By MONTE DUTTON

On the way home from Paladin Stadium Saturday night, I took turns listening to Clemson and South Carolina win. Great for them.
I stopped by Dollar General and bought some coffee, peanut butter and Ritz crackers.
For inspiration, or even just a modicum of inspiration, I looked for optimism to Jacksonville State, playing at Louisiana Tech on CBS Sports Network.
Tyler Huff, the Army Reserves lieutenant who runs a football field like a general, threw a miracle touchdown pass from midfield on the last play of the game, and Jax State missed the extra point. Thirty-seven all. OT.

Huff – leader of men, swashbuckler, riverboat gambler, taker of my mind off its problems – still pulled it out, 44-37. Precious memories, how they linger.
Jacksonville State head coach Rich Rodriguez said he’s never seen a leader like Huff. I thought so what else is new?

Unfortunately, not even a miracle cheered me up.
In the learned words of Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show:

Everybody’s making it big but me / Neil Diamond sings for diamonds / I just sing for free / Everybody’s making it big but me.
Damn a 19-13 score. Last year Wofford won by that score and shouldn’t have. This year, on another Paladin Stadium Saturday afternoon mainly enjoyed across the way, it should’ve. It did.
Thank God for Clinton High School. I drove to Liberty Friday night to watch another victory. I got home and worked to 2 a.m. I got up, finished up the coverage and headed for some crazy reason to Furman. Sometimes things are good. Sometimes they are bad. The Paladins are always ours.

A season like this one … I feel for Clay Hendrix. I asked a question in the media conference, though I planned just to sit and watch. I was planning to say, Don’t mind me. I’m auditing the class.
What can he say? We’ve got to stop beating ourselves. We’ve got to make some plays. We’ve got to hit the layups.
It’s enough to make a Paladin psychosomatically ill. I’m thinking about staying up late to watch Noir Alley on TCM. I’m tired, but all four of them are bald. Another sleepless night.
Indiana is 10-0. Army is 9-0. Furman is 2-7. Donald Trump is president-elect. What could possibly go wrong?

I love underdogs. I’m just not accustomed to Furman being one. I’ve written about five home games. The Paladins have lost four of them.
Furman was 10-3 in each of the past two seasons. Each ended in the FCS playoffs with agonizing losses to powerful teams, Incarnate Word and Montana.
This year every week is agonizing.
“If you go back and watch a couple years ago, these guys are going to do the same things,” Hendrix said. “The majority of this year’s just been critical errors and mistakes.
“You just learn to keep working. They’re doing the right things. … We’ve always been a player-development program. With the number of seniors we had (in 2023), we were going to be young, and we had a lot of injuries, so, all of a sudden, we played guys who weren’t as developed.”
Holding things together / Ain’t no easy thing to do. – Merle Haggard

The Paladins gained 103 yards rushing. They lost 48. The Terriers gained 172 and lost 19. Furman netted 153 and 55, respectively. Carson Jones completed 21/33 passes for 229 yards. Four times he was sacked for losses of 30. Eleven different receivers caught passes. Colton Hinton snagged five.
All for naught. If it weren’t for bad luck, they’d have no luck at all.
Hendrix, the best football coach Furman could possibly have, isn’t pulling out his hair because it’s already gone. The only reason he isn’t haunted is that Halloween has already passed.

To paraphrase Henry Fonda in “On Golden Pond,” Wofford always was a sneaky college.
Ryan Ingram’s one-yard touchdown plunge midway through the third quarter gave Wofford a 19-10 lead, and the Terriers made it stand in the 98th meeting of the Deep South’s oldest rivalry.
The win by Wofford (5-5, 3-4 SoCon) was its second in a row over Furman (2-7, 1-4) but only its second in the Terriers’ last eight visits to Paladin Stadium.

With the game tied 10-10 at halftime, Wofford took the lead for good on the first possession of the second half after covering 57 yards in seven plays for a 39-yard Devery Cagle field goal.
After forcing a Furman punt, the Terriers used a 43-yard pass from quarterback Amari Odom to Kyle Watkins to the Paladin seven.

On third and goal from the five, Odom escaped pressure at his 12, rolled left and threw incomplete into the end zone. Furman, however, was penalized for roughing the passer to give Wofford a first down at the two. Two plays later Ingram bulled one yard into the end zone.
The PAT failed, but Wofford led by nine.
Furman drove to the Wofford 15 on the ensuing possession, but Jones was sacked by Marcus Dees at the 23, forcing the Paladins to settle for a 41-yard Ian Williams field goal three plays into the fourth quarter.
The Paladins threatened midway through the period after moving to the Wofford 21, but Jones was sacked on successive plays for losses of 17 yards to the 38-yard line, forcing a punt.

Wofford took over at its own six-yard line with 5:02 to go and ran off over four minutes of clock before Sam Spence’s punt was downed at the Furman 18 with 57 seconds on the clock. Three plays later, facing a fourth-and-one play at its own 27, running back Grant Robinson lost one.
Furman scored its only touchdown of the game on the game’s first possession, moving 68 yards in seven plays for a seven-yard Myion Hicks scoring burst.

Leading 7-0 following a Wofford punt, the Paladins threatened on their second possession, advancing to the Wofford 23, but Gavin Hall was stripped by Javario Tinch, and Amir Anoor, who recovered the ball, advanced it to the Wofford 34. From there the Terriers needed just four plays to move 66 yards to tie the game on a four-yard touchdown pass from Odom to Dylan Djete.
Furman gained 135 yards in offense in the first quarter but managed only 149 over the final three.

Ingram led Wofford’s ground game with 120 yards on 23 carries.
Furman plays at ETSU next Saturday in a noon game.
In spite of all the lyrics above, the game was a broken record. Season, too, for that matter.
“We’ve just got to keep working,” Hendrix said. “We’ll turn it around.”
Take a look at the stats here.
“I’ve been a long time leaving, but I’ll be a long time gone.” – Roger Miller

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