The Crestview girls basketball team returns to the playoffs for the first time since 2004 on Thursday when the Bulldogs travel to Pensacola to take on Pine Forest in the Class 5A region quarterfinals.

I know Bulldog coach Donald Campbell and his team won’t back down from the Eagles and have every intention on winning.

But win or lose this has been a successful Crestview campaign.

Campbell is the third coach the team has had in as many years and down the Dawgs played some of there best ball at the end of the season.

I believe if the fans are patient and give Campbell time to develop the program that Crestview can eventually challenge Fort Walton Beach on a regular basis. However, like I said, the key is patience.

The Vikings have been the epitome of a stable coaching situation for the last 30 years. Kevin Craig coached the team from 1981 to 2003. Craig was replaced by current Viking coach Holly McDaniel.

McDaniel played for Craig and started on the 1994 state championship team.

Granted, two coaches in 30 years is rare, but If all goes well Campbell could coach the Bulldogs for 10 years or longer and give the team some much-needed stability while at the same time rebuilding some tradition in the program.

On upset win over Pine Forest on Thursday will be the right step in that direction.

As I strolled over to Matt Brunson in the Crestview gym Tuesday night i had no idea the news he was about to give me would cause me to lose many hours of sleep the next two nights.

Matt had just seen the news on his I Phone that Lane Kiffin, the University of Tennessee football coach, had accepted the head coaching job at Southern California. As a Tennessee grad I’ve followed the story to the point of obsession the last two days.

First, I’ve watched in disgust at the way Kiffin and key members of his staff made a hasty exit from Knoxville. I was especially upset that one coach, Ed Orgeron, was contacting January enrollee freshmen players on the UT campus telling them not to go to class so they could sign with the Trojans.

In the last 24 hours my attention has turned to the search for the next Tennessee football coach.
Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton vowed to have the coach in place by this weekend.

As the search process has quickly unfolded a name that should be of interest to local members of the Air Force has risen to the top of the prospect list. Air Force Academy head coach Troy Calhoun now seems to be on the short list for the job.

Calhoun is more than an AFA coach, he’s also an AFA graduate who understands the price our military academy athletes must pay to compete while preparing for their active duty careers.

I don’t know if Calhoun ever served at a local base, but I would guess there are local officers that attended school with him.

If you look at things the whole cycle started with Peter Carroll taking the Seattle Seahawks job in the NFL. From Carroll to Kiffin and now possibly Calhoun the cycle keeps growing larger.

It all seems to be a part of that larger football frenzy.

If you haven’t taken time to see the Crestview boys basketball team in action this year, Tuesday might be a good time to check out the Bulldogs as they host Fort Walton Beach in a key District 2-4A game.

Crestview enters the game with the Vikings with a 9-4 overall record and is 2-2 in district play under the direction of first-year coach Keith White.

White has the team playing a style of pressure defense that is best reminiscent of the old Nolan Richardson teams at the University of Arkansas.

The Bulldogs defense predicates the tempo, which is one of run, run and run some more.

Tuesday’s game with Fort Walton Beach and a home game with Niceville a week from Friday are Crestview’s last two district games before tournament time next month. A win in one or both of the games would set the Dawgs up for a nice seeding in the tournament.

So come on out and see the Bulldogs. If you like good basketball, you’ll love how the team is playing.

Another college football season ended Thursday night. And as was the case the previous three years a team from the Southeastern Conference claimed the national title.

Alabama beat Texas 37-21 to claim its first national crown since 1992. In the 17 years between Crimson Tide titles Florida won three championships, Louisiana State two titles and Tennessee one championship.

Alabama should be the No. 1 team in the 2010 preseason polls, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Crimson Tide or some other SEC team claimed a fifth consecutive championship for college football’s best conference.

I finally got around to seeing the movie, “The Blind Side” Sunday afternoon, and I wasn’t disappointed.

For those of you who might not know, the movie tells the story of Baltimore Raven offensive tackle Michael Oher and his relationship with the Tuohy family in Memphis, Tenn.

Oher was an underachieving big kid from the wrong side of the tracks that had an addict for a mother and was, for all practical purpose homeless. It wasn’t that Oher couldn’t learn, but rather that he was a victim of his environment.

Because of his size, and athletic potential, Oher was given a scholarship to Briarcrest Christian School. Through Briarcrest he met the Tuohy family. Sean Tuohy was a star point guard on the Ole Miss basketball team and his wife, Leigh Anne, was a former Rebel cheerleader.

Sean and Leigh Anne along with their two children became the family Oher never had and, in the process, changed his life.

You’ll have to see the movie to find out the rest of the story.

I actually met and did a story on Oher in Dec. of 2004 when he was in Fort Walton Beach with the Briarcrest basketball team for the Southern Resorts Beach Blowout.

At the time of the tournament Oher was one of the most highly sought after football players in the nation. In the few minutes I spent with Oher I found him to be well-spoken, polite and gracious. I was just another reporter asking him the same questions he had been asked so many times before, but he still took time to answer each one.

I never saw Oher play high school football, but watching him run the basketball court and catch the ball with soft hands it was obvious the big kid from Memphis was a special athlete.

He ended up being named the Most Valuable Player of the Tournament that year.

But as Oher would tell you his MVPs are the members of the Tuohy family that took him in and changed his life.

Sometime in the next 24 hours or so college football fans will know the future of Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden.

The 80-year old coach has been a fixture in Tallahassee since his arrival prior to the 1976 season building one of college football’s greatest dynasties. Along the way Bowden led FSU to 14 straight finishes in the Top 5, and a pair of national championships. He’s the second winningest coach in major college football history, and the winningest coach in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

But in recent years the mighty Seminoles have played like wooden Indians rather than fierce warriors. Yes, FSU has kept its bowl string in tact, but 7-5 and 6-6 seasons don’t sit well in Tallahassee where Bowden made 10-win seasons the norm rather than the exception.

My older sister and her husband have degrees from FSU, and their daughter is currently a Florida State student. If not for my love of Tennessee I too would have attended FSU and I pull for the Seminoles except when the play the Volunteers.

I understands the passion of Florida State fans because it’s no different than the passion of Tennessee fans.

Last year Tennessee decided to fire longtime coach Phillip Fulmer who led the Vols to the 1998 national championship. But Florida State and Tennessee are different situations.

The Seminoles haven’t had a losing season since Bowden’s first year in 1975. The Vols had two losing seasons in Fulmer’s last four years. Fulmer, a UT grad, had been head coach at Tennessee about half the time Bowden’s been at FSU.

Bowden said today that whether or not he stays one more year is his decision. I believe that’s the way it should be.

In a perfect world Bowden would stay for the 2010 season and the Seminoles would flex their muscle one last time for the coach that has meant so much to Florida State and college football.

It used to be known simply as, “The Third Saturday in October.” For more than a half century Alabama and Tennessee would square off on that third Saturday in one of college football’s greatest and most colorful rivalries.

Tennessee would be adorned in orange and Alabama in crimson. The teams, and their colors, providing football contrast as vivid as the changing autumn season. Generations of Southeastern Conference football fans watched the colorful games expecting the clash of colors.

That all changed about 40 years ago as televised college football games began to take center stage on Saturday afternoons in the fall. Most families still had old black and white TV sets back then, and it was determined, and rightfully so, that it was difficult for fans watching at home to tell teams apart when dark colors or light colors were all very similar.

That was then and the day of the old black and white sets are long gone replaced by digital and high definition color sets that take you inside the huddle, but the rule, for the most part has remained in tact.

There was a minor change to the rule this year that states if the home team and governing conference agree to it, the visiting team can wear their home colors.

Tennessee and Alabama still play in October, but sometimes it’s the second Saturday, or as is the case this year, the fourth Saturday. It’s still a special game and I still long for days of contrasting orange and crimson.

Tennessee asked the Southeastern Conference and Alabama if the Volunteers could wear the orange jerseys this Saturday in Tuscaloosa. The SEC agreed, but Alabama officials declined.

The color of jerseys won’t determine who wins the game, but it would have been fun to see the orange of Tennessee and crimson of Alabama ablaze in Bryant-Denny Stadium in compliment to the fall colors in the hills of north Alabama.

Las

The calendar says fall doesn’t arrive until Sept. 22. But for those of us who are part of the football community as a player, coach, fan, parent or sports writer, summer ends Sunday and fall arrives Monday with start of preseason football.

I really can’t believe it’s that time of year again. But three weeks from tonight I’ll be at Jack Foster Stadium watching Crestview host Gulf Breeze in the Kickoff Classic.

The life of a sports writer isn’t what anyone would consider normal, except maybe other sports writers. We work strange hours, often have poor eating habit and live for this time of year when we are reborn as another football season starts.

I’m a bachelor so the longer hours away from home won’t be that bad except maybe for my dog. I’ll spend afternoons watching football practices and mornings writing about them. And when I have a little extra time I’ll check out the other fall sports.

Baker opens practice Monday morning at 8 a.m. and Crestview gets started Monday at 5 p.m. I can’t wait, because it’s that time of year.

Don’t look now, but come Aug. 1 it will cost you a little something to drop a line in the water from the shore of a local bay, bayou or sound.

For many anglers in this part of the county the nine dollar fee for a shoreline license might not mean anything because you’d rather be hooking a big old bass than going after flounder or some sort of sea trout. More power to you if that’s the case.

The fee by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission is set as an alternative to a federal angler registration fee of $25 that was set to be implemented in the next several months that is supposed to help keep track on how many fish are being caught along the shore.

No matter how you slice it this fee just doesn’t sit well with me.

Maybe it’s because way back when I growing up in Gulf Breeze I loved fishing the waters of Pensacola Bay and Santa Rosa Sound. And I’ve renewed that pleasure since returning to Northwest Florida nine years ago. Even when I don’t catch anything, or something worth keeping, which is almost always, I enjoy relaxing on the pier at Liza Jackson Park in Fort Walton Beach as I watch the sun set and hope to catch a pin fish or croaker.

I really don’t see how my purchasing a fishing license is going to save the croaker population in Santa Rosa Sound.

On a more serious note, it seems as if the newest fee comes at the worst possible time. There will be exemptions from the fee for those receiving government assistant, which is all fine and good. But many people that are not on food stamps haven’t had a raise in a while, been forced to take a pay cut or furlough, or, even worse, lost their job. Whether these anglers fish for cheap fun or to help feed their family, the timing of this fee couldn’t be worse.

I do appreciate the FWC not charging more. Nine bucks is a lot better than the $25 the feds would charge. It just seems as if the license could have been cheaper or even free. I can’t imagine it would cost more than two or three dollars to process the license, and that would put the state in good standing with the feds.

Now I must decide if the cost is worth paying considering how little I fish. Maybe I’ll put a line in the water before the fee takes place and think about it.

I’m sure most of you reading this know by now that former Tennessee Titan quarterback Steve McNair was killed Saturday. What most of you probably don’t know is another football player with ties to Tennessee also lost his life Saturday as well.

Terry Moore, who played football at the University of Tennessee from 1973-1976, died after a tree he was cutting fell on him. Moore was one of the first freshmen to join the Volunteer varsity after the NCAA opened the door for freshmen to play varsity ball.

And while Terry Moore had a good career at Tennessee he was one of those guys that went pro in something other than sports. After graduation Moore entered the business world and the ministry seldom straying far from Knoxville or his hometown of Clinton in nearby Anderson County.

I became acquainted with Terry while attending church at Calvary Baptist in Knoxville. At the time Terry and his family were members there when he wasn’t serving as a bi-vocational pastor or preaching revivals somewhere.

Terry was married to his wife, Brenda, for more than 30 years and was a proud husband and father of four sons.

Steve McNair lived his adult life in the eye of the public making the big money associated with a National Football League quarterback. He was well-known and adored by thousands of fans for what he did on Sunday afternoons in the fall. And like Moore, McNair had a wife and adoring children.

When you think about it, Steve McNair the NFL quarterback and Terry Moore the preacher both worked on Sunday as they tried to lead others to victory.

I’ll let you decide whether it was Steve McNair or Terry Moore who leaves the greatest legacy.