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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County Signs: Turns out it isn’t the weekend yet
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. On Friday morning, I awakened, and for about 30 minutes, thought it was Saturday. Until I made coffee, I thought I still had Sweet ‘n’ Low. The tipoff was that TCM wasn’t running a silly comedy or a crime serial. (Inexplicably, I have grown fond of old …
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Furmanology: The virtues of youth
By MONTE DUTTON Luke Clark (Furman photo) Click here. Eleven players on the current Furman football roster are listed as either seniors or graduates. The Paladins return 30 who earned letters and lose 37. Three starters are back on both offense, plus kicker Ian Williams. Yet Furman, which was 10-3 in each of the past …
County Signs: Recalling what it feels like
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Sensations keep us going. They keep us ambling up stadium steps long after we’re capable of running them. We remember how it feels, from a distance of decades, to lie on one’s back, the sun overhead, squinting, while raising the legs six inches … and holding them …
Nightrider's Lament 