Danny's Story

Danny Olson was a guy who could screw up the simplest task—and end up looking good for it. In eighth grade, he once had to write a brief description of an object in his desk—a book, a pencil, anything—and ended up showing how everything in his desk was really the same thing. He got a B+ somehow.

In his junior year in high school, he was a third-string offensive lineman. He wasn’t big, but he was slow. He knew very few of the plays, and our coaches assumed that if he was in, the quarterback would get sacked. So they usually didn’t put him in until the game was decided one way or the other.

It was at our homecoming game that our starting left tackle got injured in the first quarter. His sub, who usually played guard, was doing okay, until our starting right guard went down with the score tied in the third. Danny came in to play left tackle, moving the other guy to right guard. On third and five, the coaches called a pass play, for which Danny was supposed to block the guy across from him with all his might. Instead, the opposing lineman growled at Danny--who waved him through—and set his sights on our quarterback, who immediately tried to throw the ball. The quarterback threw a weak pass, which the defender batted high into the air. Danny caught it as it came down, and started running—not toward the other team’s end zone, and not toward ours (thank God!)—but toward the other team’s sideline. I yelled, “Danny, this way!” and prepared to block for him. He turned and followed me downfield, and soon we had more than enough for the first down, and suddenly I realized that we were only 45 yards from the end zone with no defender in sight. Then I heard a thud as a defender brought Danny down at the 40. One of the officials pulled out a flag and dropped it on the ground next to Danny. Danny stood up as the official walked away.

One of our coaches yelled, “Danny, get over here!”

Danny started to run toward our sideline when our team captains yelled, “Point-after team! Point after!” Danny went back to the huddle, since he was on the point-after squad.

“No, Danny!” a coach yelled. Eric Marshall, a big freshman, came in for Danny.

As Danny went to the bench, I learned what had happened. A player had come off the bench for the other team and tackled Danny, who otherwise would have scored a touchdown. That’s sideline interference, the penalty for which is a touchdown to the offensive team if the officials decide that that foul prevented a certain score. Danny had missed his blocking assignment, caught a ball which he was eligible to do only because a defender had touched it during a pass, run close enough to the opponents’ sideline to get tackled by a player on the bench, and scored a touchdown—on one play.

Neither team scored again the rest of the game. We won 21-14.