-----Original Message-----
From: AJ Johnson
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 10:35 AM
Subject: The Baker-HoHo Report
Many bowl gamers are dissatisfied, not just with the little metal stakes in the ground on our normal field but with the fact that they ripped down our goal posts. Our team captains must build a bipartisan approach to bring a responsible conclusion to what is now a very short alternate playing field. Our players deserve a game that values long, time consuming drives that allow for plenty of rest between plays, and a post-game that is adequately fueled with donuts and orange juice. The bowl gamers and the high school groundskeepers must work together.
No one can guarantee that any course of action in HoHo at this point will stop other people from showing up and taking our field before we do. If current trends continue, the potential consequences are severe. Because of the role and responsibility of all of you in HoHo, and the commitments our teammates have made, the Bowl Game Faithful have special obligations. Our friends must address as best they can HoHo’s many problems. The Bowl Game Faithful have long-term relationships and interests at stake in the field, and everyone needs to keep coming out to play.
In this consensus report, the ten members of the HoHo Study Group present a new approach because we believe there was much too much scoring at the Gobble Gobble Bowl. We believe it is still possible to get back to our old field and can give HoHo an opportunity for a better future, stabilize a critical region of the high school football practice fields, and protect bowl gamer’s credibility, interests, and values. What we recommend in this report demands a tremendous amount of endurance and willingness to keep running even after lugging eighty yards. It demands a football field that is regulation length and width. It demands unity of effort by all of the players. And its success depends on the fact that every one of you realizes that the game is going to be played one day earlier this year. Bowl gamers can and must enjoy the right of long drives and lower scoring games. Yet bowl game defenses are doomed to failure—as is any course of action in HoHo—if we continue to play the game like its arena football. The aim of our report is to move our game back to the normal field.
We want to thank all those we have interviewed and those who have contributed information and assisted the Study Group, both inside and outside the Bowl Game Faithful, at Gobble Gobble, and around the world. We thank the members of the expert working groups, and staff from the sponsoring organizations. We especially thank our colleagues on the Study Group, who have worked with us on these difficult issues in a spirit of generosity and bipartisanship.
In presenting our report to, well, all of you, we dedicate it to the men and women—players and fans—who have served and are serving in HoHo, and to their families back home. They have demonstrated extraordinary courage and made difficult sacrifices to get to the game on precious holidays. Every bowl gamer is indebted to them.
We also honor the many HoHo’ers who have sacrificed on behalf of their teams, and the members of the original STC class of ‘95 who have stood with us and with the people of HoHo.
AJ Johnson
---------------------------------------------
HoHo Bowl XIII
Christmas Eve Eve
Saturday, December 23, 2006, 10:00 AM CST
STC East High School football practice fields
http://www.gobblegobblebowl.com