Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, October 20, 2019, 8:32 a.m.

The Citadel looked exactly the way The Citadel ought to look. They wore plain, white uniforms without any noteworthy stripes. The numbers were light blue without trim or shadowing. The helmets had block C’s on the sides. The Bulldogs wore uniforms like this when Bobby Ross was the coach.

They came up to Greenville and kicked the Paladins’ asses, and these opening words make it sound like I don’t despise The Citadel. That’s because I also respect them, and I wished I didn’t after they spoiled a day that was already trying hard to be.

Fortunately, I love Saturdays at Furman so much that the 27-10 loss won’t faze me. I hope to be back when the Southern Conference’s other militarist, VMI, comes to visit Paladin Stadium in three weeks. The game was played cold and windy, and I’m currently hoping that my Furman baseball jersey and Red Sox hoodie aren’t smelling moldy right now in the back seat of my truck. If they are, it’s understandable. They were fortunate to be wet. Otherwise, I might have burned them when I got home to collect other obituaries, list the arrests, and throw something together about Presbyterian’s 55-10 loss to Kennesaw State.

It was homecoming both places. I felt cold all night, and it wasn’t the flu.

I went up early and mingled heavily. My buddy Steve Bishop came all the way from Ft. Myers, Fla., for the second time this season, and I sat through the game in the stands with fellow football pedestrian David Snipes among some of the erstwhile heroes: Stan Stanley, Danny Gleason and Bobby Woods. Many others were nearby, most nervously and grumpily pacing the walkway between upper and lower levels.

The weather – and a half dozen games on TV – keeps fans away more than it used to. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the rivalry was played in front of packed houses. The Citadel didn’t bring much of a crowd, either. Being from Charleston, its cadets probably knew more about the remnants of a tropical storm than ours did. There might have been more students watching the club rugby match that was going on across the street from the football stadium. I also remember when the entire corps bused up from Charleston to watch the football platoon mostly lose at Furman.

It was a bad day for alums to gather but a good day for bellhops to dance.

Bish and Mike Hembree got together. Hembree wrote about Furman for the Greenville News in the late 1970s and early ’80s, when I worked in the Furman sports information office. A decade later, I joined Hembree on the NASCAR beat. He asked me who that guy in the tan jacket was, and I told him it was Bish, and Mike said he’d like to talk to him. He told Steve that, many years ago in weather that was far worse than Saturday, he got one of his favorite quotes after a hard-earned Furman victory.

“We came up here,” Bishop said, “and beat them on their home ice,” and Hembree said it was all he needed to write the tale. Then Hembree retired to the press box, and I watched the debacle from the stands because I truly had no business being in the press box. I rarely see either one, and I haven’t seen them together in nearly 40 years.

All is not lost. The Paladins, who entered the game ranked eighth in the Football Championship Subdivision, can ill afford another Southern Conference loss, but they’re 3-1.

But The Citadel. Sparta to our Athens. El Cid. Bellhops, preceded by a vulgarity. Right before the kickoff, we all drank our purple Kool Aid, a fortified variety, and dutifully ambled into the stadium to meet our doom. All that unites Furman and The Citadel is Pat Conroy, whom Bulldog grads now admire because he went there and Paladin grads admire because he wrote about it.

The Houston Astros knocked the New York Yankees out of the World Series. The night was a little better than the day. I needed something. I haven’t felt so bad leaving a stadium since the national semifinals at Appalachian in 2005.

Even with the weather, it was a great time, absent a football game.

My latest YouTube video is here.

If you become a patron of mine, you’re supporting writing like this as well as my mostly NASCAR blogs at montedutton.com. If you’ve got a few bucks a month to spare, click here.

Another way I cobble out a living is with my books, a wide variety of which is available for sale here.

 

My eighth novel is called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Lightning in a Bottle is now available in an audio version, narrated by Jay Harper.