Mississippi State’s Football Coach Ponders the Fake People in the Stands
--for and after Mike Leach
I have to be honest. I haven’t really gotten
the cut-out people in the stands,
the cardboard torsos
pretending to be fans.
A Twilight Zone episode! All these fakes
frozen in time, enthusing all day
regardless of who scores, who
throws the ball away. I haven’t really gotten
the fake people in the stands.
It’s science fiction meets haunted stadium:
you’re watching the big game, and you can’t move,
let alone cheer or boo. If it’s cool,
and people enjoy it, great, but it’s a little
surreal, the fake people in the stands.
Do the person impersonators have a lottery
to see who gets the best seats? Some have way better ones,
those fake people in the stands.
I want to be one of the lucky cut-outs
on the 50-yard line. Not one of those suckers
up in the rafters. In these weird times,
even a fake person can get screwed, stuck
in the worst part of the stands.
The moral of the story is this: live clean, live smart,
and maybe someday
you’ll get good seats at the LSU game
and won’t care you’re made of cardboard,
a fake person in the stands.
--Angela Ball
“Mississippi State’s Football Coach Ponders the Fake People in the Stands” honors Mississippi State’s idiosyncratic and polymathic football coach, Mike Leach, who last fall made comments to the media about a game played at LSU and the “fake people” in the stands. His words, which seemed to capture the dysphoria of sports and life at that time, invited the poem into being.
Leach is a writer of note. Here is his biography as it appears on his publisher’s website:
“Mike Leach is a legendary college football coach and New York Times bestselling author of Swing Your Sword. He has appeared on 60 Minutes and has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, and USA TODAY. He is the only college coach ever featured by NFL Films.”
Wonderful!
Posted by: David Lehman | June 22, 2021 at 09:29 AM