SEDVILLE, Mo. The NFL post-season begins in earnest this weekend, but one team of tough, battle-tested veterans is already lining up to scrimmage over a high-stakes issue; the use of Velcro-fastened “crib sheets” by the league’s quarterbacks.
“In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
“What kind of example are we setting for the nation’s schoolchildren if we allow highly-paid young men to openly, notoriously and brazenly walk on the playing field with notes written on their arms?” says Myrna Folkstone, a substitute teacher and the editor of the 2018 edition of Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. “Even if they do it surreptitiously or in a clandestine manner, it’s still wrong.”
“1066 Battle of Hastings right.”
The ubiquitous memory aids, known variously as “playbook bands” or “wrist coaches,” are used by quarterbacks to recall previously-practiced offensive plays, such as the “forward pass,” the “flea flicker” and the “Fumble-Rooski.” Students in American primary and secondary schools are barred from using supplemental materials in “closed book” examinations, although they are allowed to text friends “OMG this car won’t fit in that teeny-tiny space!” during the parallel parking portion of driver’s license tests administered by state registries of motor vehicles.
“Send in a play–this isn’t the unexpurgated edition!”
Substitute teachers, the most widely-abused sector of the nation’s education-industrial complex, are particularly vulnerable to so-called “crib sheets” because they often are placed in classrooms without guidance as to what material the students have covered before. “I don’t understand it,” says Eloise Whitman, incoming president of the National Association of Substitute Teachers. “No matter what class I’m assigned to, no matter what time of the year it is, the kids always say they’re still on Chapter 1.”
Goodell: “Um, not gonna happen, lady.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he would take the complaint under advisement, but doubted he could persuade owners, coaches and players to change. “For some reason a lot of these guys have memory problems,” he noted. “Also, money is life’s report card, and I make a helluva lot more than a substitute teacher.”
I always wondered when the education world would jump on this Con! So funny!