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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Dean, a junior left fielder/designated hitter at Louisiana State, was the 312th pick in the draft. Heading into College World Series play on Saturday Dean is hitting .333 with 15 homers and 65 runs batted. Along the way he was named first team All-Southeastern Conference for the second consecutive year. He was a first team All-America selection in 2008 as well.

Dean will have a big decision to make in the next several weeks. Should he sign with the Twins or return for his senior season to try and improve his draft status in 2010? He has until mid or late August to make the decision.

Of course a lot can happen between now and August. If Dean continues to swing a hot bat in the CWS and turns in a strong summer league performance he could up his stock considerably and perhaps demand more than 10th round money.

This year he can negotiate with the leverage of his senior season as well. Next year that leverage will be gone, but if he puts up huge numbers his draft status should go up as well.

As a 10th round pick there is a good opportunity that Dean could have a very good career in the Major Leagues.

An interesting side note shows that since the draft was first held in 1965 there have been 24 players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Two of those players, Tom Seaver and Bruce Sutter were drafted but didn’t sign and later signed as a free agent before the next draft. Seaver was chosen in the 10th round and passed, and Sutter the 21st round and passed.

Of the 22 others only two others, Nolan Ryan (12th round) and Ryne Sandberg (20th) were selected later than Dean. Two others enshrined at Cooperstown were drafted between rounds six and 10. Wade Boggs was chosen in the seventh round and Goose Gossage the selected in the ninth round.

Those little morsels shouldn’t matter to Dean when making his decision on whether or not to sign with the Twins, but they might be something to think about.

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Most people know that Dean has done it all at the amateur baseball level. As a teen he played for Team USA as a member of the junior national squad. He was an all-state player for the Bulldogs, and has been tabbed All-Southeastern Conference and All-America while at LSU.

It surprised many people when Dean wasn’t drafted three years ago after his senior year at CHS. The surprise of 2006 will turn to shock in 2009 if Dean’s name isn’t called sometime between the time the draft starts today and ends Thursday. From what I’ve seen on draft boards and heard through the grapevine, Dean will go somewhere between the latter part of the second round to the middle of the fourth round.

All of that is speculation. It’s not until his name is called that a player can be sure he’ll be drafted at all.

Having covered the Northwest Florida State baseball program for the better part of seven years I’ve seen more than my share of kids I thought were “can’t miss,” end up not being taken. And then there are some, such as a former infielder at Chipola circa 2003, that I never gave a second thought about, who is now in his third or fourth season as a big league catcher. That player? Russell Martin of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It seems nobody can really figure out the draft. I’ve been told I’m a pretty good baseball man, but I’m often left scratching my head about why someone wasn’t drafted. I’m not the only one. It seems in talking with high school and junior college coaches that they are often as baffled by the draft drama as the average fan.

The thing is the baseball draft is as much about projecting the potential of players as it is what they have done so far in their amateur career.

Someone who is deemed a greater athlete might be considered to project better than a player that has put up big numbers at every level, but might be a couple of steps slower, or as having a weaker arm.

Hopefully, for Dean’s sake, the draft drama won’t last two long. Maybe he’ll go to bed tonight knowing his professional baseball future will start in the St. Louis organization or perhaps with the Cleveland Indians.

If Dean isn’t drafted today, surely he’ll be drafted early tomorrow, but with the draft one never knows. So left the drama unfold.

And Good Luck Blake!

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I couldn’t believe it as I sat in my favorite chair watching Florida State destroy Ohio State 37-6 in the NCAA Tallahassee Region championship game. The score was 32-0 at one time and there was nothing the Seminoles could do wrong as they teed off on one Buckeye pitcher after another in what seemed more like a slow-pitch softball game than a college baseball game.

Along the way the Seminoles set or tied 18 NCAA records. The 37 runs is the most ever scored in a tournament game. FSU set a record for hits in a game with, I believe, 38. The Seminoles set a record for total bases, doubles and the list goes on.

To put Florida State’s 37-run explosion in perspective, Tennessee’s football team never managed to score 37 points in a single game all year. Of course that’s why Phillip Fulmer is out and Lane Kiffin is now the guy on the hotseat at Rocky Top. But that’s another thought for another day.

For now it’s just hard to imagine any team having a better game than the Seminoles because nobody ever has. It was a game I won’t likely forget anytime soon.

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About this time of year the memories come flooding back…and they are most memories. I recall being a part of the first winning Dolphin football team and running at track meets where Baker’s Houston McTear took center stage.

But more than anything it is the friendships from high school that I treasure the most.

I learned a little song when I was a kid that said, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other gold.”

As so many have said before, the most surprising thing I’ve found is how quickly the years have passed. Thirty-three years, where have they have gone?

With the passing of the years I’ve come to realize that the Gulf Breeze school colors of Blue and Gold mean true blue friendships that become more pure gold as time marches on.

For any of my classmates that might see this post, “Happy Anniversary of Graduation Day.”

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Mrs. Smith reached the end of her lecture with a rhetorical question concerning why my older sister had never read a baseball book in her class. It would be a few years before I fully grasped the concept of a rhetorical question, and, I answered that my sister really didn’t like baseball. The class erupted in laughter as Mrs. Smith realized her mistake in comparing siblings.

As she turned to walk back to her desk, she said, “Boy, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

The fact is I always found baseball more interesting than math or most other subjects I was required to wade through in high school. I guess that’s one reason I find myself hacking away at stories and columns than trying to figure out the stress points on bridges or something else with a foundation in math.

I recall that story today because it’s Brooks Robinson’s 72nd birthday. The man once tabbed, “The Human Vacuum Cleaner,” or nicknamed “Hoover,” for his work at third base retired in 1978, but not before giving millions of baseball fans enough thrills to last our youth and some in a career that ended at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Another Hall of Famer, Reggie Jackson celebrates his birthday today as well. Mr. October may have made his name in the Fall Classic, but he was a boy of the spring born in 1946.

Jackson was a great power hitter who swung hard. His 563 home runs place him among the greatest sluggers that ever played the game. His 2,597 strikeouts are the most of any player in history. And Reggie Jackson is the only non pitcher in the Hall of Fame that struck out more times than he got a hit.

Like Robinson, Jackson has continued to be a Good Will Ambassador for the game of baseball long after his last game.

Happy Birthday Brooks and Reggie.

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One of the things Kyle wrote in his response was, “Life is not always fair.” And that athletics was a perfect place to learn that reality of life.

I agree with Kyle, life isn’t always fair. The fact that I’ve been a New Orleans Saints fan since 1967 proves that.

I even agree in part with Kyle’s reasoning based on his own high school experiences in Indiana. And it’s hard to imagine that a state championship could have made my high school athletic career much more enjoyable.

That’s where I part ways with Kyle’s thinking. If the Florida High School Athletic Association had never set up a class system that would be one thing, but the FHSAA, has, depending on the sport, had some sort of classification system since 1938.

The FHSAA first started recognizing champions in baseball and boys basketball in 1922. In 1938 basketball split into two classifications. Baseball split into to classifications in 1949.

The first state champion in football was crowned in 1963. A year later the state split schools into two classifications. In about a decade there were four classifications for football. We now have eight classes in football and six in the other major sports.

What’s the point behind this history lesson? It’s simply showing that the FHSAA has long had a history of trying to level the playing field according to the size of member schools. By allowing metro private schools, that often recruit players, to compete in the smaller 1A and 2A classifications the FHSAA negates the sense of balance it is seemingly trying to establish.

Kyle talks about the realities of life for the small school students here in the panhandle, but what about the realities of life for a kid attending the Rock in Gainesville, or Eagle’s View in Jacksonville?

It seems to me the message being sent these students is, with enough money, you can buy just about anything. If daddy has enough money you can go pick the school with the best program in your sport and have that chance at a state title.

It would be nice if they were taught the lesson that a state championship is something you work for, not given the impression that some private school Ted Turner is assembling the best talent available to make a run at a championship.

I will not deny Kyle’s assertion that we have created a generation that the proper response to adversity is to fight not to get better, but to get the rules changed. But at least you are teaching the kids to fight for something in that scenario.

We also have created a generation with a sense of self-entitlement that comes when parents have enough money to send their children to the top training facilities and the schools with the best athletic programs. Many of these kids act as if the world owes them something, and that includes a state championship. And, if they don’t get what they want, or they get in trouble, their parents will fix things with the family wealth.

I believe whether or not there are ever any changes to the current classification system, the kids at Baker, Laurel Hill, Paxton and Jay will work just as hard to get better and they will be the richer for it.

And I still think they deserve a state title that money can’t buy.

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