Friday, September 01, 2023

When Tigers Attack! At A Pep Rally?



Yes! Yes! Yes! On today's "95.7 The Game" Willard & Dibs show, sports took a back seat to an incredible story. The era was 1986. The team was the San Mateo H.S. Bearcats. And the event was their high school football pep rally.  It was Willard's hometown high school. And although he was too young for high school at the time, his sister (a freshmen) was there in the balcony section.

What Willard was so taken by with this story, wasn't just that a Tiger jumped into the high school auditorium crowd and mauled a football player, who survived the sack. But it was the comparison with today's world of accountability. 

What school administrator/events organizer in 2023, in their right mind, would approve bringing a 450-pound Bengal Tiger to a high school auditorium full of loud, screaming, rallying teenagers. And what would be the school administration fallout and legal ramifications had it happened today.

Willard truly knocked the ball out of the park with retelling the Tiger story. The fact he also recounted the mauled football player calling into the radio show and talking about it years later, was like icing on the cake. The guy today runs an Eastbay restaurant.

Most times we sports fans tune-in to sports radio to hear the latest happenings and goings on with our teams and/or our rivals. But there are times when radio sports commentators show off their MC-ing (master of ceremonies) skills by going off-script to take their audience to a past event set in a different place and time. 

We listeners become fully engrossed in and entertained by the telling of an unbelievably, incredible story by gifted storytellers. Radio is alive and well!

And for you post YouTube fans, There is Video!

Thanks Willard & Dibs for giving us sports fans more than just the numbers. You all delivered a humorous, side-splitting, frick'in Tiger Story.


95.7 THE GAME - Bay Area’s #1 Sports Station - LISTEN LIVE | Audacy

Part 4 (3:34)


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