By MONTE DUTTON Click here. Moe Bandy sang a song called “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life.” Paul Craft wrote it. Archie Campbell and Grandpa Jones sang “Gloom, Despair and Agony” (Buck Owens and Roy Clark) on Hee Haw, along with quite a few others: “If It weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck …
Category: Humor
A sense of deja vu
By MONTE DUTTON Jaydon Glenn is the latest Player of the Week (Monte Dutton photos). Click here. Whoever heard of playing the three biggest rivals in the first three football games? Does Alabama open with Auburn, Tennessee and Ole Miss? Florida with FSU, Miami and Georgia? The Philadelphia Eagles with the Ravens, Bills and Chiefs? …
Friday night comes alive
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. A state championship is the ultimate achievement in high-school sports until, all of a sudden, it isn’t. Clinton High, like every other occupant of the proverbial mountaintop, enjoyed the experience so much that the prospect of another seems irresistible. It’s not easy. Last year, when the Red Devils were 12-2, …
It was a Gray heat
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. On Friday evening in Chapin, it was hot. Hot. Maybe I need to get out more. The stadium has a navy-blue concrete wall at the front of the visitors’ side. As I was my usual ridiculously early self, I sat on it for a while. No one else was there …
Thoughts that have infected me recently
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. Latest trends in the world of sports: Length and size have replaced height and weight. Groups have been replaced by rooms (“the quarterback room”) that I suspect do not actually exist. Some words have flip-flopped meanings to the point where anything goes. Citizens want governments to be “transparent” so they …
The Devils are in the details
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. The Clinton Red Devils were decked out in their game uniforms on Friday morning, and they looked proud, as well they should. The fact that they are the reigning Class 2A state champions naturally leads to the suspicion that they can do it again. High expectations are, …
A visit to another county
By MONTE DUTTON Not Stonehenge (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I’ve not been a globetrotter. I’ve not even been a county trotter. Or a trotter at all. I did drive to Newberry on Wednesday, though, for a long overdue visit with a friend. Dr. Jodie Peeler, communications program director at Newberry College, and I had …
Fans can like what they want
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. My opinion is grounded in most of a lifetime of sportswriting. It’s not wrong to hope others like you do well. What’s wrong is to limit an activity, sport or career only to people like you. Bubba Wallace’s victory at the Brickyard 400 made me ponder this topic. I have …
Nutty in Johannesburg
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. I enjoyed the wide world of motorsports on Saturday. “Spanning the globe to bring you the human drama of sports … the thrill of victory ... the agony of defeat,” I watched a little Indy Car qualifying from Laguna Seca – perhaps my favorite road course because of “the corkscrew” …
The wide, wild world of John Irving
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. This isn’t the first time I’ve noted that my favorite novelists – Larry McMurtry, Elmore Leonard, Pat Conroy, et al. – have been dying off. Given my own advancing age, there’s no getting around it. Over the years, I’ve read most of John Irving’s great novels: The Cider House Rules, …
Nightrider's Lament 