A lifetime ago - OK, so it was only half a century - the coach of the newly formed first-ever football team in the history of Oxford Area High School wanted to give his young charges a real taste of big-time high school football.
We would not sport a varsity team for another year, but we piled onto a bus and made the trek up Route 1 to Delaware County.
In fact, we were going back to our old coach's stomping grounds to watch his alma mater play a football game.
I don't remember who Chichester High School played in that game.
All I remember is a guy I saw who was pretty hard to forget.
His name was Billy Johnson.
You probably know him as "White Shoes."
Luckily for us, Johnson graduated before we returned the following year to play Chi. Our coach, should have known better. We still got crushed. A running back named Joe Miller ran all over us. He returned the opening kickoff for a TD and never looked back. We lost, 72-3.
I can only imagine what the score would have been had Johnson still been the Chi quarterback.
Johnson got the idea to dye his black football cleats white. He thought they made him run faster.
I've never seen anyone better. I'm not sure what sport Johnson was playing, but it certainly wasn't the same endeavor I and the rest of my teammates were struggling with.
Johnson went on to a sterling career at Widener University and eventually to the NFL, where he became one of the league's all-time return men. You may have noticed him Sunday at the Super Bowl, where he was on the field as part of the celebration of the top 100 players in NFL history, coinciding with the centennial of the league.
Johnson rightly was named the Daily Times Football Player of the Millennium.
But there is one honor that has - for some reason - eluded him.
That would be a gold jacket, emblematic of induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Terry Toohey makes the case for why Johnson deserves a call to the Hall.
Not the least of which is he was the only player in that special group of 100 players on the field Sunday who has not been enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
He'll get no argument from me.
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