RSS Feed
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Sports Scene
Sports Editor Minutes seem like hours... hours like days and days like weeks since we last teed a football up and watched a really good high school football game. There is that eagerness to get started and being from the great state of Alabama, we know there are three seasons-football season, recruiting season and spring practice. Other than gas prices and the blasted heat, you can't get anyone to talk about hardly any other topic. Which brings me to the point I was told several years ago by a retired sports writer. We were all sitting around talking in the wee hours about great football events of the past, and he was telling of times he spent with Bear Bryant and other greats and the things they did together away from the field. It was different in those days. There was no Internet and writers felt a kinship to the schools and coaches they covered. Nowadays writers are constantly jockeying for the more sensational story. But getting back to that writer. I asked him about some of the great things he had seen and the people he met. He gave a simple reply... "It beats pumping gas!" Got that right. After 16 years of doing this I fully understand what he meant by that. The great opportunity to see the players and coaches and find out all there is to know before everyone else is fun. There is no other way to describe it. The job has allowed me the opportunity to meet some famous sports people. I will always remember talking with the likes of Keith Jackson, Paul Hornung, Vince Dooley and the greatest linebacker to ever play the game, Derrick Thomas, just to name a few. But my greatest joy, the part that recharges the batteries, is that first hint of cool in the air as high school football players prepare to take the field. There is no way to describe that strong coffee smell, mingled with the grilled burgers and the jalapeno peppers all coming from a concession stand. Throw in the fresh cut grass smell and parched peanuts and no matter what you know you are at a game. The last bastion of true athleticism is in high school sports. They play because they want to...no one is making them. Younger kids are sometimes made to play city youth sports and once you move on to college the main goal is to make it to the NFL. I'll trade Auburn-Alabama tickets anyday for the chance to see Sweet Water-Thomasville, Leroy-Jackson, Clarke County-Thomasville and Clarke Prep-Patrician...and that is just scratching the surface. I see those players and coaches standing out in the hot Alabama sun during the first three weeks of practice and I see the dedication and sacrifice. No one is getting paid except the coaches and if you saw how much that was, you would fall over laughing. Friday night lights....they are approaching very fast, and then even after 11 weeks of the regular season it will be all over and then we have to wait eight more long months for it all to get started again. That same sports writer, my good friend, passed away a few weeks ago and everytime I think I am not happy doing what I do I will remember his four word mantra... "It beats pumping gas." Truer words have never been spoken. That's all folks.......
|
for larger version       |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
