"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
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 …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. The United States Open is being played in Moore County, N.C., which is a golf principality. Just to the south is Richmond County, which is a onetime NASCAR duchy. Every time I wrote about a race at Rockingham, I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Southern Pines, …
Continue reading Furmanology: The need for speed(ing tickets)
By MONTE DUTTON (Furman photo) Click here. On Saturday, I watched the closest finish in Kentucky Derby history. On Sunday, I watched the closest finish in NASCAR history. On TV, mind you. I’m not some globe-trotting bon vivant hiding behind a cloak of seeming poverty. I’m worse than a poor boy. I’m a poor old …
By MONTE DUTTON Evidence suggests the rain-shortened game was justified. (Furman photo) Click here. All is tangible, and all is not. Time, for instance. Precise. Measurable. Inviolable. Examined another way, it is not. For me, time crawls every morning, and then it gets faster and faster until late at night, when it runs out of …
Continue reading Furmanology: But first, a bit of aged philosophy …
By MONTE DUTTON Camden Finley connects. (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. The latest of life’s ironies occurred to me Thursday morning as I augmented, updated, corrected and reposted Wednesday’s crop. NIL (name, image and likeness) provides college athletes monetary compensation, yet the world “nil” means nothing. Thus could the athlete at an unmonied institution say, …
By MONTE DUTTON (PC photo) Click here. It’s been almost 40 years since lights were installed at Wrigley Field. I can still immediately identify a night game there. Shadows cover the backs of all the players. The Friendly Confines have no light stands over the outfields. One reason I’m a good speller is that I …
Continue reading Blue Hose Blurbs: PC wins barrage of batters
By MONTE DUTTON J.P. Pegues is moving along. (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. Ain’t gonna be no more Willie Totten to Jerry Rice at Mississippi Valley. Walter Payton blazing a trail at Jackson State? Ken Anderson quarterbacking Augustana? Walt Frazier at Southern Illinois? Centenary’s Robert Parish? Get outta town! Maybe this is how it should …
By MONTE DUTTON (PC photo) Click here. Rather than seeing whether or not Scottie Scheffler can manage to hold a five-stroke lead in three holes at rain-delayed Harbour Town this morning, I’ve elected to apply myself to more substantive matters. Lawyers, chiropractors and analysts never end. I’m not experienced enough to make this judgment as …
Continue reading Blue Hose Blurbs: Baseball can’t shake the blues
By MONTE DUTTON (Furman photo) Click here. My first impression when I watch Nikola Jokic is of one of those 1970s rasslers who claimed to be from a Communist country. Then I realize that Jokic takes the exact same clumsy shots I took when I played basketball, with the exceptions that he hits virtually all …
Continue reading Furmanology: Paladins win first softball series with Terriers
Nightrider's Lament 