One of my favorite sportswriters is Chuck Culpepper. He used to write for the Lexington Herald Leader in the late 90′s and reading his column was always the highlight of my Sunday sports page. Chuck is now a freelance sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and Newsday and has published a few books. Before his fame and glory though, Chuck wrote this gem of an article in the 1999 Herald Leader‘s College Football preview section. This article hung on my wall at home until it literally fell apart...looking back, it’s easily one of the reasons I love good sports writing.
Enjoy!
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August 29, 1999
ON ANY GIVEN SATURDAY
Chuck Culpepper Herald-Leader sports columnist
It’s Saturday in a big country, and there’s an eagle flying in a stadium down on The Plains; there’s a steer named Bevo running through the stadium at Austin; there’s a buffalo named Ralphie running through the stadium at Boulder. There’s a trojan riding a horse around a field in Los Angeles; there’s a regal bengal in a cage by the stadium at Baton Rouge; there’s a bulldog with a pretty face at Georgia.
In Miami, always odd, there’s this giant ibis.
There’s more orange than you ever saw in your life in eastern Tennessee; there’s more red than you ever saw in your life in eastern Nebraska; there’s ample green under the clouds at Huntington; there’s more powder blue than you ever saw in your life in the Rose Bowl.
There’s a grove in Mississippi full of jackets and ties and old elegance; there’s a Lawn in Virginia just in case we’re wondering what Mr. Jefferson would have thought of all this (note: He would have advocated a free-form offense); there’s a stadium in Seattle with a view of the sailboats on the lake outside; there’s a gem of a field even at the top of New York City.
It’s Saturday in a big country, and there’s heavy air in the Swamp and the Orange Bowl; there’s an early October game in New England – Princeton at Brown, Oct. 9? – about to show off some serious leaves; there’s a late-October game somewhere in the Rockies with snow written all over it; there’s a clash of Ducks and/or Beavers in perpetual Oregon rain.
There’s an old coach down in Tallahassee you’d just love to know, the kind who calls everybody, “Hey buddy”; there’s an old coach down in South Carolina who stalks the sideline part preacher, part general; there’s an old coach up in Pennsylvania who comes to the game by water, for he walks on it; there’s a coach getting old out in Kansas (State), his car still in the parking lot ’round midnight most nights.
There’s a band member out-of-this-world honored to dot the “i” on the field at Columbus; there’s a bunch of grown young men touching a rock at Clemson; there’s a regular college student on the kickoff team out at Texas A&M; there’s the chance 100,000 grown people in Knoxville might sing Rocky Top so loud it’ll tingle your neck; just up the 81 in southwestern Virginia, there are grown adults chanting, “Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, high!”
If that weren’t enough, somehow the word “touchdown” is about to share a phrase with the word “Jesus” in the allegedly staid Midwest.
It’s Saturday in America, and Michigan is trying to establish the running game; Alabama is trying to establish the running game; Nebraska is trying to establish the running game; Florida is trying to establish the passing game; and some wild game will zigzag through the western night after the East has gone to bed, some tussle still not complete at midnight and at 45-42.
There’s a quarterback you should see at Georgia, a quarterback you should see at Georgia Tech, another at Louisville, another at Marshall, two more in Indiana, one at Purdue throwing maybe 80 passes just today. There’s a running back you should see at Arizona, a running back you should see at Tennessee, another at Alabama, and a big ol’ running back you’d call a load up at Wisconsin.
There’s a receiver you should see at Florida State, a linebacker you wouldn’t believe at Penn State – OK, there are two of those, as usual – and an offensive line full of big grocery bills at Michigan. There’s somebody named Beano who seems to know all about it.
There’s a football team called Owls that pulled one of the biggest upsets of the century last year; there’s a football team called Vandals that won the Humanitarian Bowl, if you can believe such a thing; there’s a football team in Oklahoma so beloved they went ahead and elected a quarterback to Congress; there’s a new Division I football team this year: Buffalo. Did I mention Them Hogs are back?
There’s an Old Oaken Bucket, an Axe, a Little Brown Jug. To top it all, there are a few thousand Cadets about to cheer from one side, a few thousand Midshipmen about to cheer from the other.
Look at the hats fly.
It’s Saturday in America, and it’s the best game we have, college football, better than some of our games by a little bit, better than others by a lot – not only because it’s (usually) outdoors, not only because it’s ritualistic, not only because it’s social, not only because it is the sport in which each game is more precious and meaningful than each game in any other sport, but because there’s so much going on in one day it’s darned near impossible to cram it all into your head.
Copyright (c) 1999 Lexington Herald-Leader