"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. 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. Laurens football would be a question mark wrapped in an enigma, anyway. New coach with big name. Lots of new players, tough schedule. It’s not hard to figure out the Raiders are going to be better. It is to anticipate how much. Laurens has only faced another …
Continue reading County Signs: Raiders, Red Devils from a week’s distance
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 …
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 …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. CHAPIN – It was good to get out of the house on Monday. I’ve been to Chapin in distant memory – Laurens played in a jamboree, as Clinton will on Friday night – and I remembered there was a barbecue place. It’s open on Thursday through Sunday. …
Joshua Harris (Furman photo) Click here. The upward mobility that characterizes much of the Furman football program is excepted in the figurative room of wide receivers. "It (wide receiver) is one of the deeper groups on our team and one with a bunch of talent that we're excited about," said head coach Clay Hendrix. "We've got …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Shortly after Team USA won Olympic gold in men’s basketball, I showered on account of athletic heroics on TV and the lingering fatigue of a late night in Union, and I hadn’t gotten around to it. Then I drove over to watch Presbyterian College practice the art …
Nightrider's Lament 