I’ll not drag you deep into some rabbit hole about the world of Sports Tourism, and my feeble contribution to that landscape and a job for which I was as well-suited as if I’d had instead taken a hard right turn into the exciting career path of a tugboat captain.

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Just know that seven years ago this week, Huntsville was hosting a national cornhole tournament.

This week, there is a college football game between two instate teams who haven’t met in 20 years at an old baseball stadium that had been left for dead. Which, on the mild-to-hot scale of exceptional Huntsville sporting events, is just somewhere up there in “really, really hot but not quite nuclear.”

Samford will play North Alabama at 6 p.m. Saturday at Joe Davis Stadium, which now gets the appendix of /Wicks Family Field. These are both FCS programs with no small bit of legacy. This is expected to be the first of yearly games here.

(Now, for the love of all that’s all holy, NO BOWL GAME HERE, PLEASE. There are people in Huntsville who would like to make that happen. It’s a worse idea than pickle-flavored waffles. We are not a December destination. It would not be money well-spent for what would be required as host. Our football community’s attention would ignore the game, as it would be focused on our state’s top two teams as they head to the College Football Playoffs and the Music City Bowl rather than, say, the Marshall Thundering Herd vs. the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers.)

North Alabama is still trying to chase its old small college history, with three consecutive national titles in the 1990s and 21 NCAA playoff invitations. Such a power was UNA, NCAA Division chose to honor one of its stud players, Harlon Hill, as namesake for that level’s Heisman Trophy.

Samford was once known as Howard, back when a quarterback named Bobby Bowden transferred there from Alabama, became an All-American – while, hush-hush, sneaking off to Trenton, Ga., to elope with the beautiful Ann Estock against his coaches’ wishes -- then coached the program for four seasons. It’s now in the hands of a grand Bowden-esque figure named John Grass who spent eight seasons as Jacksonville State’s coach, with a national coach of the year award and six Ohio Valley Conference championships. I hold college football coaches of the past 20 years in the same regard as moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, but I’ll pull for John Grass forever.

To rewind back to the cornhole tournament. My job at the Convention & Visitors Bureau sent me to various national conferences where I’d schmooze with people who had sporting events and were looking for sites. They’d gladly accept your bid fee, discounted hotel rooms, free meals, hospitality and grunt work in return for their gracing your city with the flimsy promise they’d leave behind a fortune spent in hotels, restaurants, bars and stores

.

I sold the cornhole people my elaborate vision of their tournament at Campus 805, boards supine in rows up and down the vast greenspace, bags colorfully helicoptering in the blue August skies. And yummy adult beverages on either side. They bought it.

Sadly and wrongly, there had been much competition and even some bitterness between various local entities involved in sports tourism. Everybody was thirsty for credit. So this was My Win. The new guy landed an event. My shoulder was sore from patting myself on the back.

Then … well, then there wasn’t much to celebrate. It came in over budget. The competitors were ticked because the yummy adult beverages at either side were unforgivably unavailable at 8:30 a.m. The planned night-time competition – I had even arranged for portable lighting – got scrubbed in late afternoon because it was the first week of college football and all the competitors wanted to get home to watch. The heads-in-beds hotel stays? Mostly for one night, and in the sort of lodging intimately familiar to viewers of TV true crime shows or Chevy Chase movies.

I still feel the mournful, lonely ache of failure, lugging lumpy garbage bags across that vast plateau between brew pubs and toward a dumpster at sunset. Somewhere inside one, surely, was my tattered soul.

In Huntsville sports tourism lore, I am Pete Best. He was, you may know, the drummer for The Beatles before they stumbled across this cat named Ringo Starr.

I was followed at the CVB by Joel Lamp, who along with Sports Commission executive director Mark Russell forms this two-headed most important figure in Huntsville sports. Their imagination, contacts, hard work, dedication and teamwork led to a mere $63 million economic impact through sports in 2025, double the pre-pandemic numbers. They combined for 71 significant sports tourism events with 161,000 athletes, coaches and spectators coming to town, and they don’t care who gets credit for them. Fifteen of the events were televised. Russell has long maintained “My three favorite words are, ‘Live from Huntsville.’”

Lamp and Russell have been given enormous support from City Hall, from Mayor Tommy Battle and City Administrator John Hamilton. They have benefitted from local partners everywhere who understand the importance of what they do for the community – from the Von Braun Center to the Trash Pandas to Parks & Rec to the Chamber.

Mark Russell, far left, and Joel Lamp, far right, flank Auburn coach Steven Pearl, Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle and MTSU coach Nick McDevitt at announcement of this December’s Auburn-MTSU game

They are why the SEC Softball Championships will be here next spring, why Auburn is playing a basketball game in December, why Conference USA plays its basketball championships here, why the NCAA is enamored with our cross country course and while we’re a beach volleyball destination when we’re 350 miles from the closest waves.

They are why there is an intriguing football game Saturday to begin the season, one I hope fills the stands at Joe Davis Stadium.

And why you haven’t seen very much lately about cornhole tournaments.

Me and Joe Engel. You may have heard I was writing a book….

I was 12 the last time I stood on a pitcher’s mound, baseball in hand, with people watching. I was nervous then. Vicky Cannon was there. She was the coach’s daughter, an exotic, alluring older woman of 14.

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Now, here I am again. Many decades later. In front of a pitcher’s mound, holding an official minor league baseball so antiquated it bore the signature of a baseball executive who retired in 2020. And I am nervous. My legs feel a little collywobbly. It is considerably farther to home plate from this mound than it was in the Brainerd Dixie Youth League and I was aiming at my catcher, Wayne Hickey.

I am about to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. I have three thoughts running through my head:

(1) I should have tried a few warm-up tosses at home over the weekend.

(2) I recall how President Bush was preparing to throw a first pitch at Yankee Stadium in the aftermath of 9/11, and Derek Jeter’s last words were, “Don’t bounce it.”

(3) I thought about a montage of all the horrendous first pitches with which You Tube has provided us through the years, from throws that sailed to the backstop, that trickled to the plate like a snail, that hit the mascot, that slipped from the pitcher’s grip like a wet bar of soap.

Waiting for my turn, I was joined outside the dugout by my long-time friend, Chattanooga’s iconic radio voice, Jim Reynolds. As I walked toward the mound, J.R. went Derek Jeter on me.

“Don’t bounce it.

My throw is dead-solid right down the middle of the plate.

On one bounce.

Oh, well…

I had barely taken three steps off the field and into the box seat section when somebody stopped me. It was Clay Crumbliss, whom I first covered when he played football at Baylor and somebody I’ve remained connected to through Facebook. We played on opposite softball teams in the Lookout Mountain League, where we all had so much fun it should have been illegal.

‘I’ve got one question,” he said. “I saw your throw. How did you guys ever beat us in softball? And you played third base.”

I was a two-tool player. Great hands and I could hit, for power and average. But I needed FedEx to help get the ball from my side of the infield to first base.

The First Pitch Ceremony has undergone a massive evolution from when another president, the Terry Forster-ish President Taft, lobbed it from the front row of the box seats. It became a microscope moment for dignitaries and stars; my first pitch came only a day before the Mets offered the same opportunity to the AT&T commercial girl, Lily. So, maybe the “dignitaries and stars” phrase is a stretch.

These days, especially in the minor leagues, the ceremony involves multiple pitchers, typically game-day sponsors and adorable children in their pee-wee ball uniforms, or the reluctant children of game-day sponsors who heave the pitch like an Olympic shot-putter.

Or, on this evening at Erlanger Park, a guy billed as a Chattanooga Baseball Historian. Ahem…

The Lookouts have invited me to their new stadium as they celebrate the game’s history in the city, and to help plug my upcoming biography of the city’s legendary Joe Engel: “The Barnum of Baseball: The Life and Times of Joe Engel.” Which just happens to be on presale in advance of its Christmas release.

A quick word, first, about the ballpark. I have been to close to 100 minor league stadiums since my unrequited crush on Vicky Cannon waned. Erlanger Park is by far the best. Its sheer location helps transform what had been an eyesore at the front door of Chattanooga, acres of empty, dilapidated old foundry buildings. It has incorporated some of those buildings into the construction of the park. There is a marvelous mixture of old and new. The fan experience is incredible. From four rows up in the stands, you can hear and feel the sizzle of a 95-mph fastball.

It makes me proud to be a native of the city, and appreciative of how team president Rich Mozingo and his staff have embraced the deep history of baseball there. Including using Coke bottles statues from Engel Stadium (about which I write in “The Barnum of Baseball: The Life and Times of Joe Engel.” Which just happens to be on presale in advance of its Christmas release – in case you missed this link in a previous paragraph).

Proud to say part of the history collection is a pennant I donated that is autographed by the 1976 Lookouts, who brought baseball back to the city after a 10-year absence.

One of Mozingo’s interns, bless her heart, tried to offer some hospitality as I stood at a my table in the concourse.

“So you’re a historian,” she said. “Tell me some Chattanooga baseball history.”

Oh, girl, you don’t want to get me started …

I look around the stadium, I figure I am the only person here who was also at Engel Stadium on April 20, 1976, Opening Night of the return of baseball. I am pretty much the only person there old enough to have been there

.

Joe Engel was the stuff of legend at his ballpark, from signing the 17-year-old girl Jackie Mitchell to a pro baseball contract and sending her out to pitch against the New York Yankees to trading a shortstop for a turkey. And, of course, giving away a house on a night that drew more than 24,000 fans, many of whom were left to stand in foul ground and behind ropes in the outfield. Chattanooga historian? Geez, I used to write about and am friends with the family of the man who now lives in that house.

But the history created during the return of baseball to Chattanooga, and still being written by Mozingo and his organization and his team is remarkable.

I could tell that intern about that first game, and how Mark Budaska hit a grand slam and Brian Kingman was the winning pitcher, and how Kingman and I still stay in touch. And how Kingman talked his way into Gov. George Wallace’s office one day, with me in tow, alongside Bruce Robinson

Matt Keough, Bruce Robinson and Bob Mollenhauer, as they arrived at Chattanooga airport in 1976

And about so much that season. A pregame pep talk from first baseman Ron Beaurivage that snapped a losing streak. Manager Rene Lachemann growling that if anybody didn’t like the rules, they could call Oakland owner Charlie Finley, then reciting a phone number. And how bonus baby Denny Walling immediately responded, “Gee Lach, that’s not the number Charlie gave me.”’ And Matt Keough, who died much too young. And Dwayne Murphy, who played centerfield so gingerly one night in Savannah after I pointed out a spot where the Braves’ guard dog left a massive souvenir. And Bob Mollenhauer, who turned me on to Kurt Vonnegut, and Denny Haines and Rick Tronerud and Clarence Harrell, also gone far too soon. And Steve McCatty and Keith Lieppman, Derek Bryant and Russ Peach, Randy Scarbery and Ron Bell.

Close my eyes, I can see each one, all in their early 20s, all so young, all so fresh in my mind. All so vivid 50 years later, so real and alive, it can’t really be history, can it?

# # #

I was bad, but not Michael Jordan bad…

I’m so appreciative of new subscribers. Especially those who provide some financial support to encourage this exercise. Part of the deal, paid subscribers should receive one of my books. If you’ve signed up and haven’t gotten a book shipped to you, please let me know.

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.Even still, news tidbits kept floating in every day, and I have a cool book update for you.

After I submitted my manuscript last week, Kevin Reichard, my publisher/editor/boss/friend at August Publications, and I agreed on a title: Barnum of Baseball: The Life and Times of Joe Engel

.Now, this won’t be the cover. This is courtesy of chatgpt for a promotional placard as I accept advance sales of the book. I’ll be at Erlanger Park in Chattanooga Tuesday night, Aug. 18, for Chattanooga Baseball History Night and fans can order personalized copies, with the book to be published before Christmas. You can click here to order in advance. And I’ll be printing some excerpts here in the coming weeks.

Some random tidbits:

Deb Honeycutt, wife of Rick, the long-time major league pitcher and coach for the Dodgers, reports that the Honeycutt’s old house, which had been sold to the city of Fort Oglethorpe several years ago, has been repurposed as the new home of the Honeycutt Park and Recreation Office

.Rick and I went to different schools together, I wrote about a 275,000 words on him during our respective careers and once co-hosted a talk show together. Great guy.

As for another major league reliever of my acquaintance, there is 38-year-old Craig Kimbrel from Huntsville. He was recently signed by the Kansas City Royals, hoping to extend his stellar career

.Trivia question: Name the teams for which Kimbrel has pitched.

I no longer pretend to have any clue what merits Hall of Fame induction. Craig is a nine-time All-Star and is fifth all-time in saves. He was a Rookie of the Year and twice the reliever of the year.

I do wonder if continuing to pitch and not being as devastating as he was in his prime will hurt his Hall of Fame chances.

Last week, Oakland’s Jacob Wilson broke the record for consecutive errorless games at shortstop, at 111. The previous record-holder was Mike Bordick, a former Huntsville Stars standout.

Bordick is now involved with former Chattanooga Lookouts Frank Kolarek in an organization called League of Dreams, which works to help disabled kids play baseball and softball. It’s a magnificent organization and has established programs in north Alabama. Kolarek and Bordick were joined here last spring by Ron McNeely, the former star at Lee High School, Memphis State and a long-time player in the Oakland organization.

Cool surprise last week for Jayson Swain, the Grissom High All-State wide receiver of a couple of decades ago who went on to play at Tennessee. The Huntsville Hall of Fame member remained in Knoxville, doing radio work, and was recently asked to join the booth for Tennessee football broadcasts along with Mike Keith. Here’s Keith’s invitation:

Trivia answer: Braves, Padres, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Dodgers, Phillies, Orioles, Braves again, Astros, Rays, Mets, Royals.

You know when you open an e-card and your computer bursts alive with fireworks or some other joyous explosion of graphics?

I feel gypped.

My computer screen should have just done that. Earlier today, I pressed the send button and sent a manuscript to a publisher. I think any time a writer hits send on anything larger than, say, the average Substack, there should be computer fireworks.

Now, AI tells me how I can create them.

To make fireworks and similar celebrations appear on a computer screen, you use visual effects software, browser extensions, or code. Key tools include particle simulation software, browser extensions, and HTML5/JavaScript canvas code. [1, 2, 3, 4]

I won’t.

The book will throw no fear into Harry Potter. Stephen King and John Grisham are not being threatened.

It is a biography of Joe Engel, who was an amazing minor league baseball promoter, the owner and president of the Chattanooga Lookouts for nearly 35 years. This is a guy who gave away a house to a lucky fan (more than 24,000 in the park that night), signed a 17-year-old girl who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and once traded a shortstop for a turkey. And the list goes on.

This will not be the last time I hype the book in this space. But even if you think you know all about Joe Engel, you don’t. You’ll learn so much more. If you’re in Chattanooga, you’ll appreciate the history. If you’re a sports fan, the names and nostalgia and stories will entertain and enlighten.

What do you know?

I just wrote my own book blurb.

Fireworks, please.

You want to know how long it takes to write a book? This has been right at a year since my publisher, the great Kevin Reichard of August Publications, asked me to write it. It’s my fifth book, but first biography. And with a subject who died in 1969 and few family and peers remaining, it was a challenge.

When I visited Hemingway’s house in Key West, I was amazed at the number of cats. I wondered how he got any work done. We bought a puppy a few months ago. I’m telling you: trade in those cats for a couple of puppies, and the old man would still be there with the sea, all wistful abut Joe DiMaggio, and nobody writing about him.

Now, for the cool coincidence of the day.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press today profiled a man named Jamison Pack. He is a collector of baseball memorabilia. He wants to relocate his museum, the GroveWood Baseball Museum, to Chattanooga. He could be my new hero if he makes this all happen.

There is a vacant space, perfect for his collection.

It is Engel Stadium, still sturdy in its foundation but needing a little fixin’-up all over the place. The trouble with the stadium, it’s been under the apathetic ownership of UT-Chattanooga. There is oversight – or, really, poor sight -- from a lot of politicians for whom the quest for re-election drowns out sincere actions for community service and creative thinking

.

Engel Stadium’s concourse should be the new home for Pack’s collection.

The Engel Stadium Foundation, once a factor but now seemingly a ghost, should have already found Pack’s contact info. They should drum up a pitch to HGTV to build one of those home-improvement shows around a historic stadium. Let the stadium serve its role as sight for competitive sports for UTC and save the innards for history.

They, or one of the stadium’s landlords, should galvanize the community to preserve a place with such rich history, where Billy Graham saved thousands of souls, where Roy McDonald’s Home Stores gave out thousands of coupons to folks praying for a new home, where Joe Engel served thousands of holiday meals to the less fortunate during the Depression. Where movies were filmed. Where Babe Ruth struck out and Harmon Killebrew homered and where 17-year-old Willie Mays launched his career. Where countless players took a huge step toward the majors. Where Michael Jordan, Chipper Jones, Cal Ripken, Bo Jackson, Ty Cobb, Mark McGwire, Walter Johnson and Satchel Paige all played.

Ironically, I know the perfect guy to make all that come together.

Joe Engel.

Because it is one of the Commandments of Journalism to go back in time for round-number and significant anniversaries, here we go with a 2001 retrospective. Obviously a pivotal year for our country — and a busy one for a columnist. We not only had 9/11, but in the sports world, we lost Dale Earnhardt early in the year. Meanwhile, I convinced my bosses of a great boondoggle: I’d cover a national or world championship each month of the year.

So, every month for subscribers only, I’ll be digging into the archives. And remember monthly Substack subscription here is just $5. (These posts are typically paid content; because I am on a book deadline this week and created no other Substack post, this World Series of Dominoes is for all to read.)

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ANDALUSIA -- Oh, how you’d have loved to have been in The Green Duck, there in Kansas City, when the door opened and let in a shimmering gold sparkle from his right front tooth, and Wayne Morrow made his grand entrance a minute or two behind the sparkle.

“I talk a lot of trash,” Morrow has told you. “They ain’t gonna be able to shut me up any more.”

Morrow, a computer operator with the Department of Agriculture, traveled a million miles from midtown K.C. to L.A. -- the Lower Alabama flatlands -- for the 15th time in his life, and came away as the king of the World Championship Domino Tournament.

“If you can win here, you definitely have something to talk about,” Morrow says.

As it happens, there is plenty to discuss at The Green Duck this week. Ten of its

regulars — all African-American — made the trek to Andalusia. Most had more than a modicum of success.

Or, as Ronald Toombes - they call him the “Bonemaster” — says, “We’ve cleaned up this year.”

This whole thing began, as Doctor Dominoes tells you with a chuckle, “when I was talking when I shouda been listening.”

Dr. Charles Tomberlin is a radiologist. To the population of Andalusia, he is Doctor Dominoes. He was the brainstorm behind the championship, the paternal figure who nurtured it through its 26 episodes, the instinctive P.R. whiz who enlisted Bear Bryant as a participant to grow its notoriety, the wispy, white-haired gent who still bounds energetically around as the tournament progresses.

You know he has told the story a thousand times, but still he revels in it as he grabs a chair and a cup full of boiled peanuts and sits at a card table where 14 dominoes lie scattered, like tornado debris.

A Muzak of click-click-clicking dominoes provides the soundtrack as he provides the history. Tomberlin and a foursome of friends had their own little revolving game, playing once a week at the various homes. They were members of the Rotary Club. *”Everybody thought of us as the old men’s club,” he says. “We didn’t do projects. If somebody needed some help, we wrote checks. We didn’t believe in projects.”

But it was 1976, the Bicentennial Year. Andalusia wanted to do something special. Why, the year before, somebody made a sincere attempt at both glasnost and culture, bringing to town a troupe of Russian dancers.

So, the Bicentennial folks asked the Rotarians to help.

“I was sitting back there and said, ‘I think we ought to have a dominoes tournament’” Tomberlin says.

To which Bill Albritton, a local attorney, countered, “That’d be worse than those Russian dancers.”

Well, anyway, as you can guess by now, and you can tell by looking around at all the hubbub around Doctor Dominoes, at the energetic young boys, at the teen-age champ - Joanna Ward, a sweet, soft Cabbage Patch Kid of a girl confined to a wheelchair with a trache otomy tube attached to her throat — at the farmers and retirees and Kansas City guys in gaudy gold watches and various local gentry, it has knocked the babushkas off the Russian dancers.

The first year, there were 86 people. The second, when it became the State of Alabama Domino Tournament, there were 350 people to show up. The next year, with the clever notion to patent the title, it became the World Championship Domino Tournament.

How wonderful this tournament endures as it does, with a comparatively lean purse of $16,910, not lured away from here by some corporate sponsors and plopped in a tacky hotel ballroom casino and played on tape at 3 a.m. on ESPN2.

How wonderful that it lives in this modest town, a small dot on the road map bisected by skinny red lines instead of the thick artery of an interstate, has created for itself an identity and source of self-worth to separate it with pride from the other Mayberrys of the world.

Perhaps appropriate, since dominoes is a game whose popularity has somehow eluded the upper-middle class suburbs — why play with game pieces you can actually touch when PlayStation offers you such realistic fakery? -- but owes its life to the fellows of the aging “Greatest Generation” and young black males.

Of course, it should be noted that dominoes on the Internet is a blossoming deal. That’s how Jim Thompson, ranked No. 1 in the U.S.on one site, learned of the tournament and wound up here from his home in Sacramento, Calif., flying to New Orleans, then taking a bus to Andalusia to join the field of 500-plus entries.

You can count a half-dozen different license plates in the parking lot, just on the way from your car into the Kiwanis Community Building, an enormous fieldhouse the size of three gyms, with the dominoes area partitioned off in the center, with a rows of card tables surrounded by aluminum folding chairs that screech angrily when somebody moves them on the cold, concrete floor.

Best of all, the Rotarians - who co sponsor the tournament with the Pilot Club, and whose president is former Huntsvillian Dr. Toby Atkinson - have contributed some $300,000 to a variety of charities over the tournament history.

“These people,” says Cecil Franklin, “are go getters.”

Franklin, a 77-year-old retiree from the Post Office who lives in Calera, has been playing dominoes for 65 years. He hasn’t missed a World Championship since its second year.

“Hey, Timex. You take a beating and still come back,” teases one of his friends as he walks past.

They have kept coming back as much for the camaraderie as the competition, most participants will tell you. It’s a reunion as much as a tournament.

The appeal of the game is less easy to determine.

Says Franklin, “I guess it’s like people who play golf. You get started and it gets in your blood.”

It’s not a new phenomenon.The first evidence of dominoes was discovered in King Tut’s tomb, from 1355 B.C. But he only reigned over Egypt, and he’s now just a mummy. The real king reigns in Andalusia, Ala., and Kansas City, the lord of a place called The Green Duck, his gold tooth glistening as the trash talk bubbles.

You know, the last time Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi and others tried to break away from something, it didn’t really turn out all that well.

Here they go again.

At least they’re threatening to.

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The SEC Media Days are in Tampa this year. I think it would’ve been more appropriate to hold them at Fort Sumter.

The SEC: It Just Wants More.

You can’t spell secede without SEC.

I’ll resist my annual old-man, get-off-my-lawn grumpiness about how glad I am not to be covering this extravaganza of propaganda and prevarication—about how it has lost its fun, how there’s no real news, and how everything is so homogenized.

Mostly, I’m glad I wasn’t there to hear Greg Sankey’s address and Q&A. I’ve already had one stroke. I don’t need another.

First of all, don’t get me started on Sankey’s desire for a 24-team College Football Playoff. Every survey and poll says nobody wants that—except conferences like the SEC, which can beg and bully its way into a handful of extra invitations. (And don’t hit me with hypocrisy about the sanctity of the academic calendar. Coaches’ concern for academics generally extends to (1) keeping athletes eligible and (2) telling recruits’ mamas that academics are important.)

But the nerve to suggest the SEC could simply secede from the NCAA and play by its own rules should concern every fan and alumnus out there.

Naturally, the first question after Sankey’s polished oration was just how real the conversations are about the SEC breaking away.

“So they’re real,” Sankey said. “People have talked about that. They’ve opined about the frustrations that bring them to the point of saying we should look at something significantly different. I do not believe that is a leverage point. I think that’s just honest communication. …

“(T)hose comments represent a high level of frustration with the circumstance in which we find ourselves. We have regulated ourselves more progressively than other colleagues by choice, across our league. We’ve had different academic eligibility restrictions in the past. We’ve had different transfer restrictions in the past. Some of what you hear comes out of a culture that we can regulate ourselves.”

“I’ve said this for a long time now...I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find rules that everybody plays by, then we should play our own,” Georgia coach Jefferson Davis—er, uh, Kirby Smart—said last May at the SEC meetings. “I’m not afraid of that.”

Easy to be brave when you’re sitting atop a rich, successful program.

If the SEC adopts its own football rules, step one for everyone else in the NCAA should be to tell the SEC it’s on its own in every other sport, too.

So, Kirby, go down the hall and ask the volleyball coach or the track coach what they think is best for their programs.

And ask some recruits what they’d choose. And think how many stars might look elsewhere. Suppose Georgia and Miami each offer $100,000 in NIL money to the hottest running back in the country. Georgia can’t compete for a national championship. Miami can.

Or imagine it’s a point guard choosing between Villanova and Auburn for $75,000. The choice is an NCAA Tournament bid—or, assuming desperation would make the NIT cave and invite SEC teams, a consolation tournament.

There is no question college athletics is a horrible, self-inflicted mess. Greed isn’t limited to the SEC. The NCAA has been an abysmal failure in anticipating change and figuring out how to regulate it.

I once wrote about Mike Slive, the late SEC commissioner and a man I truly liked both personally and professionally. I noted a bit of symbolism in his downtown Birmingham office. Sitting on his windowsill was a pair of antique binoculars. I thought they represented the foresight he brought to leading college athletics.

Right now, Greg Sankey—and much of the rest of college athletics—is looking through the wrong end of the binoculars.

“Hey. Relax. Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring. Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls. It’s more democratic.”
— Crash Davis to Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham

If there’s one thing Facebook reminds me of on a regular basis, it’s that nobody has a freaking clue what labels really mean — from fascist to communist to socialist, and all the other scare-you buzzwords flung from one side at the other.

“Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology characterized by dictatorial power,” ChatGPT told me when I asked, “How are strikeouts fascist?” Part of the answer: “They symbolize control. The pitcher completely dictates the at-bat, leaving no chance for the defense or offense to improvise.”

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Which brings us to this most recent Major League Baseball All-Star Game, a 4-0 snoozefest featuring 27 strikeouts and only three hits by the National League. Mostly because both teams rolled out a parade of one-inning wonders — pitchers who are barely household names in their own households — specializing in throwing 100 mph and striking everybody out.

Rather than fascists, the great columnist Joe Posnanski simply called them “pitching warlocks.”

That’s the world of baseball today. But instead of reaching for the panic button, stay calm.

One of the miraculous aspects of sports is their ability to self-correct and evolve. Baseball emerged from its chemically enhanced home run era only to enter an assembly line of atomic arms. That will change, too. Maybe — hopefully — the next evolution will favor defense, base hits and athleticism again.

It happens everywhere. Just when you think the NFL is nothing but passing, you realize you’d better grab a running back in the first or second round of your fantasy draft. Basketball has gone from behemoths in the paint to silky guard play to, well, behemoths who now play like silky guards. College football has evolved from three yards and a cloud of dust into an aggressive, wide-open game.

I’m a progressive conservative when it comes to baseball. A contradiction? Maybe.

I’m a purist in many ways. The home team wears white. The road team wears gray. If somebody Cadillacs around the bases after a home run, he deserves to get plunked in the rear his next at-bat. A bunt single is not a mortal sin. Starting pitchers should work deeper into games. And I admire great defense.

Watching from my perch as the third-string official scorer at Trash Pandas games, I’m often most struck by defensive brilliance — and not just because I have to focus on hit-or-error decisions. It’s the third baseman who snags a one-hop rocket with a “look what I found” play. Or the range of Rocket City shortstop Mac McCroskey. (Here’s a clip from last year, when he was playing second base.)

https://www.milb.com/video/mac-mccroskey-s-strong-defensive-game?t=playerid-815151

Yet I’ve always been an advocate for the designated hitter. I applaud the rule limiting extreme infield shifts. And I like any rule that discourages endless relief-pitcher matchups.

Now, here’s where baseball still has it wrong.

As much as I hate rewarding starting pitchers who can’t keep their pitch counts down and get yanked early, it’s time to change the rule requiring a winning pitcher to complete five innings.

And then there’s this ghost-runner dude...

Actually, I understand the idea. Nobody wants 20-inning marathons that empty ballparks and decimate pitching staffs. Placing a runner on second base to begin extra innings speeds things along.

But wait one inning.

Play the 10th the traditional way. If it’s still tied, put the automatic runner on second starting in the 11th and every inning after that.

Going back to the All-Star Game and Posnanski’s column, he suggested that we’re always going to complain that the current All-Star Game isn’t as special as the one we watched when we were 10 years old.

For me, that was the game played late in my 11th year — one that just marked its, sigh, 60th anniversary.

The National League beat the American League 2-1 in a crisp, 2-hour, 19-minute day game played in a ridiculous 105-degree heat. Brooks Robinson, my childhood hero, went 3-for-4 and was named MVP. Both starting pitchers worked three innings: the immortal Sandy Koufax and Detroit’s Denny McLain, one year before his mind-boggling 31-win season.

Geez, what’s with that hair? is what the third baseman on the right seems to be asking the other

Robinson tripled off Koufax in the second inning, then scored on a wild pitch. Brooks Robinson was never to be confused with Usain Bolt. He finished with just 68 career triples in 11,782 regular-season plate appearances, many of them, I suspect, because of the quirky ballpark dimensions of that era.

The games were genuinely competitive — not in the maniacal Pete Rose-running-over-Ray Fosse-at-home-plate sense, but because both leagues took pride in winning. There also wasn’t the familiarity we have today. Interleague play was still years away. As Jim Kaat later said, “We were starstruck” seeing National League players up close.

And what stars they were.

For the American League: Brooks Robinson, Jim Kaat, Catfish Hunter, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, Frank Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski — all future Hall of Famers.

For the National League: Sandy Koufax, Henry Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays, Ron Santo, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry, an injured Bob Gibson, Jim Bunning and Joe Morgan.

And, um...

Only 11 total strikeouts in 10 innings.

We visited the Vatican on our honeymoon 22 years ago, agog at the beauty and history, caught up in the hustle and bustle of St. Peter’s Square. We then found a charming sidewalk café for people-watching. Weren’t we something back then?

Anyway, Patricia was raised Catholic. So, returning from a short vacation in northern Michigan (a very underrated destination, by the way—but Southerners are advised to wait until their summer, July 28–30, before venturing into Lake Michigan), I made a slight detour. I figured she needed to see that other magnificent Catholic shrine: Notre Dame Stadium, along with its two cousins in lore and majesty, the Golden Dome and Touchdown Jesus.

I have Irish blood, but no great sentimental ties to Notre Dame. That’s partly a byproduct of my newspaper background, where neutrality was part of the job.

I am not neutral here: Notre Dame has the catchiest fight song melody on the planet. Click for a guaranteed all-day earworm.

We found a parking spot next to the Hesburgh Library and walked around to gaze at Touchdown Jesus, his arms extended above a green, squirrel-filled courtyard leading to the stadium entrance. Requisite photos taken, we strolled to the stadium.

I posed next to the Knute Rockne statue, keeping an ear cocked in case he decided to implore me to win one for the Gipper. Instead, he just sent me a subliminal message to find the campus bookstore and shop for souvenirs.

As we gazed through the metal bars of the locked gate, an affable Notre Dame maintenance worker eased up in a black pickup.

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“You look like two people who deserve a treat today,” he said.

He fished out his ID badge, tapped a sensor, and opened a walk-in gate. Then he led us down a long, narrow ramp beneath a ceiling from which countless championship banners dangled proudly. It was the same ramp trod by Joe Montana (the true GOAT), Jerome Bettis, Tim Brown, and dozens of other legends. We woke up the echoes, as the fight song says

.We walked onto the field, struck the obligatory leaning-on-the-goalpost pose, then meandered to midfield.

“Don’t step on the logo,” I warned. Bad juju.

We didn’t want to wear out our welcome, but we didn’t exactly dart toward the end zone and the exit, either. I just kept gazing around the stadium.

I have always loved the fullness of an empty stadium. Maybe it goes back to emerging from the tunnel at Talladega and seeing the acres of a deserted infield and grandstands stretching nearly a mile. Or maybe it was those football Saturday nights when, having finally won my bloody battle with the Deadline Monster, I would luxuriate in the view from the press box. Only hours earlier the stadium had buzzed with energy; now it was littered with crushed cups, scattered boxes, and booze bottles that had once been strategically sneaked inside and now lay like dead soldiers.

The emptiness of Notre Dame Stadium was, well, deafening with its echoes.

We got halfway back to the car when Patricia said, “You know I’m not a sports person. But when we were walking down that ramp, I got goosebumps.”

Touchdown, Jesus.

So, every other week for subscribers only, I’ll be digging into the archives. And remember monthly Substack subscription here is just $5.

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BIRMINGHAM - The tennis player hustles full sped to the right corner, chasing a lob. With a grunt, he stretches for a forehand smash. With the follow-through, the racquet dances briefly in the air with a fancy swordsman’s flourish.

He makes a quick stop before hitting the fence, then turns to see his return has been placed so impeccably, his opponent’s answer is a feeble shot into the net.

Game!

Close your eye and it’s every tennis tournament you’ve ever attended.

The tww-o-i-i-ck of ball against nylon strings. The audible silence of the crowd. The grunts of a server. The muffled, muttered curses of self-admonition.

Except one thing.

Except for the noise of hula-hoop wheels on the cheese-grater pavement of a tennis court, a noise that sounds like a razor against a morning’s beard.

And when you open your eyes to that noise, it is one of the most remarkable things you have seen in sport.

The Lakeshore Foundation World Challenge 2001 is the richest tournament in wheelchair tennis. The best players in the world are here at this leafy campus clinging to the east side of the mountain in Birmingham.

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“Wide World of Sports,” that great Saturday afternoon ABC-TV fixture, spanned the globe to bring us “the constant variety of sport … the thrill of victory … and the agony of defeat.” Anybody of a certain age can’t read that last phrase without seeing, in the mind’s eye, that poor skier flying awkwardly off the ski jump and simultaneously into oblivion and eternal attention (and, likely, a nearby ER). You win a bar bet if you can recall the name Vinko Bogataj.

Wide World of Sports comes to mind as I ponder why certain names stick with us and come echoing back, inexplicably, years later.

Among the places featured by Wide World of Sports was the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club. Bobsled was one of the great events the show presented. It was fast, fascinating, and so foreign. There were spectacular crashes. It wasn’t something we could pretend to mimic during the four days of snow we’d get over three winters in Chattanooga—not that we didn’t try, depending on the availability of garbage can lids and the lack of rust on the old Flexible Flyer purchased years earlier at Western Auto.

The chief executive at St. Moritz was a retired British Army colonel named Digby Willoughby. Best. Name. Ever.

He was often interviewed during the competitions, and he was more stuffed-up than a taxidermied rabbit. He should have worn a monocle. Every bobsled race was the Super Bowl to Col. Willoughby, himself a competitor who was bold enough not only to rocket down an icy chute but also to marry his ex-wife’s cousin as a matrimonial mulligan.

The name Col. Digby Willoughby stuck with me because I vowed that someday the St. Bernard—or maybe the English bulldog—I would own would bear his name.

Alas, the St. Bernard and the English bulldog never happened. A mini goldendoodle did. And so did the name.

So, happy seven-month birthday to this dust mop, with some alterations courtesy of AI. And now friends know the backstory on the name. Not quite a Colonel yet, not until he’s totally housebroken, but

Two other names have resonated over the years.

In my baseball-card-collecting heyday, every other pack seemed to include Henry Aaron (I’d later be there for his 715th home run) and a Kansas City catcher named Rene Lachemann, photographed with cheeks bulging from a wad of chaw. It became a running joke among my collecting fraternity that I’d pulled yet another Lachemann card.

Fast-forward to 1976. I’m a young sportswriter assigned to cover the Chattanooga Lookouts.

Who are managed by—yep—Rene Lachemann.

I learned so much from him about baseball, about covering the game, and about building relationships within it. We still connect by email from time to time.

Frankly, I think the current Lookouts should invite Lach and the rest of the 1976 club back for a reunion at the new ballpark. Call me. I have contact information for about 20 of them

.

And then there’s Mack McCarthy.

When I covered Vanderbilt, coach C.M. Newton had a saintly administrative assistant named Dot Deathridge. She was like my Nashville mom. She made sure Coach Newton returned my calls, always had a big hug for me at games, and even tried to play matchmaker. Being in Mrs. D’s orbit gave me credibility there.

After one particularly silly conversation, she said, “You remind me of that Mack McCarthy down at Auburn. Your names are alike, and you act just alike.”

It turned out Mack would call C.M.’s office and tell Mrs. D to tell Coach Newton that, say, John Wooden was on the line. Or James Naismith.

I had no idea who Mack McCarthy was but the name stuck. I met him first the day he was introduced as UTC’s new basketball coach. He became a cherished friend. I think Mack and I once conspired to prank-call Mrs. D. If we never did, we certainly should have.

###

It touched my heart this morning to read that the Sandy Sandlin Unselfish Sportsman Award was presented last night to Jay Fowler, director of the Greater Chattanooga Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Jay played at Tyner, graduated from West Point, and has devoted the past 25 years to FCA. He also survived youth-league football coaching under local icon Doug Fisher and me.

Proud of Jay.

###

In the mid-1980s, I was probably the only sportswriter covering the Atlantic Coast Conference with his own private pilot.

I was responsible for covering Georgia Tech for the News-Free Press. That was a high-water mark for Tech basketball, and I’ll go to my grave arguing that the ACC of that era was the greatest conference in college basketball history. (Len Bias, Michael Jordan, Mark Price, John Salley, Johnny Dawkins ...)

My Georgia Tech coverage caught the attention of local automobile dealer Marshal Mize, a devoted Yellow Jackets fan. It certainly didn’t hurt when one of the newspaper’s top advertisers—who had the publisher on speed dial—enjoyed your work.

Marshal was a pilot and often flew to games in Atlanta, landing at Charlie Brown Airport near Six Flags, and he’d invite me along.

We had the chance to visit a few times over the past several years, and it was always a joy. He was an important figure in Chattanooga, and he’ll be missed.

Marshal died this week, and his services are today. I couldn’t be there, but to Gil, Donna, and the rest of his family and friends, I’m there in spirit. And eternally appreciative of my status among peers as the guy with his own pilot.

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I am here to proclaim that the state of sportswriting – and sportswriting in this state – is not near as dismal nor near death as the doomsayers and pessimists among us might believe.

No question it is no longer as robust as it used to be. I use the word “robust” sarcastically here. Nobody ever used that word until the pinheads who own and run news organizations began tearing them apart, and every press release and announcement from a publisher or newsroom poohbah was a boilerplate statement pronouncing all future work would be “robust.”

Now, I write this specific to my current home state, but I’m aware of a covey of readers back in Chattanooga and elsewhere. To that, I’ll say Chattanooga remains incredibly fortunate to have the sportswriting it has, both under Stephen Hargis’s leadership at the Times Free Press and for the forum John Wilson provides at The Chattanoogan for, well, “robust” coverage of local sports and the writing of talents like Mark Wiedmer and Paul Payne.

Newspapers are dinosaurs, and we’ve had to accept that fact. They’re a dreadful business model, and they were made a worse model because there was no foresight and their administration was handed off to arrogant, out of touch, self-absorbed leadership.

But, back to the happy place … and a most recent incongruous happy place. It was a gigantic island high-top table surrounded by barstools in the middle of a generic lobby of a generic mid-price hotel in Jacksonville, Ala. It was Sunday night. A cooler of beer and soft drinks sat on the floor. A bottle of wine was uncorked on the table. Styrofoam bowls full of chips, salted peanuts and M&Ms were scattered about.

Around the table were the last soldiers from the annual Alabama Sports Writers Association convention; some hanging out for a few more minutes hospitality, a few staying over, most attendees having already departed.

It filled me with happiness and optimism, reuniting with this group of friends and former colleagues; despite my long-ago shove out the door from this state’s largest news website, I’ve remained an active member of the ASWA and am still allowed and even encouraged convention attendance.

It filled me with happiness and optimism because of what that table represented, which was a couple of generations of writers, a tremendous amount of talent, a dedication to serve the sports community, and a treasure trove of stories to tell and re-tell.

The state of sportswriting in this state is healthy because of people around that table like Katie Windham, who covers Alabama for BamaCentral and was just elected our first woman ASWA president. And Chris Walsh, her boss, who seems to rack up the most awards every year, who champions thorough coverage and conjures up brilliant special project material.

It’s healthy because of younger writers who work at underresourced outlets, but do good work in covering big areas, like Heath Hambrick in Fort Payne and Andrew Simonson at the Shelby County Reporter. And for some old guys who keep plugging along, like my great friend Tommy Hicks at Mobile’s Lagniappe.

It’s because of the AL.com guys who go to work with old-style newspaper DNA melding with digital demands, like Creg Stephenson and Ben Thomas and Thomas Ashworth; the latter covers the Huntsville area, and he’s headed to North Carolina soon to receive an award as Alabama Sports Writer of the Year from the National Sports Media Association. From the past 40 or so years, that’s two dozen of those plaques coming back to Huntsville.

Yep, this convention is when we pat ourselves on the back and hand out writing awards. But it’s much more. Beyond the everyday coverage, the folks in this organization serve a larger mission. They work to keep the rich history of sports in this state alive and to recognize the continuing successes.

The high school rankings are a function of the ASWA, as are the all-state teams that honor the top players. It’s not easy work, but it’s important.

We also spotlight the most accomplished from each year. There’s the President’s Award, designed to honor those who quietly contribute our state’s athletic heritage. Wasn’t exactly quiet this time around, but you can’t argue Philip Rivers wasn’t deserving.

There were the top athletes in various categories: Denver QB Bo Nix (pro athlete), Auburn golfer Jackson Kouvin (amateur athlete), Alabama State QB Andrew Body (small college athlete) and Northeast Alabama pitcher Addie Edwards (community college athlete), who was a mere 35-0 for this second-year program that won the national championship.

Lillie Meeks from Whitesburg Christian, who overcame Guillain-Barre Syndrome to win state track titles, won the Jimmy Smothers Courage Award.

Lillie Meeks of Whitesburg Christian, right, with ASWA president Katie Windham (Photo courtesy Bama Central)

I’m wrong, but part of the duty of sportswriting goes beyond the day-to-day reporting and includes lifting those stories up for the readers.

Nobody did that better than four men we honored this time, four friends and colleagues we lost in the past year. Phillip Marshall and John Pruett, both co-workers of mine at The Huntsville Times, Mike Bolton from The Birmingham News and Rubin Grant from The Birmingham Post-Herald.

I was volunteered to speak about Pruett at the banquet. I quoted a line I stumbled across in one of his old stories, when he described a person’s “selfless human decency.”

John Pruett at Cooperstown, when he and three others drove post-9-11 to Syracuse to cover an Auburn game (Photo by Robin Conn)

As long as this generation of writers, and those who follow, continue to hold the powerful accountable, but also remember to serve the readers and to celebrate selfless human decency, the craft will be fine.

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I saw this headline recently in an email newsletter:

“Can you love your country and cheer against it?”

That’s obviously in context of sporting events, not like in wars and Miss Universe pageants.

Frankly, I’m an overwhelming “yes” vote.

The story was timed to the World Cup, and perhaps targeted toward its readers dissatisfied with the country’s leadership. Though I happen to believe President Trump’s recent “I love the inflation” comment was either in reference to Stormy Daniels or Kristi Noem’s husband, and not the economy.

As for the World Cup:

(1) It is soccer. It is therefore something I’ll pay no attention to. No offense to the wonderful soccer people with whom I worked in my previous employment.

(2) Soccer is merely cross-country with a ball.

(3) Soccer is the game of the future in the U.S. and always will be.

If I were to choose a rooting interest in the World Cup, I go back to my high school days. I portrayed Norway’s ambassador in the United Nations Model Assembly. And Norway is atop my bucket list of destinations.

And how can you not root for a team posing like the one above for a photo?

I do think we are collectively guilty in our rooting sometimes. It’s as if we believe we have a birthright to victory. That we should win every event because, by God, we’re ‘Merica. That really rears up every two years at the Olympics, cheering on athletes we’ve never heard of before in sports we only see every quadrennial.

I don’t root against our American Olympians, even if the America-centric coverage gets overwhelming.

I do confess to having rooted against the U.S. in the Ryder Cup. That’s not any anti-patriotic thing. It’s anti-U.S. golfers. The United States has fielded teams of spoiled, unlikable golfers, from Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and a bunch of empty shirts who seem overwhelmed with greed. Meanwhile, the Euros have all these appealing, charismatic guys who seem to play for fun, like Rory and Rose and Westwood and Hatton.

But this whole rooting thing is foreign to me anyway, after all those years of neutrality press row.

I do catch myself rooting against much more than for.

• For instance, I’ll root against:

• Somebody dating a Kardashian.

• Anybody who treated a journalist like crap.

• Basically every SEC football coach since 1990 (see above).

• The Dallas Cowboys. Of course.

• And the Patriots.

• Feeling guilty on this one: Kyle Busch (RIP)

• And Kevin Harvick and Ross Chastain and Tyler Reddick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

• Any golfer who jumped to the LIV Tour.

• University of Louisville teams. (Long story, but Bobby Petrino is involved).

• Any team in the New York Metro area.

• Or Philadelphia.

The latter is killing me. My grandson lives there. He came home from preschool a month ago and he had been taught to sing “Fly Eagles, Fly,” the Eagles’ fight song by one of his teachers.

Alas, I have little leverage there. Charlie is too young to understand the concept of “OK, you’re out of the will.”

Auburn fans will know the name, and will certainly be saddened by the news.

Paul Ellen, a part of Auburn radio broadcasts for a half-century, has died.

He helped build radio station WEGL on campus, and began a play-by-play radio career there. Paul did Auburn baseball, then football for a couple of seasons. He did a lot of basketball games.

For the more recent Auburn audience, he was better known as having been a host for the football broadcasts. He was a fixture at halftime, doling out scores and details from other games.

For me, Paul Ellen was a friend and mentor. He was an occasional golf partner – usually at Chapel Hills Golf Club down near his home in Douglasville, but occasionally he’d have some heavyweight client we’d go play with. Like, one time, a senator, I believe.

I worked at Cohn & Wolfe Public Relations in Atlanta for a little more than two years. Paul kept me sane when insanity and insecurity were overwhelming me. He taught me the PR business. He had that literal and figurative open door for me, his corner office just a few feet from my cubicle. (Behind his desk, a pride-and-joy photo of Paul teeing off at St. Andrews.)

After the Super Bowl was awarded to Atlanta for January 1994, we were hired by a couple of entities to support the game. Paul was team leader and I was very involved.

The NFL – which stood for No Friends Left by the time the week ended – hired us to publicize its NFL Experience, the massive interactive carnival that filled the Georgia World Congress Center. We worked to get a lot of regional publicity for the NFL Experience, but very little in the Atlanta paper. The NFL folks, who were as a as foot fungus, fired us a few days before the game. Our boss, an irrepressible Alabama grad named Bob Cohn, pleaded: “Give us one more day. Let me make a call.” What Cohn knew, and we knew, but the NFL didn’t, was that the Atlanta Journal had long planned a huge piece on the NFL Experience for the following day.

Cohn looked like a genius. On the eve of the game, the NFL handed him a shopping cart and said, “Go get what you want” in the NFL Experience gift store.

We had all sorts of celebrity interaction that week. Ellen got to escort the MTV veejay Downtown Julie Brown through the experience. Mitch Leff, one of Atlanta’s preeminent PR guys, got to deal with MC Hammer, and Hammer’s body guard threatened to kick Mitch’s butt. Meanwhile, I had to get up at 3:30 one morning to go hand a ballcap to Willard Scott to wear on-set at the Today show.

We also worked for the NFL Host Committee, an Atlanta-centric group headed by Leeman Bennett, the congenial former head coach of the Falcons. One of the nicest guys ever.

Among the tasks: Cohn & Wolfe would represent Atlanta on-site at the respective conference championship games. We’d go into town early and meet with all the media we could wrangle, mostly the non-sports folks, to talk up all they could see and do and write about as they traveled to Atlanta for the Super Bowl. Everything from Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church to The Varsity.

Paul and I would be the representatives at the conference championship weekend games in Dallas and Buffalo on Sunday, January 23.

Paul called me into his office.

“We need to get our plane tickets and hotel reservations. You’ve been here a little more than a year, right?” he said. “And I’ve been here for 12.”

Me: “Yeah, what’s that mean?”

Paul: “It means you should dress warm.”

So, every other week for subscribers only, I’ll be digging into the archives. And remember monthly Substack subscription here is just $5.

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LAS VEGAS - Fancy ballrooms. Computerized pairings. Women and foreigners.

Men like Phil Gordon, who sold his teeming software business so he could backpack the globe and play poker. Men like Bob Slezak, who walked away from his job as chief financial officer of Ameritrade. Men like Dewey Tomko, a former kindergarten teacher.

No longer does high-stakes poker seem to be a game of romantic desperadoes, where you kept a bottle of whiskey on the table, a revolver strapped to your ankle and, if you were really smart, the motor running outside.

These young pups with their cultivated images and Ph.D.’s and battery-operated fans to keep the oxygen flowing. And all their money.

Like legendary ol’ Amarillo Slim said the other day, “Some of these youngsters got so much money, they burn up enough hundred dollar bills to dry 50 wet mules.”

Time changes.

Las Vegas isn’t Sinatra and the Rat Pack and the mob any more. It’s Siegfried and Roy and family vacations and chiropractic conventions. It’s Orlando, but with legalized gambling.

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I’ve always known the only way I would have gotten into Vanderbilt is to donate my body to the medical school.

That said, I’ve always had a deep appreciation for Vanderbilt, a soft place in my heart.

My daughter Jordan got her master’s from there and worked on campus for a couple of years.

One of the most fun newspaper assignments I had was to regularly cover its basketball team in the middle 1980s. C.M. Newton, one of the classiest and most accommodating coaches I’ve ever worked with, was head coach. There were some interesting players and it seemed every game in that cathedral that is Memorial Gym brought unmatched drama.

For many years, a lot of the crusty old columnists around the South would regurgitate the same column under different words: Vanderbilt was a disgrace to the SEC, and it ought to do the conference a favor. Drop out.

Well, it might be doing the conference a favor if that happened now. All around, Vanderbilt has earned respect.

One of the major reasons: director of athletics Candace Story Lee.

In this local-kid-done-good episode of the Never A Bad Game Substack, I wanted to acknowledge that she was just named Sports Business Journal’s Athletic Director of the Year during the annual Sports Business Awards in New York.

This, on the heels of being named the 2026 Tennessean of the Year by the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame.

She may be a Tennessean by zip code, but we’ll claim her here. She lived in Madison and was a star basketball player at Bob Jones High. That led her to Vanderbilt, where played basketball and earned three degrees, including her doctorate.

What Candace has done at Vanderbilt is prove it can succeed without compromising its academic integrity. Once it learned to get out of its own way after an absurd restructuring 20-plus years ago, it has recognized athletics needs autonomy. It is a standalone business, and Candace has been a remarkable CEO.

She’s made some brilliant hires, and she’s managed to sustain other strong programs. Basketball has always been a sport where one superstar player can turn a program around. Football, not so much, though it did happen after Lee hired Clark Lea from Notre Dame and they landed that generational talent in Diego Pavia. The Dores won 10 games for the first.

Her basketball hires – Mark Byington and Shea Ralph – were inspired. Both teams finished in the AP top 25. Facilities upgrades continue, including in the iconic Memorial Gym, so full of history, the original beach baskets are still there.

The Nashville Scene recently interviewed Lee, where she said:

“Clark Lea says all the time: “We’re one of one.”  It is objectively true that we are the only school that has this type of academic distinction in the SEC.  I want the high academics. I was drawn to Vanderbilt for that reason. I’ve always believed we could do what we’re doing.  We under-invested in athletics for a long time, it’s true. There might’ve been a fear that if you invested in athletics, it might take away from the academic distinction.”

Candace Story Lee is one of one.

# # #

We sent another pitcher to the major leagues, joining a list that has included a dozen guys since Jimmy Key’s great career.

Tyler Samaniego, a Lee High graduate, was called up to the Boston Red Sox on April 15. Though recently sent back to Triple-A, he had a nice run of 18 appearances with Boston, with a 1.04 ERA. Surely he’s on Boston’s radar as a future contributor.

Meanwhile, Craig Kimbrel pitched a scoreless inning last night in his debut with the Tampa Bay Rays, having been let go by the hapless New York Mets. If you’re counting, it’s 11 teams for Kimbrel: Braves (2010-14), Padres (2015) Red Sox (2016-18), Cubs (2019-21), White Sox (2021), Dodgers (2022), Phillies (2023), Braves again (2025), Astros (2025), Orioles (2025) and Mets and Rays this season..

# # #

Nic Dowd, the first player from Alabama to score a goal in the Stanley Cup playoffs, which he did a few years ago for the Washington Capitals, is headed for the Stanley Cup finals with the Las Vegas Golden Knights, who traded for him in March. He was a fixture for the Capitals for 500 games over eight seasons. His charitable work continued there, with an annual fundraiser to support autism research.

At 36, he’ll be a first-ballot inductee four years from now into the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame and should make history as the first hockey player in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

“He’s a phenomenal human being. As they saying goes... if I had to pick one guy in the room to look after my daughter, it’d be him. Just a really good person, great teammates, works extremely hard every day. Such a good dad, such a good friend,” former teammate Tom Wilson told Yahoo Sports recently, adding, “I think there’s hockey players and there’s human beings, and I think for him, it’s kind of the same guy. He is who he is.”

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OK, I was just 16 years old, barely starting my newspaper career and dutifully carrying out any assignment thrown my way. But, sorry, if you are a 16-year-old boy more than a half-century ago and you are in the presence of a middle-aged woman who looks like a cross between a champion lady bowler and a junior high principal and she is freely and casually and frequently using the word “bitch,” you can’t help but getting the giggles inside.

It was like trying to hold back a burp in church, or the keep from laughing when my friend Robert Stahl, the funniest guy in class and the source of my lone D in conduct on a report card, said something hilarious under his breath.

“Bitch” was on that list of naughty seven or eight dirty words you shouldn’t say, but here was this dowager-in-waiting dropping the B word so openly.

In this Substack so full of newspaper nostalgia, I have reminisced about so many great, memorable events and people.

Now, the worst assignments ever.

One: My old newspaper in Chattanooga was loaded with specialty columns when I started there part-time in high school: bowling, boating, horse shows, golf and dogs. They all had the corny titles many columnists assumed back in the days, like “Horsin’ Around” and “Going to the Dogs.”

This wasn’t one of the dog show contestants. This is our wonderful and brilliant Digby, five months old, after his kindergarten graduation

One Saturday found me going to the dogs. There was some dog show and our dog columnist would be there for perspective and to gather material for future weeks. But we had to cover the damn thing for whatever news value it had, and she couldn’t do it herself. So I found her, introduced myself and tagged along, with her constantly pointing out what a “beautiful bitch” this one was, or “last year’s winner was a bitch.” You get the point. And inside, I’m a shook-up bottle of Coca-Cola, with foam about to spew out. My story, for a family newspaper, referred only to male and female dogs.

Two: An editor who I know gleefully signed my execution papers at The Huntsville Times/al.com disaster more than a decade ago had an idea that only she thought was brilliant. “What’s wrong with this picture?” We were to observe oddball and unappealing and incongruous scenes, snap a photo and write a few dozen words to go along.

All it did was turn us into HOA rent-a-cops. I took a photo of somebody’s yard with thigh-high grass. Turns out, they were traveling for a long time to visit a family member in the military. I learned that, sigh, when I happened to call a source for a story months later only to learn he was the person I’d embarrassed with my HOA cop bit.

One did make sense, though: Why did the main post office have a row of identical drive-up mailboxes, with same tasks, same pick-up time, side-by-side, barely a foot apart? Why not spread them apart?

Yes, these were the kind of assignments forced upon a 35-year veteran of the industry because we wanted “reader engagement.” What a bitch.

Three: Recruiting/Signing Day. Hated it, hated it, hated it. Thought covering football recruiting was the most overblown thing we could do, and then to even put a grade to it? Recruiting is not a science. It’s hard work, it’s deliberation, it’s certainly important. But it’s subjective. It’s not a sport with a scoreboard. It’s more full of flops than success stories.

Now, more depressing recruiting news. I’ve been supportive of compensation for college athletes – not this million-dollar nonsense, but cost-of-attendance benefits – but the NCAA in its typical shortsightedness let this explode with no control. I’m also good with allowing one transfer.

However, I read today that thousands of college football players wind up “retiring” against their wishes. They enter the transfer portal, say goodbye to their former team and don’t get scooped up elsewhere.

In the pre-portal days, players could still transfer. Like a kid I was sent an hour away to cover his big announcement on signing day. Twice arrested while in high school, he committed to one school, announced a different destination on signing days and later transferred to a third.

All in all, I’d have rather been counting mail boxes any old National Signing Day.

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And now, only a few short days since the death of Ted Turner, another Atlanta Braves icon has left us.

Bobby Cox, Hall of Fame manager, the helmsman in the greatest era of Atlanta baseball and one of the great dynasties of the game, dead at 84.

Fourteen consecutive division titles. One hundred sixty two games – an entire season’s worth – of ejections. Both define him as manager.

I covered so many Braves games in that time, from spring training to postseason. Never enough to be a regular on the beat like the Atlanta guys, but enough to be some sort of a familiar face.

Bobby was always gracious to me and accommodating and hospitable when I’d show up for games. I think he liked that I always called him “Skipper,” that throwback term for a manager.

Never so much, though, as the Tuesday mornings in spring training that followed the Daytona 500. Bobby knew I covered the race before I hopped over to Kissimmee for the Braves’ camp to grab some stories. After the morning workout, several of us would gather in Bobby’s office. Once baseball talk ended, he’d look at me and say, “OK, tell me about it.” He’d want to hear my perspective on the race. He closely followed NASCAR then, but had never gone to the 500. Too busy with spring training. “You’re the manager,” I’d plead with him. “You can order a day off.” ”Maybe one day,” he’d say wistfully.

Thanks for the memories, Skipper, and for the kindness. And now, my favorite column I ever wrote about Bobby, back in the Huntsville Times in 1998.

# # #

ATLANTA

May 4, 1998

Dear Alexis,

Less than eight hours after you were born today, your Grandpa did a silly thing.

He got thrown out of a baseball game.

Just because your Grandpa is Bobby Cox and going on 57 years old, doesn’t mean he always knows how to control his temper. That’s why he had to leave the game. Maybe the best way I can explain it to you is when you get to preschool in a few years, they have a special phrase for it:

Your Grandpa got sent to timeout.

Your Grandpa is the manager of the Atlanta Braves. That’s a baseball team. Right now, between sleeping and eating and pooping, it doesn’t mean much to you, but it will.

It means that a lot of people think he is a really smart man. And a lot of people think he is a really stupid man. And a lot of people agree with him. And a lot of people disagree with him. And they all change their minds about him more often than your Mommy and Daddy will be changing you.

Before the game Monday night, they put your name - Alexis Rose Cox - up in lights on the outfield message board and announced you had been born at 11 o’clock on the West Coast. Pretty name. Six pounds and 18 inches long.

They put the message up there, then they showed your Grandpa on the big TV screen while he was reading the announcement. Talk about doing fine. Your Grandpa was beaming and smiling like he’d just gone back in time, and Lonnie Smith didn’t hesitate at second base this time around. (Your Grandpa can explain later.) Not that your instincts won’t tell you this immediately, Alexis, but you’ve got Grandpa around your pinkie already.

Now, about your Grandpa and timeout. He has this big player named Ryan Klesko. You will meet a lot of boys like Ryan when you grow up. Sometimes teachers will put a D next to the line “works and plays well with others” on their report cards.

Those kinds of boys will probably tease you and put fake spiders in your lunch box, but they’re really not bad boys. They’re just, well, boys. (Your Mommy can explain later.) Ryan got angry at the umpire, who is sort of the principal. He yelled a few things and your Grandpa tried to break things up, but he wound up saying some naughty words. Off to timeout.

Your Grandpa said after the game he wasn’t angry and that he really liked the umpire. Keep that in mind when you and your cousins start fussing. By the time you’re old enough to crawl up on your Grandpa’s rickety old knees, he won’t remember much about this particular game. After all, he’s managed 1,685 games for the Braves and been in four World Series, and heaven knows he’s been sent to timeout on plenty of other occasions.

So let me tell you real quickly - I know it’s getting close to nap time - about the game the Braves played on the day you were born. They were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers.

That used to be the Braves’ biggest enemy when they were in the National League West together. Alexis, don’t let that mess you up in geography class. Atlanta is not in the West. That was just back in the days when everything about baseball made sense except for the geography - the opposite of the way things are now. A young pitcher named Kevin Millwood won the game.

He’s in his first full year in the major leagues, and not many people know much about him. The Braves have four other pitchers who are like the Beatles (your Daddy can explain later) but richer. Millwood only gave up four hits and won his fourth game of the year. Eric Karros hit a homer off Millwood in the Dodgers’ eighth inning but Atlanta’s Keith Lockhart hit a homer a few minutes later to tie the game, 2-2. Chipper Jones - you’ll probably think he’s cute - and Andres Galarraga hit singles.

The Dodger outfielder messed up on Galarraga’s single and it bounced past him, so there were runners on third and second when Klesko batted. Well, he struck out and got angry. Then your Grandpa got sent to timeout. Just a few minutes later, Javy Lopez had a two-run single that helped win the game, but your Grandpa missed it. Let there be a lesson in that, Alexis.

Anyway, later your Grandpa talked to all of us sportswriters about the game and about timeout. But he was in a hurry and didn’t say much. He was wanting to pick up the telephone and call your Mommy and Daddy and find out all about you.

So, I’ll close with some words of welcome: I hope you have a great life!

Mark

Ted Turner once spent five minutes telling me, “No comment.”

It was wonderful.

It’s astounding what a good column you can get from no comments.

Turner was in Chattanooga for a fundraiser for his alma mater, The McCallie School. I popped in to grab a quick interview; pretty sure the function was held at The Fairyland Club on Lookout Mountain.

There was, not surprisingly, something controversial going on between Turner, then the Atlanta Braves owner, and the stuffy Baseball Establishment. I don’t recall exactly what that particular controversy was. I just remember him going on and on, telling me why he couldn’t talk, how he felt about the Establishment that had put the muzzle on him that wouldn’t let him give me any comments, and reiterating other things he had said publicly about the matter.

But, sorry, I can’t comment, he’d apologize.

And crank it up again.

And, ta-da, I had a column that did not betray anything off-the-record or said in confidence.

Of Turner’s McCallie days, the genial former headmaster Spencer McCallie said in an interview many years ago, “He was never quite in danger of being asked to leave. But he was always trying to see how far he could push the system.”

With Ted Turner’s death on Wednesday, we have lost one of the most fascinating and important characters of our lifetime, who carried the push-the-system courage and daring into adulthood.

The biggest of his many media ventures was the creation of 24/7 news with CNN. For all the flaws of cable TV news, it remains THE place where the world turns when the most significant international news happens. CNN led to forays in Hollywood, some for better, some for worse. He was a risk-taker, usually paying off.

He owned sports teams and skippered an America’s Cup championship yacht. He assured the preservation and perpetuity of classic old movies – thumbs up! – but goofed by trying to colorize some them – thumbs down! By now, dozens of other stories have reiterated his CV, from Braves to bison.

Turner was also a deeply flawed human being, a womanizer and exuberant drinker in his early years, a bombastic, demanding boss, a man who should have said “No comment” a lot more frequently in public. His politics were often contradictory and confounding. “Still,” as the New York Times obituary read, “he remained popular with many Americans, who saw him as an affable, successful rebel.”

Covering the Braves as frequently as I did, you couldn’t help but encounter Turner. Maybe sharing an elevator to the ground level with him and his wife, Jane Fonda. Maybe him emerging in a victory celebration in the clubhouse. Maybe seeing him just hanging out with President Jimmy Carter and wife Roslyn.

On more than a few occasions, I would be driving north on I-75 from the stadium and look over to see Turner in the next lane driving himself back toward Buckhead in a Taurus or a Camry, some generic sedan. The everyman car for somebody who was never close to being an everyman.

My good friend and former colleague Mark Wiedmer now works at The McCallie School as a writer and instructor. Many weeks ago, he told me Turner’s death seemed imminent and he was already preparing the obituary for McCallie’s website.

Wiedmer told me this great story that he used for the lede in the obit.

Turner was at McCallie in the early 1950s when it was a military boarding school. Everything was strict. Answers had to be precise, with the yes-sirs and no-sirs and military starchiness.

McCallie legend Yo Strang was, wrote Wiedmer, “on dorm duty one evening in Founders Hall (and), noticed light pouring out from under a dorm room door after all the lights were supposed to be out for the night. ‘Who is responsible for that light?’” Strang asked.

“’Edison, T., sir,’ came the reply, full of bravado and mischief.”

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The first conversation between Chuck Karr and myself about his good friend Nick Saban went something like this:

Me: You know, I never really could warm up to him. He just didn’t like sportswriters.

Karr: Yeah, now that I know you, I understand.

Or kinda like that, with a needle poking me.

Thinking about Dr. Charles L. Karr in some Saban-esque perspective is appropriate.

First of all, Karr is the GOAT.

Second, the person announced as his successor as president of the University of Alabama in Huntsville will find impossibly big shoes to fill. No matter his accomplishments, he is destined to be forever compared to Chuck Karr, who now eases into retirement with his wonderful bride Jodie.

For the best part of three years, Dr. Karr – I never could bring myself to call him Chuck – was my big boss at UAH as I served as assistant athletics director. He never ceased to amaze me. He came to UAH from the University of Alabama, where he was Dean of Engineering. When Saban needed an academic type to assure recruits’ parents that the academic side of things was equal to athletics, he’d lug Karr along on trips. His sales skills were invaluable to Saban.

I can only hope they were slightly more subtle than a moment to which I was privy. In talking with a four-year-old kid, the daughter of an alum or fan or visitor, I can’t remember which:

Karr: “Are you going to come to UAH?”

Kid: “I don’t know.”

Karr: “If you come to UAH, we’ll give you a pony.”

Karr is/was a force of nature. He rolled through campus like a hurricane. He made every student he encountered feel a little more important, a little more proud to be a Charger. The on-campus construction – a new engineering building and new track-and-field complex – are evidence of his impact.

He was a godsend to athletics. It may come as some surprise that academicians who become college presidents don’t always hold athletics in the highest esteem. Not Karr.

He was a regular presence in our building. On many occasions I’d look up to see him in my doorway, dropping in and cracking wise, maybe with a “don’t say I ever said this, but…” disclaimer to a conversation.

Karr seldom missed a game. A game? He even showed up for workouts. He’d absolutely shame one of the student-athletes who might arrive late, or miss, some crack-of-dawn workout at Spragins Hall when he showed up to exercise with them.

Karr, a former college baseball player, would often show up early to softball games, grab a bat and hit fungoes to the outfielders in pregame warmup. He kibitzed around the batting cage. Once, to a UAH baseball player, “What’s your GPA.” The response was “4.0.” “That’s what I figured. Too smart. You think too much. Just see the ball and hit it.”

How many college presidents do you know who doubled as hitting instructors?

I have maintained for my quarter-century plus in this city that Huntsville lacks full appreciation for UAH, despite the fact that it has been a pipeline for our high-tech companies. In turn, sports fans have missed watching a long line of accomplished and gifted student-athletes and uber-successful teams.

Now, at the end of his five-plus years, I’m not sure Huntsville, or even the UAH campus itself, has the full appreciation for this GOAT among presidents.

I can end this column in only two ways: One, to offer great applause and thanks to Chuck Karr. And, second, in how he ended every public appearance the past five years.

Go Chargers!

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Talladega week? Really?

Used to, it came at me like that whole marvelous, death-defying pack of screaming race cars, 40 of them, bumper-to-tail at 195 mph through the trioval.

Fan, journalist for three different newspapers, PR guy for a race team – all the different roles in which I attended more than 70 races, covering something like 45 out of 47 in one stretch. From camping out for a week across the street to parachuting in for the day, from bumming a pit pass and meandering backstage, from ponying up to the guys in the car next to us in the infield, who knew a “bootlegger” who’d sell them – and us – beer on a Sunday morning.

The two races were circled on the calendar every year, as a highlight and even a bit of a homecoming. Now, I suspect it’ll be DVR’d, watched Sunday night fast-forward and with the announcers muted.

That’s partly a commentary on me, but also on the sport. I don’t know it, or the drivers, any more. Used to, I had a passing acquaintance with half the field. They might not know the name, but I was at least a familiar face. In the media center, I was surrounded by fellow ink-stained wretches who had traveled many of the same roads and shared the same laughs and memories. Now, frankly, I can’t tell the five-time winner Tyler Reddick from Ryan Preece from Ross Chastain. I root for Bubba Wallace because every win for him is a knife in the side for so many fans, for Ryan Blaney because he was a good interview and Chase Elliott, because I liked his old man.

I could have easily scarfed up some credentials, but I just didn’t want the hassle. Which leads me to this long-ago post – and to a link I think you’ll enjoy about Dale Earnhardt’s final race at Talladega that I wrote for The Anniston Star on its 20^th anniversary.

###

Being less than enthralled with traffic jams, I’d arrive at the race track five or so hours before the green flag. That was back when traffic was still a factor, before NASCAR started walking head-down, looking for every bit of spare change dropped onto a sidewalk, and didn’t pay attention to what was coming.

I’d plop down my assigned spot in the Talladega Superspeedway media center, at a table that might well have been constructed as a project in the Talladega High School shop class.

Many of those mornings, the four or five of us early-birds would look up to a familiar sight who strolled into the room, grabbed a cup of coffee and pulled up a chair, propping his boots on a table.

“What’s going on?” Dale Earnhardt would say

.

It felt like any collegial coffee break in any office in America.

Except with the greatest racer on the planet holding court.

You’ve had to tolerate a lot of good ol’ days meanderings if you’ve followed this blog.

But, come on. Could there be a better ol’ day start than covering a race and having Dale Earnhardt pop into your office?

Yes, he was bored and restless. But he liked hanging around media guys. He could find refuge in the media center away from the autograph hounds and tour groups that clogged the garage area.

Likely as not, Earnhardt would be back in the media center many hours later. For the winner’s press conference.

He started 44 NASCAR Cup Series races at Talladega and won 10 of them. The damndest one of them all, he was 18^th with five laps to go. That prompted this oral history of October 15, 2000. Hope you’ll grab a cup of coffee and pull up a chair and give it a read.

It wasn’t just Earnhardt’s 10^th win at Talladega. It wasn’t just his most dramatic.

It was the last win of his career.