By MONTE DUTTON

On Saturday night, I slept well on paper.

I’d been sick for a few days. Not on paper. In the toilet. I was better, but not enough to be too far away from the bathroom. Even in a shoebox, the bathroom is  still a long way when nature calls in the dark of night.

I started feeling ill on Wednesday night, when I performed at the Cedar Mountain Outpost’s weekly open night. One of the songs was “Go Big Red,” my ode to Clinton High School football. I’ve been adding verses since the 1970s. I also did a humorous ditty, “Bills to Pay,” and my favorite obscure Charley Pride song, “Able Bodied Man.”

For more about Cedar Mountain, click here.

A road trip to Newberry was out of the question. I listened to the broadcast as the Red Devils conquered the Bulldogs. Locally, the Rosman Tigers won. Rosman is Joanna with a high school. I’ve developed an affinity for the Tigers, not to mention the Apapulco Mexican joint, the Country Skillet and the laundromat. A lot of friendly folks live in Rosman.

I did not expect to be more dismayed by Clemson’s 51-10 loss to Louisiana State than Furman’s 56-9 loss to Tennessee . During most of the latter half, I watched a film noir, “The Yellow Canary,” that starred Pat Boone and Barbara Eden. Boone was a bad guy, not too unlike Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes in “A Face in the Crowd.”

A perfect choice. Not a perfect movie but an appropriate one.

Part of this is the stodginess of age.

My screenplay, The Graduate Transfer, is an irreverent commentary on the times. The principal character, Caleb Penn, is a quarterback who plays through six years, four colleges and four knee operations, only to become a small-college head coach at age 24. His hiring is a publicity stunt by a prominent evangelist who wants to turn his college into the Notre Dame of the fundamentalists. Caleb, his best friend and his best friend’s wife, inexplicably dive into the job.

It’s meant to be satirical. It was a novel first. When I was re-editing it, I was amazed at how plausible it seemed in today’s world.

Everything’s a farce.

I decided to make it a screenplay..I could save a lot of work by just buying a lottery ticket a couple times a week, but I’ve been diligently reading books on how to write a screenplay, and who knows? If, somehow, some way, and by some strange set of circumstances, The Graduate Transfer becomes a movie, it might become a novel, too.

I’ve always believed in sports. I’ve devoted most of my life to writing about it. When I observe the kids who play sports at Clinton High School and Furman University, it restores my faith.

Sports really is a microcosm of life. I used to think the decline in fundamentals was a matter of athletes getting faster, quicker and more powerful, thus not needing fundamentals as much.

I was wrong but not about sports. Fundamentals, in every other aspect of human behavior, are receding like the ice at the earth’s poles.

“That’s just not the way it is anymore.”

Niccolo Machiavelli’s latest adherent is a football coach named Lane Kiffin.

In The Prince, Machiavelli wrote that rulers have to take on unsavory policies in the furtherance of their society. 

“The end justifies the means.” Machiavelli advised rulers to engage in evil when political necessity requires it.

What seemed ridiculous last year is acceptable this year. I was expecting, last Thursday night, when Massachusetts ended a 16-game losing streak by hammering Rutgers, several Minutemen to switch uniforms at halftime. That’s next year. The current rage is for college players to go pro unsuccessfully and then return to college.

I thought about driving up to Knoxville — after all, I’m now halfway there — because I’ve never seen a game at Neyland Stadium before.

It was hard enough to see the Paladins pummeled on TV. No good could have come from being there.

What Dabo Swinney of Clemson and Clay Hendrix of Furman are going through is what drove Nick Saban to TV. God love them for holding the line.

There was one American left who was loved by everybody. She died last week.

At some point, we’re going to have to stop saying “that’s just the way it is,” and start working toward the way it should be.

Sports is just a small part, but it’s a start.

The site is supported by reader contributions. If you’re interested, you can make modest monthly payments on my Patreon page or a one-time contribution via Venmo (@DHKSports).

Or, if you’d like to make a contribution by check or cash, my mailing address is: Monte Dutton, Adventure Village, 15 Adventure Ridge Rd., Brevard, N.C.  28712 (hutdut@outlook.com).

It means a lot to me that you enjoy what I write.

Most of my books are available at Amazon. Two of my novels, Cowboys Come Home and Lightning in a Bottle, are available in audio versions. Most of the Kindle versions are free with Amazon Prime.