Tiny “Tank” Shockley coached for 73 years in the Southwest Conference. He is our Friday guest columnist today.

–So what if Jim Tressel wanted to buy an exercising machine for his former player? When Itchy McGillicuddy was attacked by wild dogs in the 1913 Borax Bowl, d’ya think anyone minded when we bought him a bit of rye to take this sting out out of being ripped in half? O, what a character that Itchy was. He hated Italians!

–Why do people make car washes so hard to navigate these days?

–Coaches make too much money these days! We were paid, sure. I worked a whole year in 1935 coaching the Southeast Missouri School of Anti-Devilment and Stenography squad paid only in buttons and Confederate nickels. And that’s what I ate, dammit, for the love of the game. For the love! Of the game! When I took a crap, it sounded like someone firing buckshot into a china shop.

–I miss tetanus. Now that was a man’s man’s disease! Kept the lineman slim, too!

–All this passing bothers me! How do you know where the ball’s gonna go? A tornado could pick up the ball, or a dust devil, and then you’ll be sorry now, won’t ya smart guy?

–That Frances Bavier sure could fill out an apron. What a fine figure of a woman she was!


Roooarrrrrgggh.

–You know what football players don’t get enough credit? The drunk ones. It’s hard playing football at all, but playing drunk is a special challenge that takes a special athlete. I’m thinking of you, Staggering Bill Canty of the Montana A&M Technical Institute. Oh, that you hadn’t walked past a burning wood stove on the way to practice that fateful day in 1928 and burst into flame like a zeppelin! It took them days to put you out, and the fumes were staggering

–I don’t care if a player likes to stem the rose with other men. Call me a socialist namby-pamby, but it doesn’t matter to me. As long as they’re not so loud about it, you know, listening to Noel Coward records and wearing green chrysanthemums in their lapels and such. I’ve known some fine homosexual football players in my time, but I’ll keep their secret safe with me to the grave.

–Unless we’re talking about Red Grange. Man, he loved some hard bareback riding on the rump range, if you know what I mean! And I mean sodomy. Hard, fierce sodomy. He put W.H. Auden in the hospital, for God’s sake! And they called Doc Blanchard “Mr. inside?” Hundreds of elderly gay men disagree, football writers of America.

–Where are my pants? Where? Nurse! Where did you put them, you dastardly, shifty Filipina!

Tiny “Tank” Shockley may actually be called Tank “Tiny” Shockley. He once punched Bud Wilkinson in the balls for a perceived insult to his pet goat Mathilda, and currently lives in an assisted living facility in Fort Worth, Texas.