You can feel it in the fall air. You can see it under your town’s Friday night lights. You know they are “comin’ to your city” on Saturdays. You can watch it on TV screens all across the nation on Sundays. And you know “all my rowdy friends are coming over” on Monday nights. Yea, baby, football is back! We’re talking the real game of smash-mouth, slobber-knocking, hard-hitting, ground-pounding, pigskin-flinging good ole American football. It doesn’t get much better than this!
The stadiums, the rivalries, the teams, the players, the coaches, the cheerleaders, the waterboys, the fans and the announcers. Wait, what? Go back. The waterboys?
Absolutely! You cannot have a game without the folks who take care of the athletes. The people providing the “high-quality H2O” are critical to the safety and health of these gridiron gladiators. Without the “waterboys” (Read: trainers, doctors, nutritionists, etc.), the player’s cramps, dehydration, exhaustion and injuries from the high-endurance tasks required during a football game can quickly become a medical emergency. These are the essential aides who provide the fluid replacement, calorie and electrolyte renewal, medical monitoring, and cooling/heating needed to rehabilitate and rejuvenate these top-level athletes in order to get back into the game.