#384 Halftime

All right. What’s all this business about gridirons? That’s all I hear lately, the high school gridiron action is starting, college gridiron action is on the way. Gridiron this, gridiron that. And I’m thinking, as I know are you, what the heck is a gridiron and what does it have to do with football? A mystery that I intend to address today, and I promise it won’t be as controversial as Jimmy the Greek or Howard Cosell evolutionary biology. There are some far-fetched notions about the whole gridiron thing. Among them that it has something to do with the elaborate Sunday breakfast many families prepare preparatory to the big game. That breakfast almost always involves waffles. The primitive precursor of a waffle iron was a gridiron. Eat waffles, watch football. Fanciful, and unfortunately, an urban myth. Another supposition is that like a gridiron, the players in a football game are on the hotspot, forced to move quickly lest they burn out or meltdown under the pressure of their opponents punishing offense or defense. They’ve got to get their game cooking or be scraped off the griddle like so much burnt bacon. The bacon thing relates to the pigskin-enclosed oblong of air that is the article of contention on the gridiron. When the players scramble and scrimmage, it’s like a well executed sauté, when every thing gets mixed up and stir-fried and eventually some peppery piece squirts through the restraining arms of the defending spatula and touches down on the counter. Actually, the answer is a lot more mundane. The real gridiron is derived from a type of griddle. And to one with an only slightly developed imagination, the lines chalked on the grass and the big goal post handles at either end, make the field look like an extremely large griddle. I’m willing to grant that observation and conclusion. Although to be honest, the last time I looked at my griddle it didn’t have lines and numbers on it. And I can’t remember if I ever moved little chains one-tenth the length of it at a time to keep track of my eggs scrambling. As with most analogies, it breaks down when you try to press it too close. Like certain quarterbacks during certain crucial games. So it turns out the waffle description is very nearly correct. Because a waffle iron is one of the closest cooking implements we have today to the ancient gridiron. Except perhaps for the Jenn-air style cooktop grill. Cause the ancient gridiron was something between a griddle and a skillet. A skiddle or a grillet, as in grill. A gridiron could function as a grill for steaks and chops and chicken parts. Quarters and halves and even a full back or two. Chicken parts could be arranged around the center and have a couple of wings patterned on the ends. Add soy sauce. When it’s all cooked up and sorted out you could serve it in a big bowl. Preferably sponsored by a national company. It could be like, um, the Kikkoman Teriyaki Super Bowl. Yeah!
America, ya gotta love it.