Stoppage time

No country for heavy men

Just when you thought Pennsylvania had enough sports featuring unhealthy cutting of weight, Mansfield is set to announce it's new sprint footbal coach today at a press conference.

After dissolving its real football program a little over a year ago, MU has actually had sprint football plans for some time. This will be the first real face of the team, though, which will attempt to fill the hole of the recently-extinct 115-year-old program.

As you may or may not know, sprint football is essentially football for players too light to play any position other than cornerback or wide receiver on a full-size football team.

The rules are the same. But the weight limit is 172 pounds, making it a perfect fit for places like the service academies, where intensive crosstraining is part of the coursework.

I do wonder how they're going to get the players to field a quality team at mansfield though. I've walked around the campus and seen the average student ... let's just say more often not, the guys fall somewhere between me (6-foot, 235) and Onslow from the brit com "Keeping up Appearances." If you haven't watched PBS during the afternoon, check out the link above.

The good news is, the bar has been set pretty low over the last ... say 60 years ... when MU had just five winning seasons on the gridiron.