, turn around," a girl says. I see a human wall, not unlike the bulls at Pamplona, bearing down, very fast. A hundred big, burly football players, running full bore, are about to crush me.

The band members talked about it the rest of the game. "You should have seen your face!" They'd never seen anyone sprint so fast in their lives.

I can only hope that someone in the grandstands got it on video. It's a YouTube moment if ever there was one.

Comments

[Gordon McGregor]

and you didn't take a picture of them ? :)

[Doug Plummer]

You know, actually I tried. I held the camera up and fired away as I ran, but the damn zoom had zoomed out to 105. It's why I was running lengthwise down the tunnel instead of knocking a cheerleader over to get out of their way.