The Gospel of Southern Football

I’ve been a sports fan since I was in kindergarten. My parents are – how can I put this? – incredibly not.

My sisters are – how can I put this? – incredibly not.

Brothers-in-law? Nope.

Anyone with the same last name I have? Nope.

Anytime I wanted to watch sports – even just highlights – I was relegated to the television in the basement, where it was routinely 20 degrees colder than anywhere else in the house and where creatures that inspire horror movies regularly made special appearances.

As I got a bit older, I found more people of my ilk. In the Northeast in the 1980s and ’90s, it was mostly about baseball and basketball. We watched the NFL, but college football was absolutely an afterthought, an “if nothing else is on” kind of thing.

If people talked about sports in upstate New York, it was usually about — in this order — the Yankees, the Mets, the Giants, the Knicks, or Big East basketball.

My high school football team played on Saturday afternoons after lunch in front of about 12 people. At my school, the pep band – of which I was a member – sometimes outnumbered the fans in the stands.

Seriously.

Welcome to football country

When I first became a sports editor in Jackson, Tenn., in May 1999, it was baseball season, so I was in heaven. The West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx (don’t ask) were the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. They were a solid team, and my paper covered them almost as if they were a major league team. We had a beat writer and everything. (What’s up, Rich Loup?) It was so much fun to be a part of that.

Then summer turned to heat stroke (we Northerners call it “August”), and our sports department started preparing for the high school football season. It was then that I learned that The Jackson Sun would run a special preview section.

“We talking like four or eight pages? Tabloid? Think National Enquirer-size pages,” I asked The Boss, even thinking something that large would be a bit too much.

“Ha. No. Try 32 pages. Broadsheet. Full-size pages,” The Boss shot back.

It was then that my jaw hit the ground and I realized I was no longer in upstate New York.

Our staff proceeded to spend the next three weeks working around the clock (almost literally) to produce preview articles and statistics boxes on all 40-plus high school football teams in our coverage area. I’d never participated in anything like that before, and I’ve never done anything like it since.

Since we had a staff of just six or seven, all of us (editors, too) were sent to a few area schools to get information. On one brutally hot August morning, I was sent to Trenton Peabody High School to watch practice and speak with head coach Tim Haney.

Can you spell suck?

It was Haney, giving more accountant vibes than football coach vibes, who gave me the greatest quote of my entire journalistic career, a quote that has never been in print — until now.

Me: “How’s the team look, Coach?”

Coach: “Can you spell suck?”

I nervously laughed. Coach did not. At all.

He proceeded to list everything his team couldn’t do, but, in fairness, there was some positivity toward the end (I did have an article to write, after all), and things ended pleasantly enough. Years later, Haney went on to become the superintendent of the district.

Once the season started, Friday nights were mayhem in our office. We’d always start the same way, with a staff dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall place in Jackson called The Dixie Chicken. (If you ever have the chance – or even if you don’t – GO.)

Once we were back and settled in, phones rang incessantly with coaches reporting their scores (we couldn’t be everywhere). Stories poured in, and radios blared over each other as we listened to broadcasts of games (yes, in high school).

It was great.

Rocky Top, Rocky Flop

And if you think Southerners love high school football, Saturdays in SEC country were a whole different story. When I arrived in Jackson, the University of Tennessee was coming off a national championship season with Tee Martin at quarterback, a year removed from the Peyton Manning era. Jackson was UT crazy. We sent two writers to every game, and we even did a story on Jackson residents who had season tickets to the Vols and drove six hours one way to watch their team.

The University of Memphis was a bit more than an hour away in the other direction. No one cared.

One Saturday during the ’99 season, Tennessee blew a 10-point lead at Arkansas. The Boss, who was running the front page that night, went with “Rocky Flop” as our 96-point banner headline.

Man, did the phones ring. My favorite bunch of calls was from a fan we lovingly referred to as “Bud from Greenfield,” a fervent Vol fan who called our newspaper office regularly to give us his take. If you have a picture in your head right now, I can promise you that it’s pretty accurate.

The gospel according to Bud

On this particular Sunday, Bud called every hour on the hour from when I got in the office at about 2 until I left shortly before midnight. Each time, he merely played “Rocky Top” on his tape player and held the receiver up to it.

Oddly, I gained a lot of respect for Bud that day.

After experiencing all of that – and more – I can say that I get it. I really get it, and as I travel home to New York this Thanksgiving, I will be spreading the gospel of Southern football to all who will listen – even my family.