Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, September 22, 2019, 1:06 p.m.

The first NFL game just came on. Falcons at the Colts. Oh, bother. The game’s going to be background noise. I’ll likely watch the IndyCar race. Laguna Seca is as cool as its name. I’m going to watch the next Country Music installment tonight. It’s about the best thing since the microwave, or maybe Lonesome Dove.

Now, yesterday, I was feeling swell. I came home from Greenville proud, happy, and tired. I was already tired when I went up to Furman University, the result of another grueling Friday night of high school football, photography, and writing about it. In bed at three, up at 8:30, check the email and social media, shave, shower, stop at the Pilot Travel Center for insanely sized coffee, and set the cruise on 72.

God, it was worth it.

In addition to the Mercer University Bears, Saturday brought a large assemblage of old friends to Paladin Stadium. The occasion was the induction — the previous night while I was watching the local ball team fall, 63-13, to an aptly named Hurricane Wren (actually the Wren Hurricanes) in a somewhat town named Piedmont — of legendary old friend Robbie Caldwell, folk hero and current coach of the Clemson Tiger offensive line, into the Furman Athletics Hall of Fame. I couldn’t be there. If I could’ve, I would’ve.

I’m sure Piedmont has a square and a business district, but, for some reason, I’ve never seen it. I’ve never seen a Powdersville, either, but I believe a tree that falls in the forest makes a sound.

It’s a commonly believed that a great game is hard to write. This is untrue. A lousy game is hard to write. I tried.

I needed a lift. One alma mater went down hard. I needed the other to give me what Vin Scully used to call “the two-out pick-me-up.”

Did they ever. The Paladins impaled the Bears with their figurative lances and won, 45-10. Furman is just 2-2, but the losses have been by less than a touchdown to football teams of upper (Virginia Tech) and lower (Georgia State) royalty, which is defined in college football by the term FBS. Furman is FCS. Very seldom do the twains meet. They came close to meeting in Blacksburg and Atlanta. As these words are written, the Paladins have only once been held to less than 42 points.

Before the game started, I socialized heavily. At the beginning of the game, I took photos, suspecting I might get up today and write this. I retreated to the tailgate party, conveniently nearby, at halftime.

I wore my almost-new Furman baseball jersey. I’ve worn it at the two home games. When last you spied this site, I was writing about how I was trying to minimize the alarming incidence of superstition in my life. Not when Furman is playing. It will definitely require a loss for me to change to purple instead of black, and, yes, I know this is ridiculous.

Many, many Paladin partisans, most being one-time wearers of helmets and pads, turned up a shot glass of vodka-laced purple liquid, and it was off to the stadium, poised to reflect the impending glory.

Many stories were told. Somewhere a cell phone contains footage of me playing “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” on my miniature guitar, conveniently stashed behind the truck seat for just such an occasion.

I told stories that were, amazingly, mostly, true. I heard just as many. The last words spoken to me by Dick Sheridan, who looked absolutely capable of coaching the Paladins again, were, “I really enjoyed your stories.”

Let the record note that I never played football at Furman, which was among many reasons Furman was so good. In my prime, I was only fast at fixing broken face masks. I also worked on press rows and wrote releases, and kept right on doing it after I graduated, and when I realized I was too hardheaded to do that fulltime, and a man must eventually grow up, I moved on to serious matters such as writing about automobiles going wide-ass open around and around.

Now, in my anecdotage, when aging men spend all their time telling stories, I am trying to make up for all the years that I missed.

FU all the time.

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