Luke Petit (Furman photo) Click here. Newcomers are going to be common when Furman takes the football field this season. Some of the more watchful eyes are focused on the offensive line, where the Paladins lost four regulars with a combined 112 starts from a 10-3 team that won the Southern Conference. “Obviously we have …
County Signs: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Sometimes I judge television shows on the basis of how well I can work with it in the background. Sports watching isn’t efficient, but it’s convenient. Just bear down on the words until announcers start yelling. Take a break to watch the replays. A writer develops a …
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County Signs: August sweat breeds autumn success
(Monte Dutton photo) Click here. The summer sports doldrums are ending. The football teams are hitting the practice fields. Scrimmages begin in a week. Laurens Academy gets a head start with a game on Aug. 16 against Cambridge Academy in Greenwood. The Laurens and Clinton seasons begin a week later, both at home in big …
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Furmanology: Paladins won’t back down
By MONTE DUTTON Xavier Stephens (Furman photo) Click here. Some football coaches poormouth in the preseason. They hedge their bets. Others try to build confidence by analyzing their teams optimistically, seeking to build confidence in the ranks. Furman head coach Clay Hendrix has a novel approach. He just says what he thinks. The Paladins have …
Hope springs, comparatively speaking …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. When Steve Englehart arrived at Presbyterian College, in the spring of 2022, amid the ruins of the Year of Living Dangerously with Kevin Kelley, about 30 football-playing warm bodies greeted him. On Wednesday morning, Englehart greeted his third team of Blue Hose, now numbered 117. None of …
County Signs: Legends of fall begin with August work
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Practice makes perfect. Doesn’t it? It’s not without its hazards. Injuries happen. An ancient television show known as Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In used to hand out the “Fickle Finger of Fate.” My view is that luck intervenes only in the short term. It all evens out. Click …
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Furmanology: Time to make perfect
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. Practice is about to start, not just at Furman, other colleges and high schools, and not just football but a wide range of other activities involving men and women, boys and girls, sticks, balls, helmets, clubs, racquets, mats, nets, etc. As a direct result, less of my …
County Signs: Memories of absent friends, etc.
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. For no particular reason, I awakened reminiscing on Sunday morning. It wasn’t Christmas, New Year’s or the Fourth of July. It wasn’t Thanksgiving, Memorial or Labor Day. It was just Sunday morning coming down. Or waking up. The great sportswriter Red Smith once wrote a book, Absent …
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County Signs: A lot about a little
By MONTE DUTTON (Pixabay photo) Click here. Things kids don’t do anymore because there’s so much else to do: I’ve never read about it or seen a film, but when I was in college, I discovered that almost everyone had played in their youth what I knew as ‘thump football.” Kids could play it on …
Furmanology: Olympic fear, loathing and humor
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. I’m leery of initialisms and acronyms. A history professor walked into a classroom and printed on the chalk board “fufn.” First usage, full name. During the regrettable times I wrote about local news, obscure terms crashed in waves from the podiums. We paid for this with an …
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Nightrider's Lament 