By MONTE DUTTON

Before football season began, I knew it would be good and thought it would be great.

After the first Chattanooga game, I knew it was a clutch team capable of making big plays in all situations.

I thought the Wofford nightmare was a reality check. Made thus aware of their own mortality, the Paladins would not be lulled again.

Mostly, I was right. This team could have won the FCS championship. The dream ended honorably in overtime in Missoula, Mont. They Huffed, and they puffed, but they couldn’t blow the Grizzlies’ house in.

I’m going to miss this team. A throng is graduating. No colony of ants ever worked together better than the 2023 Paladins. Ants never had that kind of fun. They loved what they were doing, and they loved doing it in the company of one another.

They reminded me of the greatest teams in Furman history. This bunch found fun in serious business. They brought me back to a time when my greatest link to the outside world was Willie Nelson on the eight-track of my Mustang II, the only model of Mustang I ever didn’t want and the only one I ever had.

Dominic Roberto and Matt Sochovka, from the same high school in Fayetteville, N.C., would have fit right in. Most of them would. I could tell their majors from the way they answered questions, and they all answered questions well.

If Tyler Huff had never enrolled in ROTC, if he were not already an Army Reserve lieutenant, and if he had not won the Armed Forces Merit Award (basically for being the best military-affiliated football player in the whole US of A), I would still imagine him leading troops. Huff has the cool under pressure, the honesty and the practicality to make the best of what he has. He never, ever gives up.

I have watched Huff since the fall of 2019 at Presbyterian College. One of my favorite tales ever is how one-year PC head coach Kevin Kelley wrote off Huff, not to mention most of the game’s tenets, and that was after PC fired Tommy Spangler after a successful COVID spring season.

Since then, Presbyterian College is 7-26. Tommy Spangler has been part of 31 victories: 11 as a Clinton High volunteer assistant and 20 as a Furman assistant. Huff was 19-4 as Furman’s starting quarterback.

Many players – Wayne Anderson Jr., Jack Barton, Braden Gilby, Wyatt Hughes, Luke Clark, Jacob Johanning, Travis Blackshear, Mason Pline, Julian Ashby … I could go on and on – leave me with memories of insightful remarks and brief conversations. I regret I didn’t have time for more of them.

I’ll smile for what others think is no reason, and I’ll be thinking of the Kennesaw State game when Huff scored a touchdown, took what should have been a late hit in the end zone, popped up off the ground as if it were a trampoline, stuck out his chest inches away from the guy who hit him, and raised his hands to signal touchdown. A ref flagged Huff. It was the season’s best penalty and possibly the best ever.

Then there’s Clay Hendrix, whom I’ve known since he knew Furman, and that is a famously long time.

He’s honest, dependable, traditional, practical and good as gold. No one alive is going to coach Furman better because no one alive knows Furman better. Everything is changing except Furman football. As Merle Haggard sang, “Holding things together ain’t no easy thing to do.”

Hendrix is friendly. He’s got a fine sense of humor. Football is about matchups, execution, making plays and taking advantage of opportunities. Every week, the Paladins are going to “go play.” They’ll win their share and do it the right way.

Next year will be different. I have never written about such veterans, and I once wrote about Harry Gant.

Even with a surfeit of experience, Furman brought young players along. Next up is refitting the assembly lines for the fall model year of 2024. Carson Jones is ready to step in for Huff. Names like Grant Robinson, Eli Brasher, Ben Ferguson, Colton Hinton, Myion Hicks, Jayquan Smith, Alex Maier, Ryan Lamb and Caleb Williams, we shall get to know better.

Not as many will expect the next edition to win, but an important effect of consecutive 10-3 seasons is that the next edition will expect it.

A few will transfer out. A few will transfer in. Hendrix and staff will develop what they’ve got and be prepared with it.

Elite is still the standard, and the word is not used lightly.

The great majority of the site’s advertising is in Laurens County. The great majority of contributions is from Furman fans. I would love to get more donations from the county and more advertising from Furman.

But, amazingly, it is what it is.

Thanks so much for the recent contributions.

I used to list an address to send a check (DHK Sports, P.O. Box 768, Clinton, S.C. 29325). I finally got it through my thick head that not that many people write checks nowadays. For example, me. A more convenient means might be sending a reasonable amount to DHK Sports on Venmo.

Support the advertisers, and help keep the site – the game stories, the blogs, the photos – alive by making, if you choose, a monthly donation via Patreon. The Laurens County site is here. The Furman site is here.

Another way I can make a little is if you purchase my books at MonteDutton.net. They’re quite entertaining in spite of the fellow who wrote them. Two of my novels, Cowboys Come Home and Lightning in a Bottle, are available in audio versions. The latest, The Latter Days, is about baseball.

Photo galleries are posted on Instagram @furmanatt and @laurenscountysports.