In grade school, every Tuesday our grandparents would pick up my siblings and I after class to spend the afternoon with them. Trips to McDonalds followed up with hours-long games of hide and seek were commonplace. The afternoon of Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001 did not go according to plan. Grandma and Grandpa … Continue reading Out of Many, One
My earliest memories of Tennessee football came around a campfire. I can remember as a young boy sitting next to my uncle on a family camping trip, huddled around a bonfire, as he listened to Tim Priest and Bob Kessling call the Georgia game. I can't remember what year it was. The final score … Continue reading Sifting Through the Ashes: Tennessee’s Darkest Hour
**** DISCLAIMER - I've heard several versions of this story. It is likely something similar happened, but not this exact version of events. But as always the legend is far more entertaining than the reality.**** It was October 16, 1976 better known as The Third Saturday in October, and Alabama had come to town. … Continue reading When Johnny Comes Marching Home: the Vols need a savior again
In the comedy classic Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, there is an iconic scene in which the protagonist, Ricky Bobby, falsely believes that he has been paralyzed. Disregarding the begging assurances of his friends that he can in fact walk, Ricky hilariously jabs a steak knife into his leg, assuming that he will … Continue reading Not this again: Week 1 on Rocky Top.
"Unblockable" is a word that has often been used to describe some of football's greatest defenses. It conjures up images of the breath rising from the helmets of the '85 Bears as they harass quarterbacks on an icy day in Chicago, or of Tom Brady picking turf out of his face mask … Continue reading Jackie & the Bear: Tennessee’s forgotten legend
In the wake of this week's rash of mass shootings, I caught myself doing something that I'm a little embarrassed to admit. If I'm being honest, when I hear about a mass shooting one of my first thoughts is, "oh no, please don't let it be a southern white guy with a manifesto and a … Continue reading Blessed are the peacemakers: thoughts on mass shootings and American division
It was 11:30 p.m. on a hot June evening. I was sitting in my car, locked in wall to wall traffic, wishing I had taken a different interstate route back to my frilly downtown Nashville apartment. Traffic had been creeping slowly for half an hour, and then lurched to a complete halt in the middle … Continue reading Last of my kind.
Have you ever been out to dinner with a couple that just cannot stop bickering? He's slurping his soup too loudly. She's telling that same story for the "one-hundredth" time this week. They're both making you miserable. Everyone at the table but them can see that they're not really mad about soup or stories. Those … Continue reading We keep the wolves away.
It’s funny, the things that we remember in life, and the things we don’t. Smells, sights, jokes, awkward moments, all of these sometimes stick with us far more clearly and with greater longevity than some of life’s greatest peaks and valleys. This is a recounting of five insignificant but enduring memories from my … Continue reading Greatest Hits
The old liberals are my heroes. Thomas Paine, Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson did more to make better the lives of the poor and downtrodden than nearly anyone in modern history. But at some point between Woodrow Wilson and AOC, the liberal ideology was commandeered by the true enemy of the cause of conservatism, the … Continue reading A critique of modern liberalism
