It will soon be TIME to submit your first picks for the
Fisher Football Follies 2001 season.

By Friday, September 7, you need to pick:

1. Which teams will prevail in Week 1 of the NFL regular
season (easy.)
2. Which teams will make the playoffs (starting Jan. 5)
and who will win the Super Bowl Sunday January 27
(not so easy!)

Submit your picks now on the FFF 2001 Web Site:

http://www.blbookkeeping.com/family/brian/fff/2001/
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For those who feel a thirst for further football knowledge,
please recite the following football factoids:

* Football helmets that meet safety requirements have the
letters NOCSAE embossed on them.

* The first football ever used was round.

* "He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball
into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the
chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's
house."
~Isaiah 22:18~

* By 1823, American students at Princeton University were
already playing a game they called "ballown," in which
they used their fists, and later their feet, to advance
the ball. The freshman and sophomore classes at Harvard
competed in a type of football game on the first Monday of
each school year--called Bloody Monday because the game
was so rough.

* Led by Yale coach Walter Camp, the 1879 rules committee soon
cut the number of players per side from 15 to 11. The
committee also cut the size of the field to 110 by 53 yards.

In addition, Camp instituted a type of scrimmage in which a
player snapped the ball back by kicking it to the quarterback.

* By 1905 concern about the increasing brutality of the game
led some colleges to ban football. Mass plays, involving such
formations as the flying wedge, had seriously injured nearly
180 players, including 18 who were killed.

* That year, rules makers prohibited all the rough mass plays,
and teammates were prohibited from locking arms to clear a
path for their ballcarrier. To further minimize mayhem, they
reduced the length of the game from 70 to 60 minutes and
established the neutral zone, which separates the teams by
the length of the ball before each play begins.

* However, as late as 1960, the Oakland Raiders were still being
penalized 179 times, for 2,269 yards.

* Wilbur Henry, a 245-pound tackle, once set an NFL punting
record when he booted the ball 94 yards while playing with the
Canton Bulldogs.

* In 1962, when the Redskins lined up on the 40 yard line for a
field goal, Baltimore defender R.C."Alley-Oop" Owens ran down
and stood just in front of the goal posts. When the ball was
kicked, Owens leaped into the air and batted it down inches in
front of the crossbar.

* The first American Football League commissioner was Joe Foss, a
W.W.II fighter ace who flew for the Marine Corps in the Pacific
and shot down 26 planes during his combat career.

* Bruce Smith, a RB won the Heisman back in 1942. Bruce Smith of
the Buffalo Bills won the Defensive player of the year award in
1997, but he never won the Heisman.

* Marion Motley was the first black player signed to the All
American Football Conference. He and Otto Graham combined to
create the draw play on a broken play that went for a big gain.

* The two top Universities with the most players in the Pro Football
Hall of Fame are Notre Dame, and Ohio State with 7 and 5
respectively.

* Green Bay Packers backup quarterback, Matt Hasselbeck, has been
struck by lightning twice in his life.

* It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a
year's supply of footballs.

* The home team must provide the referee with 36 footballs for each
National Football League game.

* When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home,
the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.

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FFF 2001 - What are you, chicken?!?

Time to get your picks in soon!

-Brian K. Fisher
FFF 2001 Coordinator