By MONTE DUTTON
Here’s my prediction for professional football.
Because most of the starters play little, if at all, in exhibition games – and that’s exactly what they are, even though the NFL insists on “preseason games” – the beginning of the actual season will be sloppy. The middle of the season will be good. The end of the season will look as if the worst teams are losing for draft picks instead of trying to win because … they’re pro football players. The secure team will rest its starters again.
The playoffs will be fantastic.
Come to think of it, most pro sports follow this pattern. Baseball is a bit of an exception because its teams have exhibition game in which most actually play.
Then there’s NASCAR, which has drawn up its format so that drivers do almost anything to win if they have no other path to the race-offs. I call them race-offs because race cars don’t play.
Austin Dillon didn’t play at Richmond. Dillon won by wrecking two cars in the last half of the last lap.
Which is exactly what NASCAR wants.
Now, though, its lords have taken away the reason Dillon drove like a wild man. Drive like that to make the race-offs. Unless you succeed. Then you don’t make the race-offs. Got it?
Let me reiterate that what Dillon did was outlandish. The system’s as wrong as he is.
College football is riding the wild wind.
It’s an army racing across enemy terrain and leaving its supply lines behind.
Get while the gettin’s good. Show me the money.
A bust will come at the end of this boom.
Nothing will be a rivalry unless it is crucial to the playoffs. In five years, the big game in the All Coast Conference might be Clemson-Cal or FSU-SMU, or Ohio State-UCLA in the Big How Many.
I don’t think I’ve wished Clemson this well since I didn’t go to school there.
Dabo Swinney is trying to do it as right as contemporary times allow.
He’s trying to develop his players in-house as all around the Tigers, Lollapalooza is going down.
Then again, Clemson is trying to get out of a contract it willingly signed.
I like Shane Beamer, too. He can’t do it as right as Swinney because it might cost him his job.
I heard over the weekend that Texas A&M paid Jimbo Fisher over $700 million not coach. I hope he’s got enough sense not to.
The season is upon us and so, too, is the Laurens County Touchdown Club.
The first meeting is a week away, Thursday, Aug. 22, at the Ridge, beginning at noon.
Local high-school coaches are the featured speakers of the kickoff. Meetings are bi-monthly throughout the season and conclude with the Awards Banquet on Dec. 19.
The county’s best players are to be honored at each gathering.
Aug. 22, Laurens County High School Football Coaches
Sept. 5, Steve Englehart, Presbyterian College
Sept. 19, Clay Hendrix, Furman University
Oct. 3, Mike Ayers, Wofford College
Oct. 17, Rick Sanford, USC great
Oct. 31, Charlie Wentzky, SCHSL Deputy Commissioner
Nov. 21, Chet Tucker, USC Sideline Broadcaster, Don Munson, Voice of the Clemson Tigers
Dec. 19, Brian Mance, Clemson Great
Anna Marie Covar has left her position as head coach of Presbyterian College women’s golf to take a similar post at Western Carolina University.
The obligatory national search for a replacement is underway.
“She made our department better as well as the women’s golf program. We wish her well but will miss having her at PC,” stated athletics director Dee Nichols.
Covar coached for five seasons at PC.
Under Covar’s leadership, the team secured its first tournament title since the 2008-09 season in the Bright’s Creek Intercollegiate during the 2022-23 season.
High Point, Big South champion the past two seasons, is the preseason choice of the conference’s coaches in men’s soccer.
Presbyterian earned the fourth-place nod.
The coaches voted PC forward Damorney Hutchinson(St. Thomas, Jamaica) the Preseason Offensive Player of the Year, High Point midfielder Jefferson Amaya (Charlotte, N.C.) the Preseason Midfielder of the Year, Winthrop defender Diego Candia (Santiago, Chile) the Preseason Defensive Player of the Year, and UNC Asheville netminder Charlie Farrar (Wakefield, United Kingdom) the Preseason Goalkeeper of the Year.
High Point, which has not lost a regular-season Big South match since 2019 and is 24-0-7 in league contests in that period, was a near-unanimous selection.
UNC Asheville, the 2023 runner-up, was second in the voting with 51 points for its highest-ever preseason ranking, followed by Gardner-Webb (48 points), Presbyterian College (31), Winthrop (30), Longwood (30),USC Upstate (28) and Radford (8).
Hutchinson is the first-ever Blue Hose to receive Big South Preseason Offensive Player of the Year.
F: Damorney Hutchinson, Presbyterian College (Preseason Offensive Player of the Year)
F: Ricardo Ferreira, Winthrop
F: Aysa Hamid, UNC Asheville
MF: Jefferson Amaya, High Point (Preseason Midfielder of the Year)
MF: Carson Griffith, Presbyterian College
MF: Brendan Herb, UNC Asheville
MF: Conor Behan, UNC Asheville
D: Diego Candia, Winthrop (Preseason Defensive Player of the Year)
D: Myles Edmondson, UNC Asheville
D: Max Fisher, Gardner-Webb
D: Leo Andrade, Gardner-Webb (tie)
D: Elijah Jackson, USC Upstate
GK: Charlie Farrar, UNC Asheville (Preseason Goalkeeper of the Year)
AL: Rodrigo Ferreira, MF, Winthrop
Matt Smith gets his first PC women’s soccer team underway when the Blue Hose visit Wofford on Thursday at 7 p.m.
The Blue Hose compete in their first of eight home matches on Sunday when College of Charleston visits Clinton for the first time in 15 years.
Smith inherits a roster with a balance of nine incoming freshmen and 14 upperclassmen.
Smith’s return to Clinton, where he began his coaching career from 2005 through 2009, opens with three instate opponents.
Thursday’s Wofford match will be streamed live on ESPN+.
Blue Hose Fan Day is Thursday, Aug. 22, at 6 p.m.
Live music, merchandise options, food and beverages, schedule posters, autograph sessions with student-athletes and an intrasquad scrimmage are on the evening’s agenda.
Head coach Steve Englehart enters his third campaign with PC, beginning the season on Aug. 29 at Mercer.
The Blue Hose home opener is Saturday, Sept. 14, against Virginia University of Lynchburg at 1 p.m.
This is PC’s 112th football team and fourth affiliated with the Pioneer Football League.
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Nightrider's Lament 