USD Football 1991

DEPLACER-VOUS ERRYLEWIS! (MOVE OVER, JERRY LEWIS!) American football has become France's newest nutty import.

BY GARY MATOSO Until recently. if you happened 10 be in Paris, strolling down the Champs Elysees and you overheard two Frenchmen having a heated discussion about yesterday's foot- ball match, you could be certain they were talking about a game where a bunch of guys in shorts run up and down a field, kicking a lillle black and white ball around. Then, a man named Laurent Plegela11e came along and c hanged the course of French football history. In 1980, Plegelatte, a high school gym teacher in Pari s, was vacation ing in Canada when he was introduced to a new sport, "American style" football. He liked the game so much that he brought 24 sets of helmets and pads back with him 10 France. · By I982, Plegelalle had organized a six team league and the Federation Françaisde Parisian students, lawyers, stockbrokers and even art gallery owners were lining up to put on the pads and start banging heads together on weekends... Football Americain (FFFA) was born. Today there are more than 60 teams with three different levels of competition. In addition. the re is a new 18-and-under junior league. a French national team, and nag-football is being introduced into many high school sportsprograms. "Back in '82. the league was much differ- ent than today," recalled Didier Zouari. the captain of a team from Paris. Les Rangers. and one of the early French players 10 step on a gridiron . ..Guys were playing in homemade equipment and gelling a field properly marked with yard lines was next 10 impossible:· A t that time there weren't many Americans playing. just a handful of U.S. Marines who happened to be stationed in Paris. The popularity of the league conlin- Gary Matoso is an American photogra- pher i11 Paris.

Tom Kelley (left) and Jered Wagner, both recent graduates of Santa Clara University, are the toasts of Paris as player-coaches of the Paris Rangers.

Photos by Ga ry Matoso

TOUCHOOWN ILLUSm ATED