In many ways, good and bad, visiting Saluda was a lot like being at home. Before Saturday, my ventures into Saluda had mostly involved passing through there to get somewhere else. The only time I can remember being there for a reason was to cover a high school football game or two. I got an eyeful of the county at-large as we drove to Aiken earlier in the day. Most of what I saw would lead many people to declare that there’s nothing there. I disagree…when I see cows behind old barbed wire fences with well-weathered posts, fields and woods and ponds, I tend to think everything is there. It reminds me of where I grew up. It’s peaceful, mostly unspoiled, blissfully undeveloped and 100 percent unpretentious. Just the land like God laid it out with not much else visible but the road ahead and a few homes here and there backed way up off of it. Saluda has some interesting history, boasting as natives two people who died in The Alamo (James Bonham and William Travis) and the Saluda Old Town Site. Archeological remains indicate the site was occupied a few thousand years ago and it was the site of a 1755 treaty signing recognizing the sovereignty of the King of England (whose tail we totally whipped in a war a few years later) over Cherokee lands. In downtown Saluda, there is a mural indicating you are 10 miles from the Saluda Old Town Site. So I was just a short ride away from being able to walk my dogs on the Old Town Road. I could’ve walked them ‘till I couldn’t walk…I’m embarrassing myself and will stop now. It was getting up on 7 o’clock by the time we pulled into a bank parking lot just off the downtown business district in the Town of Saluda. A couple of things grabbed me right away. There is a nice little square with a clock and a beautiful courthouse and library in downtown. I’d like to tell you about the architecture of the courthouse and library and some of the other nicer buildings I saw, but I know my limitations. In my pay-the-bills job of being a newspaper editor, I have to help provide content for a “homes” section once a year…and I suck at it. I don’t know how to explain columns and arches and brick facades and landscaping and stuff other than to say “man, that sure is purdy.” Take my word for it, they have a nice courthouse and library. There are some features present in Saluda that bigger towns would kill for. The sidewalks are actually elevated a few feet above the street, high enough to require a guardrail in places. It’s different and stands out a bit. The Saluda Theatre is just off Main. It is on the National Historic Register, having been constructed in 1936 and could be a real showpiece, what with its two stories of stuccoed, Art Deco exterior masonry (I totally had to look that up). The classic marquee sign even remains intact. But just like the town I work in (Chester, which boasts jaw-dropping history, architecture and the distinction of having its downtown built on a steep hill), it looks like they are struggling to take advantage of those positives. For the duration of our walk, which lasted 25 or 30 minutes, we passed exactly one person. So, on Saturday evening, when a good local restaurant or bar would have a line out the door, there was zero foot traffic (or conventional traffic). That I saw, there was one business open, that being a restaurant sporting a “C” sanitation score from DHEC (salmonella ain’t a sauce, y’all). I’m guessing Saluda is in the same boat a lot of small, southern towns are in. When the mills started closing, it took jobs away from the people who bought clothes and insurance and groceries and appliances in downtown businesses. The folks who ate scrambled eggs and drank coffee in the same booth in the same cozy little hometown restaurant every morning had to move elsewhere to find work. You then have a lot of people (and businesses) who just don’t want to pay county and city taxes anymore, so they migrate further and further away from what once was sort of their ecosystem. Customer base gone, a lot of business flee downtown or close outright. There weren’t as many empty buildings in Saluda as some other downtowns I travel through, but many of those storefronts that used to sell something or offer a service are now populated by charitable groups or churches. Church and charity aren’t bad things, certainly, they are among the best of things, but they are also nonprofits that don’t pay taxes. Eroding tax base gives small towns fewer and fewer resources with which to fix things up, capitalize on strengths and do things to draw people back to the old business district. Even if a business would want to come there, where would they locate, since so much space is occupied with nonprofits? It’s a vicious cycle that is hard to stop once its begins rolling downhill. I don’t want to sound completely like Captain Bringdown here. Maybe you get a different vibe if you walk through there during business hours. There’s a multi-cultural presence and the downtown has some nice features. My dogs didn’t have any complaints. As she had been earlier in the day, Gracie was still not being cooperative on the picture front, but Tucker posed in front of the library and theatre. Without traffic or people or other pets, it was quiet and pleasant. Just like home…in a good way.
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I have some advice for the South Carolina High School League (SCHSL) as it tries to make things fair and equitable for the athletic programs of the state’s smallest schools…stop trying.
In a few months, the SCHSL will unveil its new realignment proposal, a once-every-other-year process of dividing schools into athletic classifications and regions based on student enrollment and proximity. When the currently-in-use realignment plan came out, the league made Class A, home to the school’s with the state’s lowest enrollment numbers, REALLY small, with only 39 schools. That’s only one less school than is present in AAAA and nine less than in AAAAA (which boasts more schools that any other class), but the number is actually smaller that it seems to be on the surface. Only 30 teams placed in Class A field football teams, with a number of the academies, charter schools (and crap, I don’t know, online entities, Big Barry’s Learnin’ Shed) that populate Class A only offering a handful of sports, whereas all AAA, AAAA and AAAAA schools have football programs. The SCHSL never really explained why it decided to make Class A so small, with the only explanation offered being that they always attempt to make the difference in size between the largest and smallest school in each class as narrow as possible. Moving teams like Lewisville, East Clarendon and Hannah-Pamplico up in classification did accomplish that in Class A…of course it also increased the difference in size from largest to smallest in AA at the same time, so... My suspicion is that it was the SCHSL’s well-meaning but super flawed attempt to protect the smallest of the small. Before the current realignment kicked in, Lewisville was the largest school in Class A with 365 students, while Calhoun Falls Charter was the smallest at just under 100. In no other class would you have a team potentially competing against multiple opponents almost four times its size, so to give Calhoun Falls Charter, North, Hunter-Kinard-Tyler and Creek Bridge (which all have at or under 175 students) a puncher’s chance at being competitive, they lowered Class A’s ceiling. The size discrepancy also exists in AAAAA, but that it because there are three outsized whopperjack behemoths (Wando at 4,300 students, Dorman at 3,300 and Summerville at more than 3,000) present there that dwarf everyone else. There are bigger real gaps in AA, AAA and AAAA than in Class A, but the difference in 100 and 365 is much more impactful and difficult to overcome than the difference in 1,200 and 1,600. Unfortunately, size has definitely mattered. Class A did not feature enough teams to have its own playoffs in boys or girls cross-country or girls soccer and barely had enough (12, the bare minimum) to fill a boys soccer bracket. So, the cross country and girls soccer teams had to compete in the AA playoffs where they stood no realistic chance advancing, much less winning a state title. So by trying to make the class small enough for everyone to theoretically have a chance at being competitive in the postseason, the SCHSL actually made it more difficult for Class A schools to do so in multiple sports. The sports that have been able to field their own playoff brackets have had their own struggles. Having so few schools in Class A with football teams gave us playoffs that featured two first-round hosts with records of 2-8 and one with a 1-9 mark. A situation that was going to be bad anyway got worse when two teams, both of whom would have made the playoffs (and both of whom had more than one win on the resume) were banned for the playoffs because of an on-field brawl in the last week of the regular season. In baseball, Districts I and II featured just two teams each, because the regions predetermined to fill those districts didn’t have enough teams to do so. Region II is comprised of five schools, but the Governor’s School doesn’t have a baseball team (or football for that matter) and Timmonsville folded its baseball program just before the season started. That region is guaranteed three playoffs slots, so all three schools with a baseball team made the playoffs, though one was winless in the regular season. Ideally, playoffs are a reward for a good season and are filled with teams capable of making a real run. What we got in the last year is more like “WHEW! Filled the bracket up. Thank goodness.” When you have a classification that is as small as Class A is now, there is no room for error. An on-field scrap that leads to multiple teams being suspended from the playoffs wouldn’t be a big deal in other classes, as there would be at least somewhat deserving teams with representative records to plug the holes, but not in Class A. It is rare that schools in other classes abruptly fold up a team before a season begins (or once it has already started) but that’s a reality in schools with less than 200 students. I don’t know that it has ever happened that a AA, AAA, AAAA or AAAAA school has ever closed its doors outright, but that happened in Class A with Lincoln a few years ago and with the aforementioned Creek Bridge a few weeks ago. Creek Bridge’s closure leaves Region VI with only three schools playing football, baseball and softball. So almost no matter how bad those three might be in those sports, they will likely make the playoffs. They are also left scrambling to try to fill the spots Creek Bridge previously occupied on their schedules and in many sports (baseball, basketball, softball) that is two games. The only way to safeguard against the pitfalls and instabilities inherent in very small schools is to make their classification larger. At a bare minimum, it allows Class A to field its own playoffs in almost every sport, but it also makes the competition in those playoffs more robust. At the legislative body meeting a few months back, a plan was actually pitched to reduce realignment to a simple process of taking the total number of schools, dividing them by five and that being the five classes. It wasn't perfect, but I liked the plan as it would have made the process much less arbitrary and it would have made Class A bigger (we would've had 44 or 45 schools per classification). It was roundly defeated, unfortunately, but something needs to be done. It doesn’t make sense for teams with one or no wins to be in the playoffs, much less hosting. Having a larger class also builds in fallback options for teams folding, or getting suspended or schools closing outright. I love the smallest of the small schools in our state and its great that a school with less than 100 kids can still field a football team, but there isn’t a class you can construct in which they won’t be dwarfed in size by the competition or will have a serious shot at winning state in many sports. So there is no reason to try. Bigger isn’t always better, but in this case, it is at least preferable or more workable On Saturday, I walked my two faithful hounds (Tucker and Gracie) in downtown Aiken…or, did they walk me? We’ll get back to that in a minute. I have been to Aiken County a few times in my life. I have been to a couple of high school football games, eaten barbecue and watched two horrible movies at a fantastic drive-in theater in Aiken. To my knowledge, though, I had never even seen the City of Aiken’s downtown. I have to say, I’ve been missing out. The downtown appears to have a nice mix of newer, more modern buildings alongside repurposed (a trendy word I hate and should not be using) old brick structures. I don’t know why, but old brick, the kind that were fashioned in a fiery kiln and used to build mills and warehouses back in the day, is very appealing to me. The mix of bars, shops and restaurants had drawn quite a crowd for an early Saturday morning, so it actually took a little while to find a parking spot. That problem was exaserbated by Aiken’s one-way streets, the only mild complaint I’ll offer up about the experience. Seriously, I have a hard enough of time finding my way from one place to another even with the benefit of GPS. I don’t need a sign saying “NOPE, CAN’T TURN HERE. ONE WAY STREET” to complicate matters. Eventually we did park and I got the dogs out. We hadn’t walked 50 feet when we encountered our first crosswalk. As we waited to cross the street, a lady saw Tucker and Gracie, with all their pent-up energy from a two-hour ride and the excitement that comes with new sights and smells. “Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed. She asked me about what kind of dogs they were, if they were always that hyper (as they excitedly turned and tried to walk in every direction,) then dropped the line I hear about once per walk. “Are you walking them or are they walking you?” I get it. That’s a stock line people drop whenever they see big dogs jerking their hapless owners around. I should come up with a stock answer to reply with, but for some reason I try to say something different and creative to say each time that query is posed to me. “Actually they are dragging me,” I replied. The lady wanted to pet them and both are normally all to happy to oblige anyone wanting to shower them with attention. Tucker, though, has to scout out his territory first. He likes to know where he is and what’s going on. Gracie sat still long enough for a quick head pat, then veered off in another direction. We waited quite a while for the “walk” sign to light up, so I had the chance to tell the lady about my wonderful and awful plan to walk them both in all 46 counties. She thought it was sweet that I wanted to take my little friends on so many adventures…or that’s what she said anyway. She was probably thinking something along the lines of “are you insane?” Anyway, I finally got the “walk” sign and went on my way. I turned down a side street, hoping to walk a little energy out of the dogs. In doing so, I was walking alongside one of those classic brick facades I mentioned. I passed what looked like a cool little eatery called Betsy’s Round the Corner. They had a big awning over the front door with some outside tables set up. A couple of people were eating what I guess by that time qualified as brunch (they did have chicken and waffles on the menu). I would, later in the day, receive Betsy’s as a recommendation for somewhere to eat. I didn’t get by there (I had other lunch plans) but I’ll put that on my to do list. I often joke that walking Tucker and Gracie is like walking a couple of horses, but Aiken actually is home to a lot of real horses. That became apparent as I saw equine stores in downtown along with horse statues and horse murals. I thought it would make a cool picture to get Tucker and Gracie alongside one of those murals. It’s never a problem getting Tucker to pose for photos. I don’t know if he knows exactly what a picture is, but he somehow senses you want him to do “cute”” so like a model he’ll flip his hair back and pose. Gracie lacks those photogenic sensibilities and I could not get her to hold still or even get in the frame. Oddly, the hair on top of her head was a little messed up. Maybe she just didn’t want anyone seeing her like that. You know how women can be. Anyway, after I got a picture of Tucker next to the large horse mural, three ladies approached us. They oohed and ahhed over my dogs for a minute. One of them actually had a Goldendoodle at home, just not nearly as big as Tucker. They asked if we’d had Gracie’s tail bobbed and seemed legit surprised to hear that she was just born with no tail at all. As the walk recommenced, one of them just couldn’t help themselves. “Are you walking them or are they walking you?” “I’m training them for the Iditarod,” I said. We got up to the main drag and I found it to be remarkably dog friendly. Lots of the merchants had big water bowls out front of their shops, for which my thirsty dogs were very thankful. We passed one pet store and then a dog bakery (Bone-i-Fide Bakery). Somehow, Tucker and Gracie seemed to realize those places catered to them because, honest to goodness, both turned into those two places. I’m guessing that a lot of animals actually do walk into those places, my dogs detect that scent and just sort of follow it. Maybe there is something about those places that makes them feel welcome or MAYBE my dogs can read. “Dog bakery? We gotta check this place out.” As we walked, we encountered a lot of friendly people. A group of four men and women stopped us and asked if it was OK to pet my dogs. They were settled into their surroundings by this time, so I told them sure. They told me they’d seen us coming and, wait for it… “Were you walking them or were they walking you?” “I normally attach them to a wagon and let them pull me,” I said. Shortly thereafter, a younger family saw us coming from a little ways off and waited to talk to us. The mother was out-of-her-mind in love with Tucker and Gracie. She like a lot of people, I think, is not accustomed to seeing dogs that cute that are that big. Often, people associate big dogs with being scary, not with looking like they should be riding shotgun with Big Bird. The husband asked…well, you know what he asked by now. I got the “are they walking you” line four full times. Sadly, I was out of comical rejoinders by then and just said “haha, I’m not sure” before going on my way. We would explore the city more fully later in the day. Ashley was along for this trip and wasn’t going to let the occasion of a visit to a horse capital pass by without getting to see some horses. She is an animal lover in general,(as long as those animals aren’t scary or gross) but has a real soft spot for dogs and horses. She’d done some advance research and found a horse rescue farm outside of town (Equine Rescue of Aiken), that closed at 1 p.m., so we headed that way. We got there and were invited by the rescue manager (Caroline) to walk around and visit with as many of the horses (and mules, ponies and donkeys) as we liked while she got some shoes off another horse. I’ve ridden horses a few times, but I’ve never spent much time around them, really. Horses present some interesting contrasts. They are massive, powerful, imposing creatures, but just like our dogs it seemed like all any of them actually wanted was some attention and someone to love them. All of them we approached were friendly and gentle and trust me, Ashley approached every horse in every fence she could get to. They were drawn to her and other than stomping their hooves (a way to ward off flies), they sat mostly quiet, heads extended over the top fence rails, to be stroked and petted. Semi-domesticated animals seem to have an innate sense of good hearts and sweet souls, so it wasn’t surprising they flocked to her. Caroline eventually came over and offered to take us on a tour of the facility via a souped-up golf cart. The farm was bought and established by an older couple who wanted a home for rescued horses to be their legacy. As legacies go, taking care of people or animals that can’t take care of themselves is a pretty good one, I think. The farm is expansive and beautiful, with an arena of sorts and vast horse pastures. The horses there are a mix of retired racehorses (who, for lack of a better explanation, need a place to transition to being a regular horse), abandoned horses and abused horses. Some are brought to the rescue in such a state of neglect it brings tears to her eyes, Caroline said. Some owners are so dumb or irresponsible they can’t look at an emaciated horse with its skin sunken down to its ribs and realize it needs food. The largest horse we saw, a strong-looking black beauty, was formerly an Amish plow horse that quite literally had been ridden hard her entire life. Still, the story of the rescue is a happy one as they are on schedule to place their 1,000th horse later this year. Some horses won’t ever leave, living out their lives at the rescue and that’s not a bad thing. They aren’t the kind of folks to toy with your emotions…they don’t put “we have to raise $1,000 by Friday or we’ll have to put ol’ Trigger here down” on Facebook. They do subsist primarily on donations, though, so if you’re interested in learning about what they do and making a contribution, VISIT THEIR WEBSITE HERE. Lunch was next on the itinerary and in the same way Ashley isn’t passing up happy horsey time, I’m not missing a chance to eat good barbecue. My cousin Kevin, who knows of what he speaks where smoked pig is concerned, has long cited Carolina BBQ in New Ellenton as his favorite place to swine dine. He told me that there isn’t one thing in particular on the menu that is the best in the state, but that everything is very good. We got takeout (because, dogs) and I went with a big plate that included pulled pork, hash and rice, hushpuppies and two sides. There was a lot to choose from and I often feel the need to balance all the meat and bread and things seared in hot oil with something green that grows in a garden. They had collards and green beans, but for some reason I decided to completely indulge myself, so my two side choices were mac and cheese and something called spicy corn nuggets. We found a little picnic shelter to eat in near the restaurant. Once you leave Aiken proper and go into New Ellenton, the big ranch houses and horse farms give way to a bit more humble rural setting Still, never having visited New Ellenton, I thought it would fall under the heading “Census designated place” but it’s actually a small town with a police department, a community center and town hall. As we set up under the picnic shelter, we saw a younger guy sitting a few tables over. He had earbuds in and had a backpack that was slung up on the table and he never even looked in our direction, even when I got the dogs out for a bathroom break. At one point he actually put his head down and appeared to rest, or maybe sleep a little something off. Who is to say? Kevin’s assessment of Carolina BBQ was ALMOST dead on. The pulled pork represented a minimalist approach. There wasn’t a ton of seasoning, you tasted perfectly cooked pork, smoke and I think I detected a very faint bite of either vinegar or maybe some kind pickling salt. It was very good on its own and was enhanced by the mustard-based sauce I then applied (which had some tang and a little zip courtesy of chili powder). The hushpuppies were big fat things, with a very thin, crunchy veneer and warm, sweet insides. As for the hash…I am a savory hash disciple (marking the first time those six words have likely ever been strung together in print). I was raised on hash that is meat, onion, butter, salt and pepper. A sweet tomato base was present here, but it was good. One of the better sweet hashes I’ve eaten. The spicy corn nuggets…LAW LAW THE SPICY CORN NUGGETS. They vaulted near the top of my favorite side items list. Basically it was sweet, whole corn kernals and what I think was spicy (bordering on hot) pimento cheese, battered and deep friend. The sweet corn and hot pimento cheese played so nicely together and the deep-fry treatment added a satisfying crunch. It was top-notch. I say Kevin was almost dead on because the mac and cheese was a little dry and didn’t pop with flavor like everything else. Maybe I got a last scoop that had been sitting in a warm pan for a bit, causing it to dehydrate a little. Whatever, it was well worth a trip to New Ellenton. Right behind the picnic shelter was what looked like an abandoned sports field. A large bare spot that was undoubtedly a baseball infield at one point stood out starkly from the green grass that stood everywhere else, there were some half constructed (or deconstructed) soccer nets and old wooden bleachers whose paint job and structural integrity were giving way to time and elements. Maybe it’s because I’ve covered sports for a living most of my life, but when I see a fallow field of play, one where kids should be enjoying themselves, it makes me a little sad. Maybe there is a newer, better one somewhere else in town. I sure hope so. We went back to Aiken so Ashley could hit up a few shops that caught her eye. We decided to get the pups a few treats from Bone-i-Fide Bakery. It’s a neat little place and a guy who works there (or maybe owns it) builds those cat tower things, but they aren’t just a series of little platforms. The detail was incredible and there was even an Indiana Jones-style rope bridge on one of them. I’m sure it would support the weight of any cat but, you know, not big old dogs. Ashley and I made a quick visit to the Aiken Brewing Company (her mom was along for the trip and stayed with the dogs in the car) where I did a flight of the beers they make themselves. All were good but the oatmeal porter stood as my favorite. We’d never visited Aiken before, but there were plenty of things that will bring us back. It was time to go, though. I planned to walk Tucker and Gracie in one more county on the way home…or maybe they were going to walk me. As we arrived in downtown Anderson for our second walk of the day on Saturday I made a quick, and succinct, executive decision. “Nah.” A festival of some kind was ongoing and while I like a Saturday hootenanny with classic cars and people selling boiled peanuts as much as anybody, I’d just finished getting my butt dragged up and down Main Street in Greenville by Tucker and Gracie. The abundance of unfamiliar sights, sounds and people had jacked their excitement and energy level through the roof and to quote Andy Griffith, there wasn’t so much as I could do but move with ‘em. Anderson’s roads were blocked off and there were roughly one bajillion people crammed in there for whatever was going on. I decided we’d do our walking elsewhere, since my aim is just to walk my dogs in every county, not necessarily the downtown of every county seat. I don’t know a whole lot about Anderson County, to be honest. I had a great aunt and uncle that lived there, I very nearly went to college there and I’ve passed through it going to Clemson on many a fall Saturday morning. That’s about it. In addition to there being a festival, it was apparently “Drag your old crap out in the yard and sell it” day, as we passed no less than 10 very large yard sales. With the temperature beginning to rise, I didn’t have time to peruse the merchandise, though. We needed to figure out where we walking and get on with it. We did drive past Anderson University and I have to confess I’d forgotten how pretty the campus and buildings were at the place I nearly matriculated. That would have been a good place to walk, but it was oddly busy for a Saturday during summer break and I needed as low key a locale as I could find after getting worn out in Greenville. We saw a sign for the community of Cheddar and I nearly went for it. First of all, it would probably be the very definition of “low key” and I have some history with Cheddar. I was driving back from a baseball playoff game at Belton-Honea Path several years ago, missed a turn and ended up in Cheddar. Being fairly well inept when it comes to directions and location (and with me not yet having the magical, all-knowing lady in my phone capable of giving turn-by-turn directions), I texted several people asking if they knew where Cheddar was and got a response along the lines of “IN MY REFRIGERATOR HERPDY HAW HEE.” I also got a blank map of South Carolina sent to me with a red dot on it where Cheddar was and the message “you are here” which was super helpful. I decided to pass this time. At some point we passed the Anderson Jockey Lot and there was no way in the world I was jumping into that madhouse with two crazy dogs, though any place that has a permanent building whose sole purpose is to sell mini doughnuts is OK in my book. We weighed going to Belton, but I soon spied a sign for Williamston and decided that was where we’d do our walk. I figured it wouldn’t be very crowded, it was relatively nearby and, you know, it crossed my mind that there is a Smokin’ Pig location there, one of the finest purveyors of smoked meats in the upstate and home of perhaps my single favorite side item (jalapeno cheese grits). We got to Williamston and I could see what passed for a small downtown area, but just before it came a park. There were some people having picnic/family gatherings, but it was a mostly quiet day in Mineral Spring Park, so I decided the walk would take place there. Even though there weren’t a lot of people about, we were still in an area unfamiliar to my canine companions, so they both tried to run off in different directions simultaneously. We finally got synched up, though. I spotted a covered bridge over trouble wate…no, it was actually a creek. There was a family standing on it, comprised of a mother, father and two kids. The children, who were probably about four and seven, saw us coming and their faces lit up. I could tell they where enthralled and really wanted to pet Tucker and Gracie, but their parents grabbed them, took them off the bridge and off to the side in what looked like fear. They acted like I was walking a rabid hyena and a hungry coyote instead of fluffy, happy doodles. Whatever, y’all. As I got over that covered bridge, Tucker, seeing the creek and never wanting to miss a chance to get wet, tried to double back and head for it but I kept him from doing so. They’d just gotten groomed and washed the day before and I wasn’t going to have him wallering around in some creek, plus, I’d rather not ride with a dirty, wet dog from Anderson to Union if I can help it. We found a designated trail area and walked on that as far as it went, which wasn’t very far, though we did see a colorful and interesting mural. There was an old, big drainpipe that had been converted into a walkway and we were about to go through it when Tucker pulled up. He refused to walk through that pipe and I can’t figure out for the life of me why. My first impulse was that he might have seen a snake or something in which case AHHHHH!!!!!! But there was no snake. I’m not sure what bothered him about it but I’m not going to make my buddy do something that he doesn’t want to do, so we skipped it. We passed one of those historic markers on the edge of the park, this one denoting that there was a Civil War skirmish at the location. From what I read the war was actually over at that point and some cadets from the Arsenal Academy were actually marching to Newberry to disband when they met a band of Stoneman’s Raiders. That is the most South Carolina thing I can think of…the war’s over, we are actually on our way to officially disband but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to shoot at you anyway. Man I love my state. Ashley joined us for part of the walk, which included walking over another covered bridge, which led to a little open field where an Army tank sat. Most of our walks end because I end them. About 95 percent of the time Tucker and Gracie wear me out and I have to tap out. This time, as we’d walked in Greenville already and had been walking in Williamston for a while with the temperature starting to rise, Tucker and Gracie started plopping down to rest in every bit of shade we encountered. That’s their signal that it’s time to stop, so we started to head back to the car. As we did we some of the folks who were enjoying a picnic approached us. A woman asked us what kind of dogs Tucker and Gracie were, how I managed to walk both at the same time and made general chit chat. She also asked if her kids could pet Tucker and Gracie and we said they could. Tucker, knowing he was dealing with very small children, sat down and allowed all three of them to pet him. He gets wild and wide open in new places and in big crowds, but he’s got a gentle soul and knows to be calm around little people. Gracie, copying Tucker as she often does, sat there and soaked in the attention as well. Before we got back in the car we made one last stop, that being at the mineral spring the park is named for, which sits in a gazebo. A sign says you can actually drink the water from the small spring (it’s about as big around as a manhole cover, with the water flowing out and toward the creek I mentioned earlier) but you can’t do anything else without facing a possible fine (you can’t wash clothes in it or treat it like nature’s commode, just for example). We had water in the car, but I thought maybe Tucker and Gracie would enjoy some cool, natural refreshment. Tucker sure did, approaching it licking his lips. As he went to take a sip, though, he stopped and flopped down in the spring. He’d tricked us. I again had a very succinct reaction. “NO!” I got him up out of there before anyone saw us and got to the car. We did get lunch from the Smokin’ Pig to go and other than a terrible mishap involving my baked beans (some ended up in my lap) it was excellent. I had pulled pork and smoked chicken. I’d never had the latter and it was excellent as were the beans and the jalapeno cheese grits were rocking as always. On the way home, we decided to do some of that off-the-cuff freelancing I mentioned in the Greenville entry. Ashley looked online for stuff to do in Anderson and found a goat farm. We actually went there, Tucker and Gracie weren’t sure what to make of the goats (the goats looked at them quizzically too) and we supported S.C. agriculture by buying jalapeno goat cheese (which was great), some soap and a lemon, yogurt drink, all made right on the farm. Ashley tried the yogurt drink and said it was good but tasted “like a goat.” “Good” and “tasted like a goat” don’t normally belong in the same sentence, but I tried the drink and she was right. You tasted yogurt, you tasted lemon and you got a slight musky goat taste, but it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, in a busy day that left me completely whipped, nothing at all was. Our trip to Greenville didn’t start with a bang, but it certainly ended with one. I’m a big believer in not over-planning things. If you try to plot and plan for every moment of an excursion, you rob yourself of some freedom and get so locked into a schedule you feel you have to keep that you can’t take fun detours here and there. You end up like Clark Griswold…Dinky dies and Aunt Edna dies and your wife’s sketchy cousin bums $500 off of you you’ll never get back and you finally get to Wally World AND THE MOOSE OUT FRONT SAYS THEY’RE CLOSED! So, I just sort of decided on Friday, “hey, let’s go knock Greenville and Anderson off our list tomorrow.” Tucker and Gracie were ready for a big day, having gotten a bath and hair cut Friday morning, (you’ll see from the pic at the bottom of this entry that I was in need of both a bath and shave) so I just figured we’d roll out early and see what happened. That “fly by the seat of our britches” attitude did lead to some fun detours but there is a difference between having a lax agenda and being dumb…and I was the latter. When we walked in downtown Union, we didn’t encounter many people. We passed more folks in Spartanburg, but being on the Rail Trail most of them were engrossed in their walking and biking. In downtown Greenville there would be A LOT of people, A LOT of other dogs and A LOT of general distractions for Tucker and Gracie. “Oh crap,” I said, as we parked and I looked at the throngs of people I’d somehow not considered before leaving the house. For the first time, my wife Ashley (who is recovering from some surgery) was along. We decided it would be best if I walked some energy out of Tucker and Gracie before she joined us for a short portion of the walk. What I wasn’t sure of was how I’d even get through the early portion of this adventure. Walking them on their leashes would allow entirely too much leeway for them to wander off toward people, animals, vehicles and anything else that might catch their eye. So, I made the executive decision to walk them using their roadie riders. Those are basically harnesses that have about a two-foot strap on the back with a loop at the end that you put a seatbelt through (because you do not want giant dogs bouncing freely around a moving vehicle). I got them out of the car and DADGUM were they excited. Even with very little in the way of room to wander, I thought it best to get out of the crowded main drag until they’d calmed down, so I turned to a more open area that featured some benches, public restrooms and maybe a fountain or something (I was honestly too occupied to notice). Almost immediately we were spotted by a group of younger people who looked positively goo goo eyed at my dogs. I really wanted to stop and talk and let them pet Tucker and Gracie, but they were just too wide open. They were both in an exciting, unfamiliar place, sort of like the first time I visited New Orleans as an adult. When I went there I saw, you know, some stuff I don’t often see in Union. Let’s leave it at that. Their senses were likely on fire and it was literally all I could do to hang onto those roadie rider straps and keep them moving in the same direction at the same time. My back and shoulders were sore the next day from the workout they put me through. Since I’m doing a sort of travel log, I should probably have noted what street I was walking on, but I didn’t. There was a parking deck at one end and at the other, the road t-boned into another near a Wild Wing Café. We walked back-and-forth for a solid 20 minutes. I do remember passing a number of people dining on a sort of covered patio. Some of them waved or smiled and others just looked a hair nervous. Oddly, the larger of my two dogs (Tucker) is of no threat when you are eating. He will just sit patiently and stare at you with those big brown eyes that convey the message “if you love me you’ll give me a French fry” and you can’t resist and he gets a French fry, usually. Gracie takes a less dainty approach…she’ll just lunge at your plate and jump on you and try to forcibly take what she wants. I didn’t let them get close enough to anybody for the guilt trip or simple assault to take place. There was a family waiting to go in another eatery that basically flagged us down. “You have your hands full, it looks like,” the lady said. “Yes ma’am. They’ve never been here…it’s kind of like walking two horses,” I replied. Her husband playfully petted them both, as did their kid. They said goodbye and went inside to eat. After a few more trips back-and-forth, I decided it might be OK to go back up to Main Street, but as I headed that direction, another couple stopped us. “Man, those are some big dogs. How do you walk them both at the same time?” “It’s a struggle, buddy.” This guy said he and his wife actually have a Goldendoodle, so he understood what I was going through. “But ours weighs about 50 pounds,” he said. I told him that when Tucker was a puppy, the vet told us he’d likely be on the big end of the scale for his breed…so, like, 75 pounds. As of his last weighing he was 98, which is part of what hatched this idea to walk he and Gracie in all 46 counties (exercise and weight loss). I moved on and got back up to Main Street. I must say, downtown Greenville is significantly different than it was in the recent past. I’m trying to think of a nice way to say it used to be dirty and unappealing but there really isn’t one, is there? Now, it’s clean, well-planned, there’s tons of shops and restaurants, it’s very walkable, pet-friendly and they have lots of events that draw people downtown. I haven’t spent a lot of time in Greenville. My cousin lives there, I had a very forgettable stint at a radio station elsewhere in the county and I come over for concerts occasionally (The Peace Center is great and RIP Handlebar), but it’s just a really nice, welcoming place. It wins my most improved award (a coveted and prestigious title I’m sure city leaders are proud to receive). Once we got into the more cramped confines of Main Street, we didn’t have nearly as many interactions with people. That’s understandable, since they are walking in one direction and you’re going another, usually. We did get some smiles and hellos and “ooh, big dogs” comments. Eventually, we came upon a street musician, specifically a guy playing the violin. I should point out here I have a cousin accomplished enough on that instrument to teach lessons who has assured me a violin and a fiddle are the same thing, with the only difference being the music played on it. Since this gentleman was not telling of a contest between Johnny and The Devil, I think we’ll go with violin. Tucker’s head stayed on a swivel trying to check out all his surroundings, but Gracie sat down and stared intently at the guy. I don’t know what he was playing, but in the middle of what was, for her, chaos and craziness and “holy crap what’s that” she found some peace and a serene place for a moment. I wanted to throw a dollar in the guy’s jar but my hands were full. I decided we’d come back when Ashley joined us and tip him as a thank you for entertaining my dog and to support the arts in general. We walked back to the car and got Ashley. We got someone to take a group shot of us, but about then I heard some fairly loud music. This wasn’t another busker, though. We were near a red light and a motorcycle was stopped right in front of us. “The fire is sweeping, our very street today…it’s just a shot away.” It was “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones blaring from his bike. A great song…and “a shot away” is what we like to refer to as foreshadowing. As the last bit of that song faded out and “Fast as You” by Dwight Yoakam cranked up (so the guy had good taste in music), the light turned green, he gave it the gas and as he did his motorcycle backfired. Tucker is deathly afraid of loud noises, bangs especially. When we walk at home, if he even hears the echoes of gunshots from the shooting range a few miles away, he panics. When there is thunder he hides under a table. He TRIED to bolt away from the noise but I luckily held a firm grip. Granted, he nearly ripped my shoulder out of its socket, but I held tight. The walk would have to come to a hasty end. So, we made a quick trip back to the street musician, Ashley put a dollar or two in his jar and we got back in the car. We were done with Greenville, but weren’t done walking for the day… When you go for walks and look at the road and toward s the sky as far as your eyes allow you to see, the world seems impossibly big and you feel incredibly small. When you get right down to it, though, the world really isn’t that big a place. On Thursday, Tucker, Gracie and I rode to neighboring Spartanburg for the second of our 46-couunty walks. It’s an area I know very well as I finished up my college education there, it’s my wife’s hometown, I worked a couple of jobs there (for those that know me and know the story, that would include the place where I once asked a surly boss that thought that my vocabulary was a little too fancy “when basket be empty, what me do then?”) and I was one-third of the now sadly-on-hiatus “Piedmont Pick ‘Em Show” radio program on Spartanburg’s airwaves for a number of years (for those not familiar, imagine if Keith Jackson, Jerry Clower and a jug of moonshine could somehow have a baby). I go to Spartanburg at least once a week now, but it’s easy to forget how far away it once seemed. When I was a kid, splitting my time between Chester and Santuck, rare was the occasion that we “went to town.” Hard as it seems to believe now, driving 12 miles to Union seemed like a big deal. It’s funny, I always seem to be out of something and have to run to the store about every other day. Back then, my grandma would drive to Union once-a-week at the absolute maximum. If she ran out of something, then she just wasn’t going to have until the next week when she made her next trip to the Community Cash (her grocery store of choice since they were the only one that refused to open on Sunday). Why, there was a Pizza Inn and a McDonald’s there that my dad would take me and my cousins to sometimes and for really special occasions (and I mean like someone graduated from school or got married), there was a Quincy’s. At that point, in my young mind, there was no culinary offering on planet Earth that could surpass their sirloin tips. They came with this little plastic stick jammed in one piece that said “medium” or “well done” on them that my cousins and I actually played with. Electronic devices that stimulate the senses constantly were years away from being commonplace, so those little plastic things that indicated how your sirloin tips had been cooked made decent pretend/toy spaceships in a pinch. But I digress…getting in the car and going to Spartanburg was an exciting occurrence then. There was a mall and movie theaters and an auditorium where pro wrestling TV tapings took place regularly and a restaurant that made pizza’s big enough to cover an entire tabletop and buildings that stood more than two stories tall in Spartanburg. It’s a small world and gets smaller when you get older. Getting in the car and driving 20 or so minutes to “Sparkle City” doesn’t seem like anything now, but back then, when your normal surroundings were cow pastures, woods and long dirt driveways, you had no means or travel yourself and the only lights at night came from stars and lightning bugs, it sure did. I decided we’d walk on the Rail Trail, a nice path for walking and biking that mostly runs parallel to Pine Street. For the most part, there are trees and foliage on either side, so it normally stays shady and relatively cool. I knew going in that we’d likely have less interaction with folks than we did in downtown Union. It’s not that Spartanburg residents are less friendly, it’s just that if they are on the Rail Trail, they are usually jogging or riding a bike. They are there for a reason, not just randomly standing on a street corner. I also knew I would get a workout in. There is a dog park along the Rail Trail that we used to take Tucker to fairly often. We stopped because there were some folks who had the bad habit of bringing their dogs there and leaving them unattended. As an aside, let me note that if you put your pet in a dog park and leave to run errands, you pretty much suck as a human being. They also put some little kiddie pools in the park and Tucker CAN NOT walk past water without wanting to jump in it. So he’d plop down in those pools, get soaking wet, then roll around and waller in the dirt with other dogs and turn into a muddy mess. I love my pets and want them to be happy, but washing and drying a 90-plus pound dog with thick, curly fur is not a thing I sign up for if I can help it. Being as smart as he is, though, about the time I start to turn at the Ingles, he knows where he is and what he’s close to and goes nuts. As I pulled into the parking lot for the Rail Trail, I almost couldn’t contain him. Gracie has never visited the dog park and doesn’t get torn out of her frame over stuff very often, but when Tucker gets excited so does she, so I now had almost 180 pounds of panting, hyper dog on my hands. It was all I could do to get them out of the car. Once I did, they bolted down the trail, but Tucker took a hard right into some grass. He jerked me with him as he did and Gracie had conveniently snuck up under my feet, which led to me hitting the ground. So it was an illegal chop block, basically. I don’t know how she does it, but Gracie often sneaks up behind me at home. I’ll walk to the fridge, get something out, turn to walk back to the living room and nearly get tripped as she’ll have quietly walked right behind me and sat at my heels. How does an 80-pound Labradoodle do anything quietly? She’s like a fuzzy little ninja. As I hit the ground I said a word I shouldn’t have said in public and was within earshot of two walkers (hey, sorry y’all). But, I got back on my feet, got them on the trail and started walking. It was fairly difficult to actually keep Tucker on the paved path as he kept wandering off into the grass. He also felt the need to check out every post that we passed. I think some are part of a fitness trail, so there will be a sign on the post that suggests that you do sit-ups or toe touches or something. Tucker was less interested in a full body workout than he was with the fact that other animals probably pee on those posts. He thoughtfully responded in kind so that the next person walking their dog would get jerked toward every post too. As I predicted, we didn’t have a lot of interaction with anybody on the trail. Two girls riding skateboards waved at Tucker and Gracie, we got some smiles and “heys” from people and one lady riding a bike blurted out “ooh, pretty dogs” as she sped past, but that was about it. That changed as we passed the dog park. Tucker made a beeline for the fence and started crying, desperate to get inside and play. There were only two dogs in there and both were being attended to, but not only was there a kiddy pool, there were four of them, full of water. To let him go inside would be to sign up for a car seat caked in mud, plus a wash and dry once we got home. I opted not to do that, but it was still a worthwhile stop for Tucker and Gracie. A beautiful standard poodle saw them and walked over, greeting them. Without being too graphic here, um, any relationship Tucker has with a female dog at this point is strictly plutonic, but he’s still quite the lady’s man. He and the poodle (named Belle, I soon found out) licked and sniffed at each other and as they did, a woman (Amanda) came over and introduced herself. Belle was her parents’ dog, she’d brought her to the dog park for some exercise and she was having a bit of trouble corralling her and getting a leach and collar back on her to go. Since Belle was so drawn to my dogs, she asked if I would walk them near the double-fenced gate, which would, for lack of a better term, sort of trap her for a second. “OK, Tuck, you get to be a decoy,” I said, as I walked he and Gracie to the gate. Belle followed and Amanda was able to get the leash on her. This is where the world started getting smaller. Belle, I learned, was a rescue dog and her life story was almost identical to Gracie’s. Someone decided they wanted a dog, got Belle, then decided in short order they didn’t really want a dog after all. If someone hadn’t taken her, she’d likely have gone to the pound, at which point who knows what her fate would’ve been. Luckily, as with Gracie, she now has a home that she makes a happier place. Interestingly, Amanda and her husband both once worked at a very large metro daily paper, she told me. After that, she worked for several years for a well-known watchdog group writing their press releases. I’m on that group’s email list, so though we’d never met, I’d probably gotten 100 or more emails from her over the years. She mentioned that she volunteers with a dog rescue group. I’m obviously a fan of folks that try to take care of dogs, so if you are so inclined YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT THAT GROUP AND DONATE TO THEM BY CLICKING HERE. Much to Tucker’s annoyance, we did finally have to get back to our walk. We weren’t 10 steps past the dog park when a couple approached us. “Do they bite?” “No, not unless you are food.” They both rubbed Tucker and Gracie’s fur. They commented about how big they were and how pretty both were. By the time we parted company with them and walked a little ways further, it started getting noticeably darker. At this point it was almost 9 p.m. and I had a mile-long-plus walk back to the car, so we turned around. I could hear traffic still going back-and-forth from Pine Street, but I couldn’t see much more than my faithful hounds happily trotting along, trees that bracket the Rail Trail on either side and the familiar glow bursts from lightning bugs. The world was small…and beautiful. The first leg of my whirlwind, “Dogs across S.C.” or “Tucker and Gracie’s Excellent Adventure” tour (I should totally pick a definitive name for this project) was in our home county of Union. Obviously I’ve walked my dogs in my neighborhood which is in Union plenty of times, but part of the point of doing this is to talk to whoever we might encounter and allow my faithful hounds (and myself) to see some new sights. Downtown Union isn’t new to me, since I spent four years working at a Main Street business, spent a couple of years going to a school at a location just off Main Street and drive down the road occasionally. I'd be a block over from the mill my dad worked in, a mile as the crow flies from the place I was born and the apartment my wife spent our first two years of marriage living in and would be very near a monument honoring Korean war dead that features my uncle's name. Sometimes, though, the most familiar of areas turn into the visual equivalent of background noise. You’ve seen them so often that your focus isn’t as keen and subtle changes slip by unnoticed. This would mark the first time I’d really soaked in downtown in a while.
I parked, got Tucker and Gracie out and was promptly dragged behind them for the first few minutes of our walk. Seriously, I looked like the carcass of Sherman McMasters tied to the horse in “Tombstone.” I’m a big guy by most any measure (standing almost 6’2 and weighing between 200 and 210 pounds depending on what I’ve had to eat that day) but combined they are pretty close to me weight-wise, they’ve got eight legs to my two and they have fairly boundless energy. We started off walking from the parking lot, through a breezeway to Main Street. We passed the bank where my aunt worked for years and where I’ve deposited my INCREDIBLY FAT radio and newspaper paychecks (HAHAHA LOLOL) since I was 18. A sign on the door indicates that said bank has moved to better serve customers…a nice way of saying “we closed this branch, so y’all can drive your butts to Spartanburg.” We hung a right (well, my dogs did and I just kind of hung on) and it didn’t take long until I saw someone I knew…Lindsey, who lives in our neighborhood and who used to let Tucker and Gracie out and would take them for short walks while my wife and I were at work. She’s in college now and looked like she was leaving school for the day. I waved, but then heard a voice from across the street. “Hey. What kind of breed are they?” a guy asked. “This one (I pointed to Tucker) is a Goldendoodle. This one (I pointed at Gracie) is a Labradoodle,” I said. “I’ve got a Golden myself. They’re great dogs,” he said. We crossed the street and turned to walk back in the other direction. That gave us, in fairly short order, an across-the-street view of my one-time place of employment, WBCU radio. I played Garth Brooks records, ran the board for Atlanta Braves games (when an actual person had to be sitting there to play commercials and legal IDs), broadcast Union and Jonesville High athletics, presided over radio auctions and daily meat drawings and was renowned as the best reader of obituaries in the station’s history (by a lady in Carlisle, which seems as legitimate a source for such a title as any) in my four years there. I could see the precise spot upon which I stood as I did my part of the coverage of the Olympic torch being carried down Main Street on it’s way to Atlanta in 1996. As memory serves, that event was capped off locally by a Confederate Railroad concert at Union County Stadium, because nothing says national pride and the spirit of competition quite like “Daddy Cut the Big One,” I guess. (I will admit to liking “Queen of Memphis” and “Trashy Women” don’t judge me). Had a lot of great times in that building and some of the stories from there are all-timers. A lot of interesting folks came in and out of those doors during my time there. To quote a Robert Earl Keen song I played over the AM 1460 frequency, “one’s in Hollywood, one’s a millionaire, some are gone for good, some still livin’ here.” I should note that Mr. Keen decidedly did not fit the “Garth, Reba, Vince, Lonestar, Alabama” format…but Eric Clapton and CCR aren’t religious artists and I sure enough played them on the early Sunday morning gospel caravan show when I knew the boss wasn’t listening too so… Man, if those walls could talk… A. that’d actually be pretty scary because holy crap talking walls and B. not every story is meant to be shared, particularly on a semi-family friendly meat and football blog and also since the statute of limitations may not have expired. That’s not a throwaway line…”A Current Affair” and sedation dentistry supplies figure into some of the stories and I’m not even kind of kidding. Near as I can tell, they still do things the right way in terms of what’s on the air there, keeping it local. That’s probably why they’ve succeeded where so many other stations have failed over the last 20 years. And if they ever need a certified obit reader in a pinch, I might know a guy. We then made it all the way down to the Union County Courthouse, which represented the first real patch of grass we’d seen on our walk. I don’t know about your dogs, but mine are fairly particular about where they do their business. They won’t go on concrete, they (thankfully) won’t go on floors…they must have grass upon which to relieve themselves. Tucker saw all that lush green foliage and jumped from the sidewalk to the top of the small wall that separates the courthouse yard from the pavement. He walked into the grass and Gracie, as she often does, copied what he did. “Tucker, please do me the favor of not taking a dump on the front yard of the courthouse,” I said. He actually complied and Gracie, to whom such pleas sometimes fall on deaf ears, actually followed suit. We crossed the street again and headed back in the other direction. One lady made an obvious effort to avoid us, though she did manage a kind of nervous smile. I guess some people are afraid of dogs, especially large ones, but how in the world could anyone be afraid of Tucker and Gracie? They look like extras from “The Great Muppet Caper.” It’s like having a crippling fear of Fozzie and Rowlf. Maybe she was afraid of me. That would be more understandable. The next person we encountered, a gray-bearded man on a bike, was decidedly different. “I love puppy dogs,” he announced as he petted them both. Normally, nothing distracts Tucker from seeing new sights in a new location, but attention does the trick. We took him to Washington D.C. once and as I walked him in front of the White House he actually posed for pictures with people. There was, no exaggeration, a small line of people waiting to have their pic taken with him at one point. It’s like he was the president’s dog or something. He dutiful sat and posed with his adoring public. “Aw man, this picture is gonna blow up on Facebook,” a teenage kid said that day as he threw his arm around my dog and gave a thumbs up. Gracie lives very much in the moment, so if she sees somebody she’ll just bop right on toward them hoping they’ll pet or in some way acknowledge her and if they don’t, she turns and keeps walking unfazed. This guy didn’t ask for any pics, he just told me that he has a rescue dog he got from Florida (a Pit mix) that is gentle and loves children. “He’s the sweetest boy ever,” he told me. He thanked Tucker and Gracie for their time and pedaled off. A woman then approached. “Do you know whose doll babies those are?” she asked, pointing at three abandoned toys sitting on a bench. They were obviously not mine and I thought it best that Tucker and Gracie not be allowed to get ahold of them, so I kept walking. Tucker can’t have cute stuffed toys because he destroys them. He’ll hone in on a weak spot and just gnaw until he can get the stuffing out. Oh, and Lord help us if it’s a squeaky toy, because he’ll extract the little squeaky noisemaker thing and try to eat it. We’ve bought him toys that we were assured could hold up to any level of canine abuse that didn’t last a day. A stuffed doll baby in a pretend diaper wouldn’t stand a chance. We eventually made our way to USC-Union. I noticed during our walk that many of the Main Street establishments whose commercials I played on the radio back in the 1990s were no longer in business and in some cases nothing has come in to replace what has been lost. I was happy to see, then, how much my old alma mater has grown. When I was a student there, it was comprised of two buildings. Two. Now there are four or five, there’s a college shop on Main Street, there is student housing and USC-Union fields teams in multiple sports. Some of the kids I covered as prep athletes in baseball, softball and soccer are now Bantams, competing against fairly high-level JuCo opponents. I think there was a co-ed, club softball team when I went there. I didn’t necessarily shoot my best shot academically and missed on some opportunities I shouldn't have when I went there, but I did leave with a couple of associate degrees, the foundation to go finish up my fancy book learnin’ elsewhere and was lucky enough to have a couple of professors I still consider friends…ones who actually gave a damn about their students…ones who not only tolerated a term paper/speech on Spam (the canned meat, not unwanted email solicitations), but gave me an “A” on it. Look at the place now. It’s thriving and I’m proud and I hope that the street Tucker, Gracie and I walked will thrive along with it soon. “Hey, that’s where I went to school,” I told my dogs. Before you ask…yes, I talk to my dogs, yes they are smart and often understand me and no they do not answer me. The history of people who think their dogs are talking to them, um, isn’t terribly positive. By this time, we’d been walking for at least an hour and Tucker and Gracie were finally on the verge of tapping out. The temperature was starting to spike and they plopped down in some shade. I figured we’d done enough, so I roused them from their little break and we started to head back toward the car. We passed three people standing outside a business who, I think, might have been taking a smoke break. One of them (a lady who was seated) petted Gracie on the head but didn’t say anything, one fellow looked a little scared, but the other greeted us. “Boy, those are some big dogs,” he said. “They sure are pretty, though.” We chatted for a minute and he eventually asked my name. I told him, but then got the response that I almost always get in those situations. “Hmm. Travis Jenkins. Seems like your name is familiar. Who was your daddy?” he asked. When I’m in Union, where I live but don’t work and thus don’t spend a whole lot of time, I’m often identified as “Randy’s boy” or even “Ashley’s husband” (since she’s a teacher and knows most everybody). In Chester, where I work and people theoretically at least know who I am, I’m still often “Donna’s kid” or “Lynly’s brother” or “that (bleepity bleep) from the newspaper.” I’m not super fond of that last one, but I’m more than cool with being known by who my family is, If you knew my dad or know my mom (or wife or sister), you know that it’s a compliment, actually. He and I shook hands and I got back to the parking lot to load the dogs up and take them home. It was a worthwhile trip. I got to relive some good memories and get an up-close look at a downtown I should be more familiar with than I apparently was. We didn’t encounter a lot of people, but we didn’t pass one person too absorbed in their phone not to at least smile or say hello. We did pass two joggers with ear buds in, but even they waved. It was nice people in a nice little downtown. A really good place to walk your dogs…and yourself. A long time ago, there was a commercial that purported to demonstrate how Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were invented. One gentleman was inattentively walking down the street eating a chocolate bar. A similarly oblivious fellow was walking toward him eating peanut butter. They bumped into each other and the chocolate bar ended up shoved in the peanut butter jar. “You got peanut butter on my chocolate.” “You got chocolate in my peanut butter.” “LET’S EAT IT!” they then exclaimed in unison. Now, that is very obviously not how peanut butter cups came into being. Seriously, who walks down the street with their face shoved in a jar of Jif? If you do I’m not judging you or anything…no, actually I am. That’s weird. If you want to lick Peter Pan straight out of the jar and off your dirty fingers in the privacy of your own home, that’s cool, but not in public where impressionable children are watching. I mean, the guy in the commercial wasn’t even using a spoon…but I digress. That concept, though, of two unrelated things coming together to maybe create something better than the sum of its parts actually happened to me last week. Tucker the Wonder Dog (our Goldendoodle) seemed to be favoring one of his ears. He was scratching at it some and sort of wallowing around on the floor to rub it on the carpet. Ashley was afraid he was getting an ear infection and made him a vet appointment. I took him to said appointment and as is always the case at the outset of a vet visit, Tucker was weighed. He’s a smart dog and has been to the vet enough that he knows the routine. They call us out of the waiting room, he walks through a door and hops on the scale without prompting. The nurse scribbled down his weight, then led us to a room. The vet came and checked him out and the good news was that he did not have an ear infection. It was likely a mild allergy caused by the recent weather changes and perhaps pollen. The bad news was that Tucker weighed in at a fairly beefy 98 pounds. Now, Tucker has a big frame and lots of his weight is muscle, but the 98 is about 10 pounds higher than it should be. “Mr. Tucker needs to lose a few pounds,” the vet said. This is where we go from chocolate to peanut butter. For some reason, a friend and I started discussing whether or not we have physically put our feet down in all 46 of South Carolina’s counties. I have a fierce love and loyalty of my home state and my one trick is the ability to sing the 46 counties in alphabetical order to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” (which I learned in Mrs. Shannon’s third-grade class and have never forgotten even as I would struggle to tell you my mom or sister’s phone numbers without looking them up in my contact list). Some people can play an instrument, some excel in athletic endeavors and I can rip off “Abbeville, Aiken, Allendale, Anderson etc.” with ease. As near as I can figure, I only lack about three counties. My general travels and my job covering prep sports has taken me to nearly every far-flung rural locale imaginable, but I don’t clearly recall actually putting my feet on the ground in Allendale, Hampton or Edgefield Counties. I’ve driven through Edgefield and I think Hampton, but I didn’t so much as stop for gas or to use the bathroom. Allendale and Hampton abut one another and are located such that you don’t really go through them traveling to much of anywhere. If you are there, you are there for a reason. Then came the moment that doofus eating peanut butter with his fingers and the candy bar guy collided. Both Tucker and our other dog Gracie (a Labradodle) need to shed a little weight. Exercise (mainly in the form of walking them) is a way to do that. They actually love to walk. If I announce “who wants to walk” they both get really excited and run to the closet where we keep their leashes and collars and will actually cry if I don’t hurry up and get on with the show. They also like to walk in new places, see different sights and encounter lots of doting dog-lovers. They are my loyal, happy little buddies, so I walk them whenever I can (though handling nearly 180 pounds of energetic dogs is kind of like walking a horse sometimes). So, why not walk them in all 46 counties? That way, they (and I) would get to experience some different places and people and I would get to mark the last three counties off my visit list. It’s a brilliant and terrible and logistically difficult idea. It will require some planning and trips to some of those little border towns that spill into a couple of different counties (there is a four-corners convergence of Bamberg, Colleton, Hampton and Allendale for example…I’d need to hit that area because it’s hard to justify four separate three-ish hour drives to walk in each individually), weather and temperatures certainly come into play, but I’m intent on doing it. So if you see us, please stop and say “hey.” Even if you’re walking down the street eating peanut butter straight from the jar. It doesn’t seem to work out mathematically, but Lewisville Coach Will Mitchell says having his JV team play eight-man football will allow him to get more players on the field than playing regular 11-man football.
When the South Carolina High School League eliminated the eight-quarter rule (which allowed football players to take part in JV and varsity games in a single week), it forced coaches to make some difficult decisions. Many Class A schools only carry 20 or 30 players in grades 9-12, so those coaches could either completely gut their varsity rosters of any depth and keep JV programs going, or they could simply fold JV teams and have everyone play varsity. Many took the latter approach, but Mitchell pursued some middle ground last season, fielding a “B” team comprised of seventh, eighth and ninth graders (leaving sophomores, juniors and seniors to play varsity football). The team played a limited schedule and young players did get some needed experience. Mitchell doesn’t want to go that route this year because a fairly large and talented group of students will be present at the middle school this year and he wants them playing together on a middle school only team. In terms of pure numbers, he will have technically have enough freshmen bodies alone (14 or 15) to field a standalone JV team, with 10th-12th graders playing varsity. This is where overall numbers play a big role, however. The Lions were moved up to the AA classification this school year but are by far the smallest school in their region and one of the smallest in AA overall. “It’s not really feasible to play an 11-man game at this level with 14 kids. I can’t go play Pageland or somebody who will have 40 or so kids on JV with 14. That’s a recipe for kids getting hurt,” Mitchell said. Those freshmen could just play varsity football, but Mitchell said the playing time of eight to 10 of them would be very limited. To develop as players, though, those young athletes need to be on the field getting real-game snaps. “Nobody’s getting better on the bench,” Mitchell said. That’s when Mitchell decided to explore the possibility of having his JV team play some eight-man football. The Lions JV has one full 11-man game scheduled (against Legion) but that is on the varsity’s off week, meaning 10th graders will be able to participate that week. A lack of numbers would be less of an issue playing eight-man ball, particularly if he was able to schedule games against schools of similar size, Mitchell figured. It would also eliminate one of the primary problems faced with small rosters, which is a lack of linemen, since only three are needed to field an offense in the eight-man game. The only hitch to the plan is that Mitchell has never played in or even watched an eight-man football game before. So, he went about educating himself in the manner most people do when exploring a new concept. “I’ve watched some games on YouTube now,” Mitchell said. Not many public schools in South Carolina play eight-man football (there is actually an eight-man division of SCISA in this state) but it is fairly common in the Midwest and Southwest. It is sometimes played on more narrow fields (40 yards wide) to accommodate six fewer total players and reduce the amount of ground that has to be covered by eight defenders. Some play on a regulation field, which Mitchell said leads to very high-scoring games. “It can be a struggle for the defense, but my preference would be to play on a full field,” he said. Most of the rules are similar to the 11-man game, but there are a few differences. Eight-man football requires five players to be on the line of scrimmage. There is a center and two guards, but many teams opt to have a tight end lined up outside of those guards. They are eligible receivers, but at that point it looks like a traditional five-man line (though that leaves only three skill players including the quarterback). The same wide-open spread philosophies that now populate 11-man high school football are also present in eight-man, with some teams employing multiple receiver sets. Defensive looks run the gamut from 3-2-3 to 4-1-3 and 4-3-1. Mitchell said he would like to allow free punts and not have kickoffs in the eight-man games, with offenses simply starting possessions at the 30 after scores. Mitchell has lined up an eight-man preseason scrimmage and has found “two or three” schools willing to do an in-season home-and-home. He’d like to find some more opponents for this year, though. “We don’t mind traveling. I just want to get our younger kids more playing time,” he said. That is entirely the point. While it is somewhat unconventional in this area, eight-man football will get Lewisville’s freshmen real snaps in real games and help them prepare to contribute at the varsity level faster. “It’s a way to get more kids on the field playing more football.” It occurs to me sometimes that you might like football and mock drafts but not, you know, words. They have letters in them and there are lots of them and you have to figure out what they mean…who needs that? So, I offer up a truncated (that means smaller) short attention span version of my mock draft.
1. Arizona Cardinals- QB Kyler Murray, Oklahoma With a WR group that is a mix of elderly people and AAF refugees, it might not matter who the QB is, really. 2. San Francisco 49ers- Nick Bosa, Ohio State Fully healed from surgery on his ding ding muscle, Bosa should be a defensive rookie of the year candidate. 3. New York Jets- OLB/DE Josh Allen, Kentucky The benefit to sucking as bad for as long as they have is you can pick whoever and it’s better than anything you’ve already got. Allen will be a pass-rushing stud. 4. Parts Unknown Raiders- DE Rashan Gary, Michigan Gruden will frequently say “man” and use metaphors involving carpentry tools and women of ill repute if Gary parlays his physical skills into production. 5. Tampa Bay Bucaneers- LB Devin White, LSU Tampa resists the urge to jettison their meme-screaming, turnover-addled seafood pilferer and instead fills a big need at LB. 6. New York Giants- DL Quinnen Williams, Alabama They’ll grab Grampa Manning’s replacement later, opting to take a large person who menaces opposing QBs in this spot. 7. Jacksonville Jaguars- TE T.J. Hockenson, Iowa If you want corn or large people that catch footballs, Iowa seems like a good place to look. 8. Detroit Lions- DE/OLB Montez Sweat, Mississippi State Named like he toured with Al B. Sure and Gerald Levert in the late 80s…brings some major juice to Detroit’s pass rush. 9. Buffalo Bills- DT Ed Oliver, Houston Their horrendously inaccurate QB could use better weapons, but so could their well-lubricated turnstile of a D line. 10. Denver Broncos- OL Jawaan Taylor, Florida Only a nimrod would leave this stud out of his mock draft (quietly adds Taylor to mock draft, hope no one notices). 11. Cincinnati Bengals- QB Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State You know what you have in Andy Dalton (a red-headed person who does not win playoff games), so why not take someone with the tools to potentially take you further? 12. Green Bay Packers- TE Noah Fant, Iowa Most mocks don’t have him going this high…but if you’re looking for insight and accuracy you probably aren’t getting your NFL Draft info from a high school football and meat blog to start with. 13. Miami Dolphins- DL Christian Wilkins, Clemson The Dolphins will wait a year to address the long-term QB situation (i.e. tank and suck real bad in ’19) but get a versatile, productive winner on the D line for this year. 14. Atlanta Falcons- OL Jonah Williams, Alabama JONAH could be a WHALE of a pick for the Falcons. See what I did there? HAHAHAHA!!!! 15. Washington Redskins- DE Clelin Ferrell, Clemson This won’t happen because I want it to. We’ll probably trade our entire draft for a long snapper and a sack of magic beans. 16. Carolina Panthers- OL Andre Dillard, Washington State Other than never blocking for a running play once ever in his college career, he’s a heck of a pick. 17. New York Giants- QB Drew Lock, Missouri He’ll likely go higher than this, but I’m not sold. He could be Mahomes Part II or Blaine Gabbert’s slightly less accurate doppelganger. 18. Minnesota Vikings- OL Cody Ford, Oklahoma Allowing your QB to be savagely diddled on an every-down basis is a net negative for offensive production according to recent reports. 19. Tennessee Titans- DL Dexter Lawrence, Clemson The Titans have a glaring hole at DT and have a great one drop right into their laps…of course if Dexter literally fell into your lap, walking without a limp and having babies later in life would no longer be in the cards. 20. Pittsburgh Steelers- DB Byron Murphy, Washington If you think of something funny to say about a CB from Washington, please let me know. 21. Seattle Seahawks- WR D.K. Metcalf, Ole Miss Goes fast in a straight line, but so do choo choo trains and they catch almost as many passes as he does. Could be an all-time steal or a guy who runs fast in a straight line. 22. Baltimore Ravens- WR Parris Campbell, Ohio State With a young QB, Ravens need some WRs, um, that I knew existed without looking them up. 23. Houston Texans- OL Chris Lindstrom, Boston College I know it was like, five whole picks ago, but do you remember what I said about your QB being painfully violated by defenders too often? 24. Parts Unknown Raiders- TE Irv Smith, Alabama If the season started today Lee Smith would be starting at TE for the Raiders. Also, if the season started today it’d be weird since it’s April. Someone better seems like a good idea. 25. Philadelphia Eagles- LB Devin Bush, Michigan Sideline-to-sideline tackling machine, block-shedder, loose hips in coverage and all the other good crap you’re supposed to say about LBs. 26. Indianapolis Colts- DL Jerry Tillery, Notre Dame I’m largely pulling stuff out of a hat at this point. 27. The TBD Raiders- RB Josh Jacobs, Alabama “Muscle hamster, pound the chicken wiggle in the stink bucket, spider 2 Y banana MAN” or whatever Gruden would say. 28. The (fill in the blank) Chargers- QB Daniel Jones, Duke Phillip Rivers has lots of age on him (and also babies). Time to start grooming a replacement, who get to learn behind one of the best for a few years. 29. Seattle Seahawks- Brian Burns, Florida State They just traded away a pass rusher…they need a pass rusher…don’t make this harder than it needs to be, man. 30. Green Bay Packers- WR Marquise Brown, Oklahoma The team’s current WRs fall somewhere between “middling” and “my obese uncle” on the talent scale. Gotta give Rodgers more to work with. 31. St. Louis Rams- OL Garrett Bradbury, N.C. State They need a center, the top center in the draft falls to them. It’s need meets, um, the thing that is needed or something. 32. New England Patriots- DE/OLB D’Andrew Walker, Georgia A happy ending for the Pats to get a rising pass-rusher. Ownership seems well-acquainted with happy endings in New England. It’s that time of year again. The time when optimism rules the day, when your team is just a few shrewd moves away from becoming an instant contender, when you truly believe a better, brighter day will arrive at dawn. There is something about the NFL Draft that makes me turn loose of decades of bitterness and disappointment and embrace real, authentic hope…kind of like Andy in Shawshank Redemption. Unfortunately, if you root for a double decker DERP wagon of a team, driven by Mr. Magoo’s, dumb, rich, pompous uncle like me, you never make it to sunny Zihuatanejo and meet up with Red. You get wedged into the 500-yard sewage pipe and are eaten by giant poop rats. With that in mind, I try to revel in the only joyful part of the NFL season by doing my own mock draft. I’m not a personnel evaluator, I’m not a coach, I’m not even a “senior reporter.” I’m a disgruntled fan with a blog, a draft magazine, some beer and a little bit of free time. So, I’d like to present to you my annual mock draft…
1. Arizona Cardinals- QB Kyler Murray, Oklahoma I’ll grant you this team picked a QB in the first round last year. It’s fair to point out they surrounded him with skill players that fall somewhere between “pedestrian” and “limbless aardvark” on the talent scale. I’ll concede that they fired their last coach after one year on the job. I can’t argue that they fired their offensive coordinator last year after seven awful games. It’s factual to note they hired a new head coach who has no NFL coaching experience and had a losing record in college. Maybe their drafts over the last five years have been noxious dumpster fires…but you need to trust them where drafting a short person from a wacky, slapnuts offense who might go play baseball if pro football doesn’t pan out quickly is concerned. I don’t’ actually have a problem with Murray going this high…great athlete and competitor, but this better work where almost everything else they’ve done lately has not. 2. San Francisco 49ers- DE Nick Bosa, Ohio State Aside from three good years under Jim Harbaugh, the 9ers have been wandering aimlessly in the Sucky Suck Suck Desert, frightened, thirsty and alone on a weary camel for almost 20 years. Seriously, losing records in 12 of the past 16 years, one-year coaching tenures for Chip Kelly and that guy that farted during a press conference and super iffy personnel decisions. They’ve drafted three first round D linemen in the last five years and made a big-time D-line signing in free agency this offseason, yet somehow still need defensive linemen. Bosa seems like a safe, sure pick at end. He’s strong at the point of attack, athletic, super disruptive and perhaps the cool drink of clean water the 9ers and their camel both need. 3. New York Jets- OLB/DE Josh Allen, Kentucky If there is an upside to be a bottomless font of inept suckitude, it’s that you don’t have to agonize over draft picks. Just take whoever and it will probably be an upgrade over what you presently have on hand. To be fair, the Jets kinda, sorta, semi, seem to have a vague clue about talent acquisition lately. They’re set at QB, RB (assuming he shows up and whatnot) and one safety spot, which only leaves them needing, um, everything else, I guess. I honestly think they may trade back to address their needs at receiver, O line, D line, corner etc. and so on. If they stay put, a frightening, 6’5 football cyborg to menace opposing quarterbacks will do just fine. Allen oddly looks a hair spindly, but I think that’s just because he’s so tall and has arms roughly the length of S.C. Highway 9. He has been one of the most productive players in the country the last few years, has a crazy-fast first step and actually doesn’t seem to mind mixing it up against the run. They should be thrilled to get him here. 4. Wherever they are currently located Raiders- DE Rashan Gary, Michigan The Raiders’ current projected DE tandem of Josh Mauro and Arden Key doesn’t say “feared pass-rushing duo” to me as much as it says “HAHAHAHA let’s throw the ball every down.” I’ll be honest, I don’t know if this is a great pick this high, because you’re basically drafting on potential and when you had the fewest sacks in the league and the next-lowest team HAD 17 MORE THAN YOU DID, you need more of a sure thing. Granted, Gary looks very much like he was constructed in an unregulated, football laboratory staffed by overzealous strength coaches and sketchy genetic doctors. He’s a large person who runs very fast (6’4, 280 pounds, 4.58 40). Athletically he’s off the charts…production-wise he’s barely on them. 119 tackles, 23 tackles-for-loss, 9.5 sacks and one forced fumble in 34 career games. Workout warriors whose game tape looks like a charity donkey basketball game at your local high school scare me, particularly this high. I say the Raiders will roll the dice here. If this turns into a hit, Gruden will give him ridiculous nicknames and make inane metaphors about him. In fact, he might do that here a little later on too… 5. Tampa Bay Buccaneers- LB Devin White, LSU I almost pulled my first “OH NO HE DIDN’T” of the draft here and had them take QB Dwayne Haskins. I will guess that maybe Bruce Arians tries to see if he can help improve his current finger-sucking, seafood pilfering turnover machine of a signal-caller first. The Bucs lost Kwon Alexander in free agency, there’s no telling if Kendell Beckwith will be his old self after a bad injury and the rest of the LBs are people I was previously unaware played football. Enter Devin White. He goes almost 240 on a 6’0 frame, he is faster than most CBs (and cheetahs and race cars), he’s productive and he loves the game (so this magazine says, anyway). He’s still learning the position having come up as a RB, but he can be a sideline-to-sideline tackling machine. It’s a perfect pairing. It’s need meets, uh, thing that is needed or whatever. 6. New York Giants- DL Quinnen Williams, Alabama Your first impulse is to send Haskins here, since Eli Manning is very near the point that he qualifies for a free coffee at Hardees. He’ll meet up there every morning with Clem and H.C and talk about how there must be a storm a’comin’ because his lumbago is acting up. He’s old is my point. However, with Haskins slipping on some boards for whatever reason and with the Giants having traded away two D line starters, they require a large person that tackles people. Williams is like a boulder with lightning legs. He’s plenty big, freaky fast, has on-the-field numbers to match (eight sacks and 19.5 tackles-for-loss while playing inside) and as a redshirt sophomore his best is probably still ahead of him. They can replace grandpa Manning a bit later. 7. Jacksonville Jaguars- TE T.J. Hockenson, Iowa “T.J. Hockenson” sounds like a person who plays tight end at Iowa…or plays clarinet in a two-bit polka band. You know…chunky fellow in a funny green hat, just tootin’ away on “Where’s my bologna polka” with a bottle of lukewarm Weihenstephan Hefe Weissbier sitting on top of a nearby amp. Anyway, the Jags think they have their QB situation ironed out now with Nick Foles…but to me, Foles needs good weapons around him to succeed. They could use O-line help and another receiver but their TE’s are a collection of “who is thats?” and “why are we paying hims?” Seriously, their top two have 59 career catches, two touchdowns and average nine yards a catch. It’s a close call between he and former teammate Noah Fant, but I’ll go with Hockenson because he’s bigger, a bit more productive and a better blocker. Last year’s John Mackey Award winner provides a big boost to an area of need. 8. Detroit Lions- DE/OLB Montez Sweat, Mississippi State If I hadn’t just done the “T.J. Hockenson as polka player” bit I would totally have Montez Sweat as a late ‘80s R&B singer. He’d be on a package tour with EU and Rude Boys, alternately singing about how he’d love you tenderly and how he wants to see you bounce your booty on the dance floor. Oh well. This roster is kind of a grab bag of bullcrap with a few exceptions, so they could go CB, OL, TE or almost anything else. Sweat is another tall guy (6’6) who moves like a bullet-legged puma on roller skates. He did play at three colleges and doesn’t rack up gigantic tackle numbers, but man is he a menace in the backfield with 23.5 sacks the last two years. A nice bookend to Trey Flowers. 9. Buffalo Bills- DT Ed Oliver, Houston I’m not at all convinced the Bills will even make this pick with a trade seeming likely. I’m not convinced this is the right pick or the position they’ll even address if they do stay put at this spot. But you can’t just say“crap, who knows?” in a mock draft so I’ll put Oliver’s name here. They have a lot of needs, not the least of which is more viable targets for Josh Allen. He’s like cross-eyed sniper…sure he’s got a powerful weapon at his disposal, but he’s as likely to maim an innocent bird or shoot someone’s aunt in the hind end as to hit his target. A TE (Fant) would be a big help, but they have a large person named Star and not much else on the D line. Oliver is undersized at 6’2 and 280-something, but dadgum is he active and disruptive. Not gigantic sack totals, but he had 53 tackles-for-loss and 192 tackles in 32 college games. Small D linemen have had success recently, which probably benefits him. 10. Denver Broncos- OL Cody Ford, Oklahoma According to my intensive research, having your quarterback savagely violated regularly is a net negative where offensive production is concerned. When you add in that your quarterback is an aging, slow person, it makes things that much worse. Ford is like a bull on those shoes the kids wear that have little wheels in them. Just a gigantic slab of angry beef rolling around mashing people is what he is. They could go D line here too, but with their OT spots filled pretty ably, Ford can step in to plug a hole inside and make Joe Flacco more comfortable. 11. Cincinnati Bengals- QB Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State OH NO HE DIDN’T! OH YES HE DID! SAY WHAT? UH HUH! Look, this is almost certainly not going to actually happen. The Bengals are about as change averse as a professional sports team can be. They were quite content to teeter between meh and crap for what seemed like 30 or 40 years under Marvin Lewis. That hind tit suits them just fine, thank you. But, they have a new coach, one who was a QB in college and maybe, just maybe he’d like to go in a different direction at the position. You know what you have in Andy Dalton, which is a middle of the road kind of guy who can win you games so long as he has talent around him. Haskins looks the part at 6’3, 230 and his production was off the friggin’ charts last year (4,800 yards and 50 touchdown passes). Now, he isn’t much of a runner at all and he was a one-year starter, so you might have to treat him like a green nanner and stick him in a bag for a little while to ripen (I have no idea where that came from, sorry), but why not take a shot on a guy with the tools to take you further than you know your current starter can? 12. Green Bay Packers- TE Noah Fant, Iowa Odd to have two tight ends from the same school going this high and I’ll grant you that very few other mocks have him going this high. But, I mean, if you’re looking for dead-on accuracy, you probably aren’t seeking information on a high school football and meat blog to start with. Come for the polka jokes, stay around for the draft picks. It would seem a shame to waste the last few great years of Aaron Rodgers’s career by saddling him with a mix of old, slow and unproductive pass-catchers. Fant’s physical tools jump off the page (ran a 4.5 at almost 250 pounds). He isn’t a big in-line blocker, but if he can stretch the field and be a red zone threat, who cares? 13. Miami Dolphins- DL Christian Wilkins, Clemson Despite the rumblings that the Dolphins are going to wait a year to address their needs at QB (i.e. tank and suck terribly) I’m not convinced they aren’t going to go up and get one this year. If they stay put, adding some juice (or a name I’m actually familiar with) to a nondescript D line should be the move. Honestly, they should be thrilled to get a player of Wilkins’ caliber here. He’s got the size (6’3, 315) and workout numbers you’re looking for, he’s super productive (57 tackles, 15 for loss, six sacks and two forced fumbles) is smart and versatile enough to play inside or outside…but most importantly he’s a leader and a winner. He’d be a great addition here. 14. Atlanta Falcons- OL Jonah Williams, Alabama JONAH could be a WHALE of a pick for Atlanta. See what I did there? Little Biblical humor for you. I’ve seen people question whether he can play tackle in the NFL because his arms are shorter than is considered ideal. I mean, it’s not like he has creepy little baby doll arms on his 6’4, 305-ish pound frame. If he did it would be hilarious, but whatever. Watch him play. He’s good. Inside or out he’s a big upgrade for the Falcons. 15. Washington Redskins- DE Clelin Ferrell, Clemson Understand from the get-go, they won’t do this because it makes sense and will make me happy. Being a fan of this team is a totally one-sided proposition. You give love and loyalty and undying support and they poop in a box and put it under your tree at Christmas. WR is BY FAR our biggest, most pressing need. Consider that right now if we go four wide, we’re rolling out Josh Doctson, Darvin Kidsy, Paul Richardson and Brian Quick. “Oh gosh, a present? You shouldn’t have. I can’t wait to open this stinky box to see what’s inside.” They’ll probably draft D.K. Metcalf. He scares me to death because while he’s like a freight train careening down the side of a steep mountain in terms of size and speed, his stats are very close to what that ill-fated train would post. I don't see a receiver worth picking here, so we go to our next biggest need, which is someone to rush the quarterback. Ferrell has the right dimensions (6’4, 264 pounds), puts up numbers to match almost anyone (36.5 tackles-for-loss and 21 sacks the past two years) and seems to play his best against the best competition with a lot on the line. He’d have to adjust to more of an OLB/DE/Edge role with Washington running a 3-4, but he can do it. And he will…probably for some other team smart enough to draft him. 16. Carolina Panthers- OL Andre Dillard, Washington State The Panthers desperately need to inject some youth and speed into the DE position. I think they move up to get that, but if the stay here, taking Brian Burns or someone is a bit reach-y and desperate. You don’t want to get desperate as desperation leads to poor choices. Don’t settle for “other than the prison face tats and poisonous pet snake she’s fine” when “HOTTAROCKY” might walk through the door a few minutes later. They could use help up front on offense too and a productive, four-year starter with top-drawer physical tools seems like a good get at 16. 17. New York Giants- QB Drew Lock, Missouri His stock spiked tremendously after a good showing at the Senior Bowl, but I remain unconvinced. He’s got the size you’re looking for (6’4, 230-ish), he’s athletic and man can he fling the tater. As an aside, remember when analysts said stuff like “man can he fling the tater” instead of “he has impressive arm talent?” Bite me with that stuff. OK, now the negatives. His accuracy can go to straight to crap with almost no notice and his yardage and touchdowns were actually down last year, though his completion percentage was up a bit and he cut back his interceptions. He didn’t exactly lift the program to new heights, either, the way you kind of expect top-end QBs to do. The Giants need to get on with drafting Eli’s replacement and he could be Mahomes 2.0…or Jay Cutler’s slightly more affable doppelganger. Not sure which. 18. Minnesota Vikings- OL Kaleb McGary, Washington Remember what I said earlier about how allowing opposing defenses to violently diddle your QB is a detriment to offensive productivity? Maybe not. That was, like, eight picks ago and we’ve both changed so much as people since then. Well, that is the case and the Vikings take a guy to help on that front. 19. Tennessee Titans- DL Dexter Lawrence, Clemson The Titans need a pass rusher and BADLY need to get more weapons around Mariota, especially a younger, athletic TE. There’s a bit of a drop off after Lawrence at DL, though, so I say they fill a big need with the best guy left on the board. Lawrence’s picture should basically appear on the side of can of peas. He’s a mammoth, gigantic man at 6’4, 350-ish. He was the strongest D lineman at the combine and is amazingly quick for his size. He doesn’t put up big sack numbers, but he ties up blockers, stuffs the run and you ain’t moving him. He did test positive for Ovaltine or something, but who knew that was illegal? I mean, how much of that stuff did Ralphie drink in “A Christmas Story” to get that Orphan Annie decoder? Of course, he did have that rage incident where he curb stomped Scut Farkus, so maybe there’s something there. Is that not the same thing? Oh well. Anyway, that seemed minor and unintentional and won’t impact his draft status. 20. Pittsburgh- DB Byron Murphy, Washington Daddy is running out of steam here, kids. Pittsburgh needs a young corner, Byron Murphy fits the description…let’s move along. 21. Seattle Seahawks- WR D.K. Metcalf, Ole Miss There’s a lot to like about Metcalf. He looks like he’s chiseled out of granite, he run a 4.3 at 6’3 and 230 pounds. The bloodlines are certainly there (father Terrence, grandfather Terry and uncle Eric Metcalf all played in the league) too. What isn’t is much production. He caught 26 passes and five touchdowns last year and had 39-646-7 the year before that. He runs fast in a straight line but so do alligators and they can’t catch, man. Short arms and a penchant for eating defenders is what keeps them out of the league. Has injury history too. Could be a phenom that gives Russell Wilson a game-breaking target…or not. 22. Baltimore Ravens- WR Parris Campbell, Ohio State A pass rusher is BADLY needed here too, but having decided to go with a youngster at QB in Lamar Jackson, they have to give him the tools to succeed. In terms of speed, if the Roadrunner and a rocket booster could somehow have a baby, it would probably be Campbell. He is one of the fastest players in the draft. He had a huge final college season, going over 1,000 yards and scoring 12 touchdowns. He’s not a giant target at 6’0 and 200 or so pounds and will be asked to do a lot more in terms of route running in the NFL, but the talent is certainly there. 23. Houston Texans- OL Chris Lindstrom, Boston College Hey, um, you remember when we talked about the drawbacks to letting the other team dole out a grade 1 rootin’ to your quarterback? That message rings as clear and true now as it did five picks ago…and a few picks before that. Deshaun Watson will lead this team a long way provided he is upright and healthy, which he won’t be if he gets sacked 62 times again. Lindstrom will likely play inside, but he’ll do great there. Moves really well and is good in pass protection and in the run game, per this magazine I bought. Houston will take that. 24. Parts Unknown Raiders- TE Irv Smith, Alabama If the season started right now (which would be weird since it’s April) the Raiders would trot out Lee Smith as their starting TE. On top of having a super flashy name, he’s over 30 and has 56 career receptions. WOO HOO! Obviously, this is an area that needs a major upgrade. Smith is a little undersized at 6’2, 240…but these sort of pumped-up WRs are being used a lot more now with success. He averaged over 16 yards a catch and had seven touchdown grabs despite being one of many weapons in Bama’s passing game. Should be a nice chess piece for Gruden and company to move around and do a variety of things with. 25. Philadelphia Eagles- LB Devin Bush, Michigan The defensive front line of the Eagles is like an impenetrable wall of concrete with razor wire and flames shooting out the top and gun turrets. ..and flying monkeys wielding sabers. And the scariest sight at the top of any wall…David Hasselhoff. Their LBs are like a super-lubed turnstile, however. Bush is a little undersized at 5’11, 230-ish, but he’s a good tackler and he can flat fly, making plays all over the field. 26. Indianapolis Colts- DL Jerry Tillery, Notre Dame I’m basically pulling crap out of a hat at this point. The Colts need a WR, but can address that later. A big boy who hits people is next on the list…hence Tillery. 27. The TBD Raiders- RB Josh Jacobs, Alabama “I’m gonna tell ya something man, we need somebody to carry the rock. I’ll tell you who carried a lot of rocks is whoever built those pyramids in Egypt, man. Where do you even find rocks in the desert, man? I mean, getting the materials alone was a problem, then you had to shape them and stack them up and they didn’t have levelers or caulk or ladders or any of that stuff back then man. That’s craftsmanship and attention to detail, man. The other best rock toters I can remember is the guys who persecuted witches and women who loved a little too freely back in the day man. You’ve got to have some real arm talent to hit a Salem witch with a hunk of marble from a distance in the face, man. That takes arm strength and rock placement. You’ve really got to be able to squeeze the chicken into the tootie. I bet those guys made good QBs, man. I bet you find the best RBs at Stonehenge man, because that is some all-time rock carrying. After I sleep for 37 seconds then mainline this Sanka and adrenaline concentrate I cooked up, I’m gonna get right on that, man.” Thanks, coach. 28. The (fill in the blank) Chargers- QB, Daniel Jones, Duke At some point, the Chargers will have to prepare for the fact that Phillip Rivers’s long and productive career is going to end. For one, he’s getting on in years, and for the other, his wife will eventually tire of raising their 17 children in his absence. Jones obviously benefitted from playing under David Cutcliffe and has the physical traits you look for at the position at 6’5, 221. He has fairly quick feet too. Good mechanics, good arm and thrived despite not having the best skill guys around him. He’s not a finished product (despite having started for three years) but would be in the great position to sit and learn for a year or two behind one of the best. 29. Kansas City Chiefs- DE/OLB Brian Burns, Florida State Once they decided to let Justin Houston walk, this became a big area of need. Florida State’s defense was like a turd on rye bread last year, but Burns was still an all-conference player. By the way, “turd on rye bread” made me imagine a sandwich artist asking me what toppings I wanted on my poop and fancy bread sammy and I laughed, because despite all the physical evidence to the contrary, I am five. Burns needs to put more weight on his tall, fairly thin frame, but he’s explosive and knows what to do when he gets in the backfield. If nothing else he can come in on passing downs and wreak havoc until he fills out a bit. 30. Green Bay Packers- WR Marquise Brown, Oklahoma The overhaul of the skill talent in Green Bay continues with this electric player. Now, he is tiny at 5’9, 166, he is Smurf-ish, but he’s like the fastest Smurf alive. Was there a Speedy Smurf? If there was he didn’t get as much screen time as Papa and the rest of them. Maybe he was out working on his game while the rest of them sat around in their shrooms, devising ways to avoid the evil wizard and his talking cat. Trippy stuff, man. What was I saying? Oh, over 1,300 yards last year, 10 touchdowns and averaged 17.6 yards-per-catch. Will have to adjust to an NFL offense and much more physical DBs, but Rodgers should love him. 31. LA Rams- OL Garrett Bradbury, N.C. State This is the perfect scenario for the Rams. They let starting center John Sullivan leave, but have the best center in the draft fall into their laps. It’s a perfect combination, kind of like steak and baked potatoes, like Batman and Robin, like Jim Beam and BB guns. 32. New England Patriots- DE/OLB D’Andre Walker, Georgia There is no way in the world the Pats actually make this pick. Some nimrod will want to move up to grab a player they could probably get in round two anyway, overpay for this and only embolden the evil that is the practice-taping, soul-sucking, flat-balled hoodie demon of Foxboro. Someone will enable them to continue the fun-killing death grip they have on the league, because they’re smart and everyone else is dumb and that’s how it goes. If they do stay put, they get an emerging pass-rusher to add to their stable. It’s a very happy ending to the proceedings for them…something their ownership is well acquainted with. In my regular, pay-the-bills job, there are certain times of the year you just figure are going to be slow and uneventful. In the last week of the year, school is out, local government is basically shut down, no boards or councils are meeting and there are very few games being played. Imagine, though, if on Christmas Day, I got the following phone call…
“Hey Travis, a spaceship just landed out near Blackstock.” “Um, are you sure?” “I mean, it’s a big, glowing, wiener-shaped deal with rocket boosters and ray guns and what not. There’s aliens coming out of a big door that just opened. They seem to be communicating with beavers and squirrels and I think they are plotting our overthrow and demise.” “I’d love to get somebody out there to interview the space dudes or the beavers or whatever, but everybody’s off and I’m at a family thing right now. Can you see if they know what a phone is, have one and don’t mind me calling them later?” Trust me people, when the squirrel-whispering space aliens land in Blackstock, it will be on a day that is supposed to be quiet and relaxed. That’s kind of what it was like to get, giant, mega-bombshell Class A football news on January 31 (could that have been a weaker pivot and more ridiculous analogy? I don’t think it could have been). On Thursday, Corey Fountain resigned as head football coach at Lamar High School, leaving his alma mater to become the new head man of the Clinton Red Devils. His accomplishments at Lamar during his five-year tenure have ranked somewhere between “gaudy” and “holy crap” on the impressive meter. He not only kept the program at the high level he had reached before he arrived, he left it better than he found it. Stories I’ve read about his departure have listed his record at 58-10. I went through Lamar’s past five seasons on MaxPreps and came up with 56-10 (shocking note…sometimes stuff on MaxPreps is incorrect), but here’s what I found. In his five years with the Silver Foxes, he was 42-4 against Class A competition. Two of those losses came in state title games, one came in an upperstate championship contest and one came in the regular season. One. He lost one regular season game to a fellow Class A team in five years and that came in his first year to a great McBee squad. After falling in the upperstate finals his first year, his teams advanced to state four straight times and won it all twice. He was 16-3 in the playoffs and everything I just told you may not even be the most impressive Corey Fountain feat. Against teams of higher classification, Lamar was 14-6 under Fountain. Two of those losses came to powerhouse Hartsville and two to Darlington, both in his first two years on the job. Since then, Lamar routed Darlington twice, shut out Pageland Central three straight years, beat a good Crestwood program twice and carved up other AA, AAA and AAAA competitors. When smaller Class A schools regularly whoop up on the big boys, that speaks volumes. The dominance his teams showed over like-sized schools also can’t be stressed enough. Per my crude, often-inaccurate math skills, Lamar’s average score against fellow Class A competitors the past five season was 42.5 to 13.7…numbers that get even more lopsided if you only look at regular season contests. On 22 occasions, his teams held fellow Class A teams to eight or fewer points. So, what exactly is Clinton getting? Per my double-secret Lamar informant and other folks I’ve talked to down there, Fountain is the kind of guy you want coaching your kid. Good person who really cares about his players. He’s super competitive and wants to be the best at anything he undertakes and by extension works very hard to help his players reach their full potential. He’s also still young in coach years (39)…which I guess makes him the Fountain of youth. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! See what I did there?! In terms of Xs and Os on offense, it’s hard to say exactly, since he has never seemed married to any particular philosophy. I think, generally, his preference is to be physical and keep it on the ground. They ran double wing shotgun looks, three back alignments and other power formations. However, I think he wisely realizes that if you’re completely one-dimensional it becomes a lot easier to stop you, so his teams were always pretty efficient throwing the ball. Defensively, his teams usually operate from a 4-3 and rarely get out of it or do much wacky blitzing and stunting. I like that, since when you aren’t giving 14-18 year-olds a ton of stuff to learn and process, when you keep it relatively simple, it allows them to be more aggressive and lets their natural athletic talent take over more often. His teams are next to impossible to run against and their tackling looks like something from an instructional video. They weren’t dirty, but his Lamar teams had an intimidating presence about them and hit you VERY HARD. It often looked like they brought 2x4s to a church squirt pistol contest. I don’t know Fountain well enough to know what it was about Clinton that lured him away from the place he played. I’d heard he interviewed there a week or so back and was kind of surprised because I guess I just assume that when you get to be head coach at your alma mater, you’ve reached you ultimate destination, but that isn’t always the case. Maybe he felt he’d accomplished everything there that there was to accomplish. Maybe it was a new challenge or more money. I’m not really sure. I will say, he has left whoever is his successor will be with a lot to work with. The Silver Foxes only lose a handful of starters from a state runner-up team, get QB Cam Galloway back from injury and are the clear favorite to win the upperstate title again and advance to state. I don’t know enough about the current staff to know if the next coach is already on-board or not. If not, do they get someone with local ties who wants to come home, a young coach who wants to get his first head job at a place where he can succeed…maybe a veteran coach from North Carolina who wants to retire there and work here? Maybe it’s considered a good enough gig that there will be high-profile suitors for the job. I’m not sure, but I know that Lamar is going to be just fine…and so is Clinton. OK, let me start off by shining my own tail a little bit. I was 18-4 picking Class A playoff games. A pretty impressive record, if I do say so myself. Now, let’s have the “everyone point and laugh at Travis” portion of the proceedings…I missed my pick in the biggest game of the year, the state championship. I picked Lamar, allowing my big, stupid brain to override my gut and my heart. Let that be a lesson to you kids, never use your brain if you can help it. On one hand, Green Sea-Floyds was a sentimental favorite given that the team missed a month of the season because of Hurricane Florence and the residual flooding that came with it. They had players on the field Friday night that still can’t go back to their homes. Then you add in the fact that the team has almost no history of success. Prior to 2018, the Trojans had never made it past the second round of the playoffs and they often didn’t even come close to getting that far. They were winless just a few years ago and had a long recent drought where they didn’t even make the playoffs. To have the best season in school history in the face of terrible adversity made them impossible not to pull for. But this wasn’t just one of those cheeseball, feel good Hallmark Christmas movies where Santa is going to bring the kid his sled and his mama is going to end up with the kindly, handsome fellow who was a mall Santa, who promised the kid the sled in the first place (seriously, someone send that to Hallmark, they’ll make that movie). This was a good team, one that got as hot offensively as is imaginable down the stretch. In the six games leading up to state, they never scored less than 40 points and cracked 60 four times. That came against the likes of Baptist Hill, Hemingway and C.E. Murray…so real, actual competition that hits back and stuff. They have a lot of weapons but Jaquan Dixon is a human lightning bolt with lawnmower blades for arms and I’ve heard a lot of good things about QB Bubba Elliot, whose name for all the world indicates he’s driving the Jimmy Jack’s Weiner Cantina-sponsored Chevy at the Sugar Tit dirt track. They play real defense too, as evidenced by their blowout of Baptist Hill. Despite all that, and despite the fact that Lamar narrowly got by Dixie in a turnover-marred game the week before, I just talked myself into believing the Silver Foxes would win the day. They certainly have more title game experience as no player on the team has ever known anything but playing for a state crown. The other factor is that they are so stinking good against the run. Nobody runs the ball on Lamar and that has been Green Sea’s bread-and-butter all year. Their one loss in the last two years came to Gray Collegiate early in the season. Gray throws the ball and had success through the air that night, but even in that loss there were extenuating circumstances. Lamar had been off the field for two weeks because of the hurricane (Gray had not) and their QB Cam Galloway was injured that night and lost for the year. Dixie had as strong a power running game as anybody, what with their gigundous 240-pound running back and senior-laden line, and they didn’t crack 100 total yards. Given all that, I figured the Silver Foxes would grind out a close, low-scoring game.
And I was wrong. Now, Green Sea did mix in a bit of a passing attack and some gadget plays that worked, but in the first half they pretty much did what no one else has done in running for well over 200 yards…on Lamar…in two quarters of football. They had over 300 yards of total offense and scored on four straight possessions to take a 26-12 lead into the break. My double-secret embedded Lamar informant said Wallace just has that “it” factor. Said he actually reminded him of Galloway. He said Dixon was a total stud and that Lamar had an un-Lamar-like half defensively, trying to arm-tackle Dixon and getting run over and through in the process. He ran for almost 250, which is more than Wagener-Salley and Dixie had in total yardage against Lamar COMBINED! Now, Green Sea doesn’t always run straight at you the way Dixie does. They run option, they run jet sweeps, they run some old double-handoff stuff…lots of formations too. Double tight with a single back, double wing scrum stuff, shotgun with two backs…you name a manner in which they might hand or pitch the ball to somebody and they apparently do it. They aren’t huge up front, but their kids are tough as nails and they have serious speed to the corners with which they were able to exploit everyone, even Lamar. Certainly, Lamar didn’t play its cleanest game. They had three interceptions, put the ball on the ground a couple of other times and weren’t their usual selves in the tackling department, at least in the first half. They also turned it over down in Green Sea territory, which is also odd, since they generally finish in those circumstances. After a terribly lackluster first half, they moved the ball considerably better in the second half, but kept undercutting themselves with turnovers. Green Sea didn’t do much of anything in the second half offensively and I read three different descriptions of why that happened. My informant said Lamar didn’t really make any adjustments, they just started wrapping up and tackling better. I saw an interview with Green Sea Coach Donnie Kiefer where he said he went very conservative to work clock and protect the lead and I saw one newspaper account that said Lamar started crowding the box. Take your pick, but the Trojans didn’t threaten to score in the second half. It looked more like the Lamar we’re accustomed to, but by then they were in a hole and in trying to catch up, they took some risks and paid in the form or turnovers. They scored a touchdown to get within a score with under four minutes to play, then stuffed a Green Sea attempt to ice the game late, where the Trojans opted to go for it on fourth-and-an-inch deep in their own territory. That could have seriously blown up in their faces and ended the feel good story, but they held, getting a sack on fourth down with eight seconds left to clinch it. They made the plays early and held on late to win it all. The thing is, neither of these teams is likely to go anywhere. Lamar only had a handful of seniors this year, though one of those was super-studly RB Jacquez Lucas, who concluded his Lamar career with more than 200 yards on the ground Friday night. As for Green Sea-Floyds, they are no longer an also-ran, afterthought, “hey let’s schedule them for homecoming” program. They are champions. They went through hell this year to get there and are very worthy of bringing the big trophy home. Kiefer has done a masterful job, Dixon is only a sophomore and Elliot and junior, so they will enter the 2019 season as favorites to win the lowerstate title and be back in Columbia. I’ll have an end-of-season top 10 and some other notes later this week. Until then, congrats to the Trojans. It’s a great day and a sad. On one hand, we have a spectacular matchup between two great teams in today’s Class A state title game. It’s established, dominant program against the “out of nowhere” upstart. The back stories for both teams are intruiging and the game figures to be a classic. That’s all great. The sad part is that after today, I’ll be deprived of Class A football goodness for eight months, which is super, super sucky. In turn you, dear reader, will be deprived of words like “cranksmack,” “rootin’,” “toolin’” and truly dumb, awful analogies about pageant queen’s robbing liquor stores and such as that. We’ll just have to manage as best we can until August, I guess.
In one corner today we have Lamar, one of our state’s true football dynasties. They have lost one regular-season game in three years and BIG FAT NAM regular season games to Class A competition in four years. They are shooting for a third title in four years and have done that by physically whipping one opponent after another. In the other, we have Green Sea-Floyds, a program that, until this year, had never made it past the second round of the playoffs in its history. In fact, very rare was the year they even made it to the second round of the playoffs. By their own admission, they aspire to be like Lamar. They want to be thought of among Class A’s best programs and want to get there by stomping on your head wearing ski boots…or, you know, running the ball and playing good defense. Same deal. They come in on a seven-game winning streak and have had one of the state’s highest-scoring offenses during that stretch. That will give us a “strength-on-strength” as Lamar’s defense is essentially a castle wall with a moat full of acid, guarded by dragons, wrapped in razor wire. The offenses Since losing QB Cam Galloway to injury early in the year, the Silver Foxes have had to make some adjustments. Galloway brought a lot to the table with athleticism and that running component was going to be a big part of Lamar’s attack. New starter J.J. Langley isn’t the same kind of runner, so they’ve had to throw a little more…though Coach Corey Fountain joked that that means they now throw eight times a game instead of six. The scoring totals have dipped without Galloway, but the team still scores plenty of points, is good up front and has a stable of good backs. Now, Jacquez Lucas didn’t play last week against Dixie, I was told. Not sure of his status, but he’s a big piece of the puzzle for them on both sides of the ball. Malik Johnson is a studly back in his own right, though. The problem last week wasn’t moving the ball (they had over 400 total yards) it was the very un-Lamar like six turnovers. They were able to get away with that in part because the defense played so well. Dixie was a good, efficient offense, but they are mostly a between-the-tackles running team and that ain’t flying against Lamar, Bubba. I haven’t seen Green Sea-Floyds play in person, so I reached out to a few coaches who have. Running back Jaquan Dixon, according to one coach “Can flat G-O.” They rarely throw the ball but run at you from a lot of looks and formations. One coach told me they’ll go shotgun with two backs, they’ll show a double wing look, they’ll go double tight, two H-backs and a single back to run iso, power and counters. They mix in some option and some play action passes. They apparently ate Hemingway’s tail slam up with jet sweeps last week. Bubba Elliot is the QB and is a good athlete. Dixon has more speed than a truck stop, but they’ve got other backs too. Line isn’t gigantic but they are tough and move well. The defenses Lamar usually bases out of a 4-3 and they don’t stunt or blitz much. They play you straight up, which I like. Sometimes its better not to confuse high school kids with a bajillion coverages and stuff. They are always among the best tackling teams in the state. They play with a nasty edge…nothing dirty, but they hit you hard and never let up. They slowly grind down even the most physical teams, making you question your decision to play a contact sport. According to one coach I talked to, Green Sea’s defense has improved immensely since early in the year. Early on, they weren’t great against the run and would give up big passing plays. Then, they switched to an odd front, made a couple of personnel moves and they have been a force against the run since. Their corners and safeties attack downhill when they suspect a run play is coming. They apparently are OK against the pass too judging by the success they had against Baptist Hill. Opinions I talked to about four coaches about this match-up. Once said he fully expects Green Sea to win state in the next two years, but gives a slight edge to Lamar today based on their big-game experience. Another marveled at the job Kiefer has done, but thinks Lamar wins it based on experience and how good they are in the trenches. One said Lamar wins it unless they have a turnover-filled game like last week. The last coach said it would be a good game but would be won in the trenches, where he thinks Lamar has the upper hand. As for me, I can see this game going either way. Green Sea is an amazing story. They are having the best season in school history. The Trojans had NEVER made it past the second round in their history before this year. They have done that while facing a hurricane and residual flooding that kept them out of school for a three weeks and off the field for a month. Some players lost their homes…to succeed in the face of that tells you a lot about the character and grit of this bunch. They are giving an area that’s been whacked twice in three years by Mother Nature something to rally around, to root for and to feel good bad. How can you not appreciate that and root for them. And this isn’t just a scrappy little team that gets by on effort. They have talent, real talent and the will to build something great. When I went down there last week, the kids weren’t just talking about winning state this year, they were talking about building a foundation for future success after they graduate. I think their defense can have a pretty good night against Lamar, particularly if Lucas is out. Where I struggle is looking at their offense matching up against the Lamar defense. I know they show a lot of looks, test you inside and outside and have crazy skill talent. But it’s just really, really hard for me to see anybody…and I do mean anybody, beat Lamar with a running game. They only teams that have success against them throw the ball. That’s what Gray did. That’s what Baptist Hill did in a high-scoring loss to Lamar for state last year. This is one of those tater-kicking contest games I talk about far too often. Until I see it, I can’t pick it to happen. Now, if Lamar gets sloppy with the ball again, they might get boat-raced this week, but it’s hard to see a Corey Fountain coached team messing its britches on the turnover front twice in two weeks. I say this one is close and down to the wire, but in the end the big-game experience and slight edge in the trenches tips the scales towards the Silver Foxes. The Pick- Lamar. When Green Sea-Floyds Coach Donnie Kiefer and his players looked across the table at Monday’s state championship press conference they didn’t just see an opponent. They hope they were looking at their future.
“We want to become a championship team. We want people to think of us like they do Lamar,” said Trojans sophomore nose tackle Xavier Edwards. Today’s Class A state championship football game will pit the upstart against the dynasty, a program striving to become a consistent power vs. one that already is. Until this year, the greatest season in program history at Green Sea-Floyds was an 8-4 season in 1984. The Trojans had never made it past the second round of the playoffs until this year, suffered a decade drought in terms of even making the post-season and numerous winless campaigns. That started to change when Kiefer arrived on campus last season. “I like going to programs that are down. I love going places where people think it can’t be done,” said Kiefer, who coached in North Carolina for 31 years. The team went 6-6 and recorded a rare playoff win in Kiefer’s debut in 2017. Judged against its entire history, that stood as a great season. Kiefer, though, didn’t want his players thinking that way. “I told the guys 6-6 was not something to be satisfied with. That should be considered a down year. I told them if they were OK with mediocrity, they needed to do something else,” Kiefer said. His players took that message to heart, pouring themselves into Kiefer’s rigorous offseason strength and speed program. “We bought in. We came together as a team. We don’t play for individual stats. Wins are the only stat we care about,” said senior lineman Tyson Sorrell. There were early indications that the Trojans might be in for a special season, with the team beating Loris in overtime early in the season, the first time in 34 years Green Sea-Floyds beat its neighbor and rival. They didn’t get the chance to build on the momentum of that win, though. Fate and nature intervened in the form of Hurricane Florence. The initial impact wasn’t awful, but the residual flooding closed the school for three weeks and kept the team off the field for nearly a month. That was bad enough, but some players lost their homes. Center Lucas McDowell was one of those. He and his family were helpless to do much more than sit and watch the water creep up Highway 9 and eventually flood their home with more than three feet of water. Kiefer kept tabs on his players to make sure they were OK, but the players also checked up on each other. “I was worried about those boys,” Edwards said. The team communicated regularly on social media and the primary topic of conversation was not the stark reality they were dealing it, it was a return to the field, which would be as close to a return to normalcy as possible under the circumstances. They missed the camaraderie and family vibe and were itching to get back on the field. They finally did get back and had to take the field against Timmonsville on four days of practice. Their conditioning had regressed, they were sore, but they gutted out a close win. Kiefer said to succeed in spite of all they had faced and dealt with showed the toughness present up-and-down the roster.They lost the next week, but Sorrell said after that, the team got its legs back under it and hasn’t lost since. They began their current seven-game winning streak with a thrilled against Hemingway. Down 21-14, the Trojans scored a touchdown with three seconds left, immediately lined up and went for two. They got it, they won the game and that seems to have provided a springboard. Their lowest point total since then was the 44 they hung on defending lowerstate champ Baptist Hill. They’ve scored more than 60 points four times. Lamar has also had to deal with adversity during the year. They missed two weeks of school and were off the field for three weeks because of the hurricane. When they returned, the opponent was Gray Collegiate. Silver Foxes quarterback Cam Galloway suffered a season-ending injury early in the first quarter and the overall rust from the layoff may have shown against a team that missed little or no time. Lamar lost to Gray, marking the team’s first regular-season loss in three years. “We weren’t where we needed to be then,” said Lamar Coach Corey Fountain. “We couldn’t practice for almost two weeks. The practices needed to be tougher. That threw us for a loop.” Losing Galloway meant some changes had to be made to the offensive attack. J.J. Langley stepped in, but did not possess the running skills of Galloway. That meant throwing the ball a bit more. Langley proved a good caretaker and showed he could bounce back from adversity. Against Dixie last week in the upperstate championship game, he threw a pick six early on and had another pass intercepted and returned to the one to set up another score. Lamar trailed 14-0 at halftime, but he made a couple of big plays throwing the ball in the second half to rally his team to an 18-14 win. The defense, of course, did it’s part, holding a powerful Dixie offense to less than 90 yards of total offense. “J.J. had a rough start, but you got to stay resilient and battle your tail off,” Fountain said. The two teams that will take the field at Benedict today look a lot alike. Both are physically tough teams that want to run the ball and impose their will on opposition. “We have the mentality that nobody’s going to beat us,” said Lamar lineman Shane Amerson. That’s a well-founded feeling for a team looking to win its third title in four years. Green Sea-Floyds isn’t to that level yet but they’ve taken a big step in that direction with the promise of more to come. Kiefer said he needed to look no further than across the table Monday to see where he wants his team to go. “It’s very difficult to get to state, let alone four years in-a-row. It’s a program, not just an occasional good team. It’s where we want to take our program to,” Kiefer said. Today, he has his chance. Lamar- 18
Dixie- 14 Green Sea-Floyds- 47 Hemingway- 7 Breakdown- After 16 weeks and hundreds of games, 28 teams have taken their Kool-Aid and bologna sandwiches to the kiddie table, leaving a pair of grown folks to sit inside to eat steak and raid the liquor cabinet...or something like that. That Lamar is playing for a title is obviously not surprising, since that's kinda their thing. What is surprising is the degree to which they struggled against Dixie in the upper state championship game. That is no knock on Dixie who has come miles and miles as a program, had a great group of seniors, is well coached and is tougher than Dollar Store steaks (that's not one of those crazy "Travis made that up" deals either. I saw steaks for sale for $1 each a few years ago in a Dollar Store. I'm pretty handy with a grill but I don't believe I could do much with those. Nor could Bobby Flay. What part of a cow do $1 staeaks come from? That's gotta be hoof meat or his jublees. And did the cow have like scurvy or rubella or something? But I digress). They deserved to be where they were. They did not play a dialed back schedule as they had the previous two years as they slowly built and progressed. They gave dang good AA Landrum and 96 teams real battles, they beat Christ Church, they curb stomped the rest of their region etc. but what happened last Friday seemed to have a lot more to do wiith Lamar not playing very well than Dixie hanging tough with them. They had a very un-Lamar like six turnovers, including five in the first half. Dixie ran one pick back for a score and ran another back to the Lamar one to set up another score to give them that 14-0 lead they enjoyed at half. One that made me suspect that Twitter was drunk or that the entire football world was executing a colossal prank of some kind on me. I actually tried to think of a time recently that Lamar beat themselves (or put themselves in a position where they could possibly lose a game) and drew a big, fat blank. It doesn't happen. Discipline and robotic efficiency are their hallmarks. Even coughing it up as often as they did, though, they rallied for a win, largely because their defense didn't take to sucking all of a sudden. Dixie, who is big and experienced up front and has a terrific one-two backfield punch couldn't squeeze out one, tiny drop, They had less than 90 total yards of offense. Good as they were all year, their offensive style was just a terrible matchup with Lamar. You can have success against them through the air if you can hold up in pass protection, you may have limited success with misdirection, option, multiple looks and other sleight of hand, but if you try to line up and run it between the tackles on them, they'll point and laugh at you. Or hit you really hard, one or the other. I understand that Jacquez Lucas didn't play in this game which obviously makes a big difference. Still, they found a way to advance and will have a chance to defend their title. The lowerstate championship game was not nearly as close or compelling. Truth be told, Green Sea-Floyds doled out a gooo-oood rootin'. That they did demonstrates how well they are playing and the degree to which they have improved as the season has worn on. When tbey played Hemingway earlier in the year, they scored with three seconds left, went for two, got it and won 22-21. I picked Green Sea to win but was expecting something similar to that result. Instead, according to a coach I talked to, the Trojans ate Hemingway alive wth jet sweeps and some double wing looks. Coach Kiefer apparently shows a lot of different looks, often based on the opponent. Defensively, they just kinda kicked Hemingway in the face. Even with their top end talent (a series of scary athletes all of whom are named Darius) Hemingway didn't get to 100 yards of offense. And as mentioned, their defense left the field bow legged and with with marks. All-in-all they had a good, if inconsistent year. Despite losing 16 starters and their coach from last year, they overcame a slow start and were one of the last four teams standing. They just ran into a dadgum buzzsaw. And given how bad Green Sea has been for so long and what they've dealt with this year in terms of hurricanes and flooding and whatnot, it's hard not to root for them. They are lowerstate champions for the first time in school history. Good on them. We'll see if they can take it one step farther today. I'll have a preview and my pick Friday morning. First of all, my apologies for not posting a review of last week as normal. My wife got sick, very considerately passed that nasty bug onto me and let me tell you, I am SUPER PRODUCTIVE AND MOTIVATED TO DO EXTRA when I have snot coming out of my face. I’m better now, though, and ready to jump into my upper and lowerstate picks…
Lamar (10-1) at Dixie (10-2) Once we had a representative sample of games to go by and a bracket showing us which region was matched up with which, this pretty much felt like the matchup we were going to get. That Lamar is here is not a shock, obviously. We’re almost to the point that you can call the upperstate championship game the Silver Foxes Invitational. Since Corey Fountain took over the program in 2014, they’ve gotten here every year. Last week, they ended the season of the boys from Chitlin Junction with a 37-17 win that actually wasn’t as close as it sounds like. The Stump Whooped All-Stars scored the game’s final points with less than two minutes on the clock. My super secret, embedded Lamar informant told me that it looked like Wagener-Salley was working against its tendencies a bit, going to the air more than have in most any game this year. There are plusses and minuses to not dancing with the girl that brung ya. I mean, how big is her daddy and does he have anger issues? Plus, who are you dancing with instead? What was I talking about now? Oh, honestly, Chitlinville had a great season, they won a region title but I don’t think what plays they called were going to make a difference. Unless Lamar absolutely messed themselves, they were going to win because they are just a better team. They aren’t throwing it quite as much since QB Cam Galloway went down, but when you are as good up front as they are and have two jumbo boxes of “holy crap” in the backfield like Jacquez Lucas and Malik Johnson, whatever you can get through the air is just gravy anyway. Dixie absolutely belongs here. They have held seven opponents to eight or fewer points, they have some signature wins (Christ Church and Ridge Spring-Monetta) and they operate with efficiency on offense. Last week, they came up with a 26-6 win over McBee. (As a quick aside, let me congratulate McBee Coach Johnny Kline on an amazing late-season run in his first year as a head coach. When they were 0-6 and getting railed every week, I thought it was a rebuilding year chalked up to lots of talent having graduated, a new coach and a new offensive philosophy. They got better as the year went on, his kids kept playing hard and good things happened. To end up in the third round of the playoffs is a mark of a great season in my book. Let’s please not forget the job he did or that Scotty Steen did at Great Falls this year. Both deserve kudos for the improvement they helped deliver). But I digress…Dixie is senior laden, especially up front on offense and they keep it simple. By “keep it simple” I mean “stomp on your face with a 230-pound man/tank named De’Iveon Donald.” He delivered most of the offense against McBee, though fellow back Chandler Smalley provided a nice compliment as well. They are physical, no frills, don’t throw it much and don’t beat themselves. Defensively, they aren’t huge, but they are tough as crap, quick and obviously very good. They are a lot like Lamar actually…but that isn’t really a good thing. Just as I said last week about Chitlinvania, it is really hard to out-Lamar, Lamar. To me, if you can’t spread the Silver Foxes out at least a little bit, don’t threaten to throw the ball or don’t throw a lot of misdirection at them, it’s going to be really hard to get much going offensively. Part of the reason they are so good is that they are just flat-out more physical than most people they play. They bring an intimidating presence to the field that you can almost feel. This will be one of those games that will be like two guys standing a few feet apart and headbutting each other in the face until someone passes out or wets their pants. Dixie has had one of their best seasons in history, they have a lot to be proud of, but until I see somebody line up and physically beat Lamar, I just can’t predict that it will happen. The Pick- Lamar Hemingway (7-5) at Green Sea-Floyds (8-3) Look, I’m not one to toot my horn…let’s just say that someone who produces a Class A football and meat blog and uses analogies about people headbutting one another until they mess themselves said before the season started that GS-F was a strong dark horse contender to come out of the lowcountry. Now here they sit, playing for the lowerstate championship for the first time in school history. No one should look at what Coach Kiefer and his team have accomplished and think it is flukey or a flash in the pan. Along the way, they beat Loris for the first time in 34 years, they beat a game Timmonsville team, they knocked off Hemingway and they have absolutely cranksmacked their last four opponents (by a combined score of 239-50). They did all that despite having to halt their season and lives for a month in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. That in itself should tell you what kind of team they are. I went down to Green Sea Wednesday to do a story (which you should totally read) and what I found was a great group of guys who have completely bought into Coach Kiefer’s system. He told them when they arrived that they shouldn’t settle for 6-6 seasons, that they should expect more. They’ve poured themselves into his offseason strength and speed program and every player I talked to relishes the physical style they play. I was also impressed by their overall attitude. They are proud to have gone somewhere the program has never gone before, but they also want to lay a foundation for the future. In the years to come, they want GS-F to be thought of alongside Lamar, Lake View, Hemingway and other Class A powerhouses. I love that. Last week, to be blunt, they kicked defending lowerstate champ Baptist Hill around. From the little bit I saw of them practicing, they will take a deep shot here and there, but they’re pretty much in a bone/wing offense and run a little option out of it. Not gigantic up front, but good and they have the athletes to make it go. Here’s a hint, teams comprised of laughably unathletic people like me don’t average 60 a game. Jaquan Dixon, Anwain Graham and others provide them with lots of firepower. This week, they get a rematch against Hemingway. When these two met on October 19, GS-F trailed 21-14 late. They scored with three seconds left and immediately went for two. They got it, and pulled out a 22-21 victory. So, they are evenly matched and both teams have improved since then. Hemingway couldn’t have started out much worse, going 1-3 and just toting a couple of rootins. But you have to look at who those came to (Lamar and Carvers Bay), the fact that they have a new head coach and lost 16 starters from last year. They’ve found their way since then, going 6-2 down the stretch. The two losses came to GS-F and Lake View, who they got a successful rematch with last week. They have as much front line, top-drawer talent as anybody. Darius Williams regularly maims opposing school children. He’s listed at 6’3 and about 220 but he looks much bigger on film. Against Lake View, he lined up at DE and OLB and often either dispatched would-be blockers like annoying insects or was just running to space…perhaps because no one wanted to try to block him. He was a terror in Lake View’s backfield. Offensively, they list him as a tight end and he does look good running routes, catching the ball and stepping on people, but he’s such an athlete that they sometimes use him almost like a wingback. They bring him in motion and run jet sweeps with him. Have fun tackling that. They also have Darius Taylor, who mainly plays QB but gets sprinkled around to other skill spots too. He is just electric in the open field. This should be another great game, one that could certainly go either way…but boy, the Trojans are red hot on offense and their defense shut down that prolific Baptist Hill attack last week, so… The Pick- Green Sea-Floyds McBee (4-8) at Dixie (9-2)
This seems like a good time to acknowledge the job that Johnny Kline has done at McBee. The Panthers have lost a ton of athletes the past two years, guys who brought them an unprecedented level of success on the gridiron and beyond. Aside from Lamar, they’ve played the roughest schedule in Class A and they certainly took their lumps as a result, plus Kline brought a radically different offense to town, installing a spread in a place that a few years ago attempted something like 12 passes in a season. Despite all that, here they sit in late November, still playing football. They went on the road last week, they bent but never broke and pulled the biggest upset of the playoffs so far with a win over Blackville-Hilda. I thought their offense might give the Hawks some trouble early, but I assumed they’d get worn out by the punishing running game of Blackville-Hilda and overwhelmed by the big, fast, scary monsters that comprise the Hawks defense. I think I said something ridiculous like Blackville-Hilda would grind them into a fine powder and use those remains to make hoe cakes or something. Well, I was wrong. Part of that was them making stops when it mattered most, part of it (to a lesser extent) was because of Blackville-Hilda miscues and then, given the totality of things, I think that maybe Region III wasn’t quite as strong top-to-bottom as I thought. This week they go to a Dixie team having one of the best seasons in program history. They are similar to Blackville-Hilda in that they are big up front, they just pound you with a variety of RBs that look like rocket-powered tanks and they are physical as crap on defense. The difference is that this group is more experienced, they’ve shown no indication that they beat themselves with missed opportunities and they are a lot more battle-tested. They beat Christ Church, they won at Whitmire, they absolutely clamped down on Ridge Spring-Monetta and their two losses were competitive games against dang good AA teams in Ninety-Six and Landrum. It might be close for a while, the Panthers have weapons in Jaheim and Tyrece Wright and McBee has already proven me wrong once in these playoffs, but I say De’Iveon Donald has a big game on the ground and the Hornets play for the upperstate title next week. The Pick- Dixie Wagener-Salley (10-1) at Lamar (9-1) It’s a shame this is a third round playoff game. You’ve got number two visiting number one in what figures to be one of those games that I call a tater-kicking contest. Seriously, each side will equip itself with sturdy footwear, they’ll stand a few feet apart and just kick each other where it hurts until someone doubles over and taps out. Unless somebody breaks a screen pass loose for a big gain, I doubt there will be 100 yards passing between the two. What you’ll get is some old-school, phone booth football where the two will just try to pound the rock and wear each other out. Since losing to Fox Creek early in the season, the boys from Chitlin Junction have only been tested once, that coming in a 14-point win over Ridge Spring-Monetta. This is an experienced team, they have size up front and man alive do they have some athletes. Go watch the highlights on Qunetiz Barnes and tell me how much fun it looks like to try to tackle him. Almost as much fun as it is trying to catch/tackle/compete-in-football with Jacquez Lucas and Malik Johnson from Lamar. The Silver Foxes have made a few tweaks offensively since QB Cam Galloway went down. They spread a little, but they often go with two or three back looks…so basically, they find lots of creative ways to have Lucas and Johnson trample your souls. To the extent anybody has any success of any kind against the impenetrable wall of flames and granite and bazookas that is the Lamar defense, it is through the air. I just don’t know that you can line up and out-physical the Silver Foxes. I may be wrong, but I’ll have to see that to believe it can happen. Expect a physical war and a great game, but also expect to see the Silver Foxes playing for the upperstate title next week. The Pick- Lamar Green Sea Floyds (8-3) at Baptist Hill (7-2) This has the makings of a thrilling shootout, or a one-side tail-whipping, or something in-between. It’s hard to say. Both of these teams come in on real hot streaks. Green Sea-Floyds has won six of their last seven and in the last three weeks have beaten a good C.E. Murray team 64-26, a resurgent McBee squad 68-0 and Creek Bridge 63-8. Baptist Hill, as you know by now, started 0-2 but made the bold move of taking one of the state’s best WRs in Rashad Maxwell and putting him at QB. They haven’t lost since. The first five weeks of that experiment (admittedly not against the toughest schedule) saw them score between 58 and 78 points in every game. They’ve ONLY (a very relative term) scored 28 in each of their last two. What gets overlooked as they heap up tons of pinball-like offensive stats is how good their defense is. They only gave up 17 to the The OC Semi Pros in their opener and have allowed six or less five times. They did give up 27 to St. John’s in a 28-27 win, but the Islanders had one big-play touchdown and another non-offensive score. They aren’t throwing the ball near as much as last year or as early in the season, but if you can run for 400-ish yards like they did last week, I say go ahead and do that. Green Sea isn’t much interested in throwing the ball at all. They’ll just pound you with Jaquan Dixon, Anwain Graham and QB Bubba Elliot, who I’m certain must race on dirt tracks on the weekend. They are good on defense too, but it should be noted that their last lost came by a 37-22 score to a team with an athletic QB that spreads the field (Lake View). Of course, that was two weeks after Green Sea had spent a month not playing football because of a hurricane. They’ve definitely played a tougher schedule than Baptist Hill. I’m torn and honestly think this could go either way and be close or not be close in any direction. Baptist Hill’s quick-strike ability, Maxwell’s overall excellence and that underrated defense tell me they aren’t gonna lose this…but sometimes, wisely or not, you tell your head to get bent and get crazy and impetuous and go with your gut and a red hot team to pull an upset… The Pick- Green Sea-Floyds Hemingway (6-5) at Lake View (7-3) These two teams faced off on October 25 and Lake View ran away with that one 39-21. Of course, stuff that happened a month ago means NOT NAM at this point. Lake View, since a respectable but losing effort to Lamar has won five straight. They hammered McBee, they beat Green Sea-Floyds, blew out Creek Bridge, then took big wins over Hemingway and St. John’s. So, three teams that are still playing and another very good squad. Hemingway is the pudding of confusion, in the bowl of unanswered questions, topped with the Cool Whip of consternation at the end of the buffet line at the Who Are You Country Diner. They were 1-3 and getting slaughtered against a tough schedule early, then they seemed to find their way and notched a few quality wins, then they lost two straight, now they’ve won two straight and are still standing on Nov. 23. They have as much top-drawer talent as anybody with scary bear on roller skates Darius Williams, Darius Taylor et al. But they’re young at a lot of spots and that has shown at times. They certainly CAN win this. But Lake View has excellent athletes of their own (Adarrian Dawkins being high on that list) they’ve been better on defense, they have more signature wins and if you look at their three losses you see a close one to Hannah-Pamplico (a very good AA team), Lamar and Dillon. So, two teams that regular football teams comprised of human school children never beat. The Wild Gators play for the lowerstate title next week. The Pick- Lake View. Dixie- 27
Ridge Spring-Monetta- 13 McBee- 18 Blackville-Hilda- 14 Lamar- 48 Williston-Elko- 22 Wagener-Salley- 42 Whitmire- 7 Baptist Hill- 28 Branchville- 6 Green Sea-Floyds- 64 C.E. Murray- 26 Hemingway- 28 Bethune-Bowman- 6 Lake View- 46 St. John’s- 15 Breakdown- There were a few upsets by the seeds, but there was only one “holy crap who beat who with the which now” result in the second round of the Class A playoffs, that being McBee’s victory over Blackville-Hilda. I mentioned in my picks last week that I felt like the Panthers could give the Hawks a little bit of trouble. My reasoning was that Blackville-Hilda almost never sees anyone who spreads or stretches the field, so McBee’s new passing attack could prove a bit problematic. I in no way predicted a McBee win, though. I think I said it might be close for a bit but then Blackville-Hilda would grind McBee up into a powder and use their vanquished particulates to thicken their stew, or something. I just thought they were too big, too physical and too good on defense to lose this one. From what I read, McBee did get a couple of big plays if not consistency and did struggle to stop Blackville-Hilda’s power running game. However, the Hawks scored only once on six trips into McBee territory, they dropped a lot of passes and they dropped a couple of potential picks. So, they made some mistakes, but give McBee major credit for going on the road and getting key stops when they needed them. You can say “well Blackville got all drop-y” but that also acknowledges that Blackville was put in a position where they had to throw the ball, which isn’t something that has happened much this year. Once you get this deep in the playoffs, things start to reveal themselves a little bit. Take nothing away from the Hawks and new coach Corey Crosby. You get a program eight wins for the first time in a while and make it to the second round of the playoffs, you’ve had a great season. However, when you look at how poorly Region III has done in the playoffs, you kind of start to wonder if it was actually as good as you thought it was. It’s a really big region, so no teams get many out-of-region contests. When they do they are either playing Larry’s Living Room Rangers or, Barnwell. Teams they are either easily going to beat or ones that will have them toting an ass-whipping for a good gate. They don’t have many games against other quality Class A programs, so it’s difficult to judge just how good they really are. When they were 0-6 and just getting railed every week, the idea that McBee would make a trip to the third round of the playoffs would have seemed like the product glue sniffin’. But they’re 4-2 since then and sure enough are going to Dixie this week for Round three… Speaking of Dixie, the three-week layoff didn’t seem to hurt them as they ran past Ridge Spring-Monetta 27-13. Now, I actually picked RS-M, but did so with the caveat that I didn’t know that they’d actually win. They normally play their best this time of year, Dixie had not played in a while and what fun is it to always pick the favorite. Well, being right is fun, so that pick was sort of the onion on a big ‘ol DERP burger. Deiveon Donald (this week’s winner of CRANKSMACK OF THE WEEK…my stupidly-named player of the week award) ran for 205 yards and a touchdown for the Hornets. They did what they’ve done all year, which is to say run right up the bucket of the opposition with big, strong backs behind a big, experienced line and played great defense. Collier Sullivan ran for 139 yards for the Trojans, but the team barely cracked 160 yards of total offense, more than 70 of which came on one scoring play. I’m not sure what happened with RS-M this year. They had a ton of talent back from last year’s upperstate finalist team. They didn’t have a bad year by any stretch, but I just kinda of kept waiting on them to switch it into high gear like they always do at the end of the year and that never really happened. Dixie gets those resurgent Panthers this Friday… Every other game went like I expected they would. Lamar’s win over Williston-Elko wasn’t nearly as close as the final score makes it seem, since Lamar led 41-0 early in the third. My double-secret Lamar informant said Malik Johnson and Jacquez Lucas established the run early and Williston struggled, in the first half particularly, in trying to force the ball to KeShawn Toney. He also said Williston’s ranks looked a little thin, odd since they started the year with over 50 guys. Lamar was just too physical on both sides for the young Devils. They will face Wagener-Salley this week. The boys from Chitlinvania didn’t allow Whitmire’s offense to do much of anything in a 42-7 win. When the last S.C. Prep Media Poll was conducted, Lamar was number one and Wagener-Salley was number two, so this is a crazy matchup for a third-rounder. I’ll preview that one and all the other games on Friday…No surprises in the lowerstate. I did kinda, sorta raise an eyebrow when I saw how close Branchville was able to keep it with Baptist Hill, but the Yellow Jackets kept a lot of games close this year and were pretty senior-heavy. It may just a radar blip caused by a really fat bird breaking wind or something, but they’ve scored 28 points in each of their last two games after going for 58 or more in five straight. The defending lowerstate champs get a huge test this week from a red hot Green Sea-Floyds team. That they’ve gone over 60 twice in their last two shows you how well they’re playing, since they pretty much just line up and run it right at you. They were able to do that against C.E. Murray last Friday. Their game with Baptist Hill will be a war. On the losing end of that game, though is C.E. Murray. After three straight deep playoff runs, the War Eagles are done, but you have to understand what you’re looking at. C.E. Murray graduated a ton of talent, had two big-time starters transfer yet still found a way to finish with a winning record and win lots of close games. That is usually attributable to a couple of things, things like culture and coaching, both of which they have…The Mr. T Haircuts had one of their best seasons in the last 20 years, but just ran into a team that has more top-end talent. Hemingway has been up and down but seem to have mostly found their way at this point, which is good for them since they get a really, really good Lake View team this week. They took out a young St. John’s team. Let me say this about the Islanders and remember that the weird meat and football blog guy said this…they will be one of the team’s to beat next year. They started a lot of talented young guys this year. They’ve now got a year of experience under their belt, they have a good coaching staff leading the way…they are going to be hard to handle in 2019. Suggested Reading CRANKSMACK!!!! McBee ain’t no living room rangers, Broham. Holding Baptist Hill to 88 yards passing seems like quite an accomplishment…until you read the part about how they ran for 400 yards. Oh well. Ridge Spring-Monetta (6-4) at Dixie (8-2)
Almost everything tells me this should be a Dixie win, including the voices in my head, both of my imaginary friends and my talking dog. Dixie has an efficient, power run game on offense, with bull-ish backs like De’iveon Donald operating behind an experienced offensive line. Scrappy as all get out on defense, where they’ve limited some explosive offenses to NOT NAM this year (11 point-per-game allowed). Ridge Spring-Monetta has been up-and-down despite having most of last year’s upperstate finalist team back. Despite everything I just told you, I think it makes a real difference that Dixie hasn’t played in three weeks while the Trojans got to work up a good lather last week in a come-from-behind victory over Timmonsville. They also seem to play their best this time of year and have played a rugged schedule this year. Plus, what fun is it to publish a meat and football blog and never pick an upset? The pick- Ridge Spring-Monetta. McBee (3-8) at Blackville-Hilda (8-2) The Panthers got a blowout win over Estill last week, but this is some kinda step up in competition. I think McBee might prove surprisingly tough early in this game. The Hawks haven’t seen many teams that spread it and get athletes like Jaheim and Tyrece Wright the ball in space the way McBee can. I just think that nasty offensive front, the blunt force trauma offense (with a little bit of a throwing threat courtesy of Adonis Davis) and one of the most intimidating and physical defenses in Class A will prove too much to overcome. The final score might not be close. The pick- Blackville-Hilda Williston-Elko (6-5) at Lamar (8-1) The Blue Devils are one of the few teams equipped to challenge Lamar in the air with frightening TE/WR/Football Cyborg KeShawn Toney. Remember, Lamar’s one loss came to a Gray team that throws the ball a lot. However, Lamar was coming off a long layoff and lost its quarterback for the year early in that contest. Their defense has essentially made every other team on their schedule question their decision to play in competitive athletics. W-E has struggled on defense all year, against the run in particular, which doesn’t seem like a recipe for success against Malik Johnson and Jacquez Lucas. And save for one hiccup, Lamar’s defense has been a big scary wall of fire with razor wire at the top so… The Pick- Lamar Whitmire (7-3) at Wagener-Salley (9-1) Congrats to Whitmire on its win over Estill last week, the program’s first playoff win in 11 years. Coach Charlie Jenkins (no relation) has done a fantastic job in the Pearl of the Piedmont building a consistent winner where there was a four-plus year losing streak just a few seasons ago. Their scrum offense is tough to stop, they have a stable of backs who can tote the tater and they throw it juuuuust well enough to make it dangerous to sell out and stop the run. His teams are well-coached, they always play hard and you’ll always know you’ve been in a game when you play them. Generally, when they lose it’s because they’ve run into someone who is just better than they are. That will be the case tonight. Chitlintown is huge up front, they have experience all over the field, they will just bludgeon you into submission with their big, fast backs and squeezing out a drop against their defense is all but impossible if you can’t spread them out and throw it around a little bit. The Pick- Wagener-Salley Branchville (6-3) at Baptist Hill (6-2) Branchville is a program that is taking nice baby steps forward. They are senior heavy, they won a playoff game, they’re assured of a winning record…all stuff to be proud of. If I were them, I would focus on those positive developments instead of the unholy rootin’ they are going to be on the business end of by one of the state’s most explosive offenses. The Pick- Baptist Hill by a lot Green Sea-Floyds (6-3) at C.E. Murray (5-4) I like C.E. Murray a lot. I think Coach Wilkes and his staff do a fantastic job. Imagine coming in after the best two-year run in program history and keeping things humming. They’ve done so with a completely different offensive philosophy than their predecessor, spreading it out and chunking it all over the yard. They played for a lowerstate title last year, lost a big group of seniors that included one of the best players in the state regardless of classification (Darius Rush), then had their starting quarterback and another upper-tier level athlete transfer. They plugged Antonio McKnight in at quarterback and have continued to win. They’ve lost four games, but look who those four were (people like Mullins and The OC Semi-pros). They’ve managed to win close this year. I think they are running into a team, though, that is senior-heavy, rugged and playing its best football of the year right now. Green Sea was my dark horse pick to make a run this year. I think this one is close and probably low scoring (note, if C.E. Murray’s passing game clicks, then what I just wrote is wrong and dumb and wrong and they’ll win this going away), but the Trojans eek one out behind that ball-control offense. The Pick- Green Sea-Floyds. Hemingway (5-5) at Bethune-Bowman (7-3) Seriously, I’ve got no clue. The Mr. T Haircuts have a steady senior leader under center in Braxton Wedgeworth III, esq, who throws it well and is a heck of an athlete. They also have a plowhorse-style RB in Jesus Benjamin. Hemingway couldn’t have looked worse early, but they played well down the stretch, they have top-level athletes in greater supply (all of them are named Darius, oddly) and maybe that will be enough. Or maybe it won’t. The Pick- Hemingway, I reckon. St. John’s (6-4) at Lake View (6-3) The Islanders have a multi-faceted offense that might throw for 250 and run for 150 one week, then run for 300 and throw for 37 the next. Tyrus Richardson is better at football than you (he ran for 200 plus last week), they’ve been good on defense for the most part and have the best special teams in Class A. They are young but talented and Coach Josh Harpe has the makings of a contender next year. Lake View has an athletic QB in Adarrian Dawkins and when playing actual football teams instead of frightening pod people Dillon and Lamar, they generally win. This is the game of the night, I think, and again I’m stumped. I’ll go with the home crowd and a little bit more experience making the difference but I won’t be surprised if I’m wrong. The Pick- Lake View |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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