Tired of Politics? Here's the Best Football Joke Ever

It's actually a true story. My Grandfather tells it like it happened to him yesterday, even though he was a little boy, during the depression, riding his horse home from school...

My Grandfather was UDT (underwater demolition team) in WWII. They were the beginnings of today's Navy Seals. As he puts it, he spent WWII in his underwear, with a knife between his teeth, and a pack full of explosives on his back. When he got back from the war, he finished college at the University of Arkansas, where on 01-01-1947, 61 years ago today, the Razorbacks tied LSU, 0-0. He went on to play for the New York Giants for a while, into the early 1950's. As he puts it, when they were done playing, they folded up their helmets, put them in their back pockets, and rode the subway home. He went on to become an successful man, and still (thanks to the miracle of modern heart devices) tells that joke when he's feeling up to it.

He became a very successful man. In our part of the state, that old joke about the Pope coming out on the balcony with him ends with the punchline, I don't know who the guy in the funny hat is, but the other guy is JP!

He's a life long Democrat who tells stories of how surprised the Japanese were when we didn't torture them, when we actually treated them well, and how they were more than happy to talk when they discovered their government had been lying to them about us. You can hear him almost cry when he thinks about what the Bush administration has done to the American reputation as the people who don't torture.

But I digress.

Before all that, during the worst years of the depression, he was a kid in small town Arkansas riding his horse home from school. He came across a bunch of kids in a field playing football. Grandpa had never played before, and he really wanted to, so he tied up his horse and asked the kids if he could play. They said sure, and explained to him that he should catch the ball when they kicked it to him, and run all the way past the tree at one end of the field,  without letting any kids on the other team catch him and drag him to the ground.

So, they kicked it to him. And he ran it all the way. Nobody from the other team even touched him. When the other kids, out of breath, caught up to him, one said, "Hey, that's great, but before we go on, could you take those spurs off?"