"Why do they [write] for their money? Why do they [work] for short pay? They ain't getting nowhere and they're losing their share. They must have gone crazy back there." — Michael Burton (paraphrased)
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. One gathering I miss when football ends is going every other Thursday to the Laurens County Touchdown Club. I almost always get there early. I get to almost everything early except bed. I like to mingle and interact. I’m the same way at ballgames. I chat with …
Continue reading County Signs: Where everyone scores touchdowns
Caleb Williams blocks a V MI punt (Furman photo). Click here. Furman has been reconstructing diligently its last lines of defense, the secondary. The cornerback and safety positions sustained significant losses in experience and production following a 10-3, Southern Conference championship season. Seven lettermen in the group, including all four regulars and two others with …
By MONTE DUTTON Paris Mountain from Paladin Stadium (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. Were I a prognosticator of the sports-radio airwaves – one of those outspoken men and brassy women who tell me all about how they’re betting – I might predict a bad season for the Furman Paladins. They look at the simple math, …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I’m so excited. I just can’t hide it. It’s only Monday. Woodruff and Clinton played opening night for about a half century. Hillcrest and Laurens have played on opening night for as long as I’ve been back from the NASCAR wars. For years, Clinton was always Class …
Continue reading County Signs: Three rivalries to open prep season
By MONTE DUTTON Cambridge Academy, Greenwood (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. I wrote about my first football game on Friday night. It was an eight-man fray played on a quaint field with a shade tree on the home side, two sets of stairs and no grandstand. The score was 56-20. Eight-man football is soccer in …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. GREENWOOD -- On Friday evening, at a tidy field, Laurens Academy opened its football season with a 56-20 victory over Cambridge Academy, and the game is undefeated back in Laurens County. This was in part because it was the season’s first game and in part because the …
By MONTE DUTTON (Furman photo) Click here. For the past few years, I’ve looked forward to football with buoyant expectations. For the past two seasons, I’ve been right. The Paladins have fulfilled those elite expectations. This year, I’m fascinated. The players who propelled Furman are mostly gone. The Paladins are ranked prominently in both the …
(Monte Dutton photos) Click here. On Friday night, there will be football. Honest-to-gosh, bona-fide, counts in the standings, football. It’s eight-man football, and it’s in Greenwood, where Laurens Academy kicks off the whole county season with a visit to the den of the Cambridge Cougars. It’s sort of week double-zero. Clinton and Laurens open thunderously …
Luke Clark (Furman photo) Click here. As in old westerns, Furman’s defense features bandits and spurs, though football bandits do not wear the latter. Leading the way at bandit is one of Furman’s tops defensive returnees, Luke Clark (6-3, 253, R-Sr.), who is coming off an impressive season that saw him register 53 tackles and …
Continue reading Furmanology: Mixing and matching with bandits, spurs
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. 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 …
Nightrider's Lament 