I see where Madison St. Joe advanced to 10-0 on the season last night, quite an achievement for Coach Flip Godfrey’s Bruins. Godfrey, whom I first covered when he was at Canton Academy, can flat coach, and he has surrounded himself with an outstanding staff. Years ago, The Clarion-Ledger did a special project called “One […]
Orley Hood, the wily veteran, has taken a one-game lead over relative newcomer Rick Cleveland. Boy, that was fun to write. Only Orley could make this old soul feel like a newcomer. Here we go again . . . Orley’s picks Middle Tennessee State at Mississippi State: The dream, ever since State fans […]
Happy 81st birthday to Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer P.W. “Bear” Underwood of Hattiesburg. What follows is a piece I wrote a while back for a 100th anniversary USM football program. . . The date was Oct. 17, 1970. It was a muggy day, unseasonably warm. I was an 18-year-old USM freshman writing sports for […]
Clarion-Ledger writer Billy Watkins, like Coach Jack Carlisle, is a Mississippi treasure. Can’t tell you how many times I have picked up the newspaper, read something Billy wrote and immediately have thought, “Boy, I wish I had written that.” Billy penned the following story on Jack for Sunday’s Ledger. Because of space constrictions, some […]
You hear coaches all the time use the phrase about “learning how to win.” They use it because it is a fact of football life. There are about three or four game-turning plays that decide every close game. A team must learn how to make those plays. You can see it in practice with […]
You spend more than half a century watching Mississippi sports, and you think you know about everything there is to know— but, as I learn every day, I don’t. Have been working on updating all the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame bios recently and am nearing the end of the alphabet. It is simply […]
It is the most famous first paragraph, the lede we call it, in the history of sports journalism. Grantland Rice typed it 88 years ago after watching Notre Dame play Army. It follows: Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore their names are Death, Destruction, Pestilence, and […]
Me ‘n’ Ricky went Tierra del Fuego (that’s waaay south) last week, each going 6-6. But, like Lewis and Clark, we press on … Orley’s picks Tennessee at Mississippi State: As goofy as the Vols have been — 44 against Georgia and still lost! — and as 5-0 and ranked as State is, […]
