In the town of Clinton, there are two entities: the Clinton High School Red Devils, who win the games, and the Presbyterian College Blue Hose, who lose them.

These are their stories.

PC and Clinton used to be damn near one and the same. People in Clinton with no formal means of connection used to wander over to the stadium –an entirely different one with the same name when I was growing up – or the gym – now a center, different place – when they had nothing else to do but watch Mannix. When I was in college, another one, and came home, I’d go over to brand-new Templeton Center in part because there would be people I knew whom I wouldn’t see anywhere else.

I also wanted the Blue Hose to win, unless they were playing Paladins. I still want them to win. Sometimes it makes me mad at myself.

They might as well put up a 15-foot, chain-link fence around the PC campus nowadays, like Bob Jones.

The townfolk started scratching their heads when PC announced it was going Division I. Division I! PC? How they gonna beat Carolina? How they gonna beat East Carolina? To take Wayne Kemp and Johnny Cash out of context, “you could hear everybody laughing for blocks around.”

Then they found out that Presbyterian wasn’t going to play Newberry anymore, and that was alternating anger and sorrow. People talk about the Bronze Derby as if it were the Vince Lombardi Trophy, and in this little neck of the woods, it was.

Then they dropped football scholarships, and for the average local Joe who just wants to see a decent ballgame a couple times a year, they might as well have dropped grade-point averages. (Don’t get me wrong. I favor grade-point averages. I once had one.)

Then along came Kevin Kelley, the Coach Who Doesn’t Punt. I like The Twilight Zone sometimes, late at night. Now and then, though, it gives me nightmares.

Yet I have hope for the fall. Steve Englehart is one swell guy, one fine coach. I think the world of him. I don’t know how he found himself defending the Alamo, but they probably said the same about William Barret Travis, down in Saluda County, from which he came.

Marist better be ready when it storms into town.

The men’s basketball team has NCAA Division I’s longest active losing streak. Not only that. The majority of the 18 losses were relatively narrow.

Meanwhile, Clinton High School, which always had the town’s heart, has catapulted back to success and with almost every sports team it fields.

If you want to cite all the reasons why people stay home – streaming movies, college football games on a Friday night, the Braves in the playoffs, yada, yada, yada – don’t go to Wilder Stadium on an autumn Friday night. It’s like the old days, and I know what the old days were like.

The Red Devils give me chill bumps. The Blue Hose give me anxiety.

Presbyterian College doesn’t have the only campus where sports is bigger outside than inside. At most places, the distance isn’t across the street.

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