DREAM SEASON

An English professor sinks his teeth into a piece of living history by joining the Watertown (NY) Red and Black semiprofessional football team—the oldest in the country—and enjoys himself enormously.

Cowser (St. Lawrence Univ.) is on the cusp of 31, a teacher and a new father, but he wouldn't believe that there was no room in his life for both the meathead and the egghead. He loved the game of football, played it in high school to some distinction, and yearned to reexperience its rough and tumble. Watertown is a long hoof from Canton, his hometown, but he made the commitment to be there twice a week, plus for a game on the weekend, for the ten-week season, plus the two months of practice beforehand. This is no Plimptonesque excursion into deep sporting waters, as Cowser is a sturdy 230 pounds (if less than six-feet tall) and ready to play any position as long as he gets on the field. He doesn't get as much playing time as he hopes for this first year—he will get much more the next year, as recounted in a short chapter at the end, on a brand-new team—but he does get to taste dirt in his mouth and strangle a pinkie finger when it gets caught in an opponent's jersey mesh. His writing in terrifically inviting, whether talking about his qualms in the hypermale space of the locker room or football's curious balance, the truly odd sense of grace and tranquility in the midst of “a game predicated on deception, feigning and faking, misdirection. And it is violent, brutal.” He worries, as a brawny intellect, if he is simply a tenure-track professor in search of his inner linebacker, though that is of less interest to him—and to readers—as his appreciation that semi-professional ball is a “world of semi-truths and fantasies,” where all sorts of strangeness is played out on the iron.

No finesse player, but Cowser’s writing has that light-handed, knowing touch, elevating a violent sport into a thing of gratifying harmonies.