I have been to a place we will never go back to again.  Hold that thought.  We’ll get back to it.

A short while ago I checked in on my in-laws.  My mother-in-law was not in the room and I assumed she was in another room taking care of things one normally does not take care of in the living room or the kitchen.  So there was my father-in-law…he was demonstrating his cultural know how and he impressed me immensely with the educational television he was watching.  No…I am not joking here.  He was watching a replay of last year’s Auburn Tiger visit to Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium to take on the Ole Miss Rebels in October.  It was good to see football back on the television again.  My father-in-law is a Kentucky Wildcat fan, but I will give him credit, he knows and enjoys his football in spite of his Big Blue fall disadvantage.

I will always cherish the day I was in Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium in late March 2003.  It was Eli Manning’s senior year.  My name managed to find its way onto a clipboard that allowed me entrance into the stadium to watch a “closed scrimmage” during Spring Practice.  I will forever be indebted to the great Walker Jones for taking care of that for me.  There were only a handful of us in the stadium and I walked on the grass field in Oxford one last time.  After spring practice that year, Ole Miss installed an artificial surface.

One of the healthiest posts I did last year, I think it was over 3000 words, was my College Football Preview.  I believe we did that in mid-August a couple weeks before the season began in earnest.  I am going to do so more research this weekend to prepare for the College Football Preview of 2015.  I must do better this year.  Last year I was in love with the Iowa Hawkeyes and the South Carolina Gamecocks.  They both disappointed.  My research has been limited.  I have a new job that has taken up some of my football study time.  The reason for the majority of my behind time is due to the fact that Carrie, my dear wife, and I did not go to the beach this summer.  That is usually where I gear up for the college football season.  With Athlon, Lindy, The Sporting News, Phil Steele, and maybe another football preview in hand, I would sit by the beach and read up on the football horizon for the entire country.  I miss the beach.

As I spoke with my father-in-law this evening, we talked about how current Texas football coach Charlie Strong took away some of the luxuries the Longhorn players were used to during the course of the season.  I actually read that the players used to take buses to a practice field a practice field all of a half-mile away.  I’m forty-seven.  I walked 11 miles today.  Charlie Strong changed all that.  The Longhorn players walk to the practice field now.  I truly hope Charlie Strong succeeds in Austin.

This talk made me think of a much simpler time.  When I was in the 4th and 5th grade I played in the Brownstown Central Pee-Wee Football system.  All the players in the elementary school playing pee-wee football would leave the elementary school on assigned buses and ride over to the middle school where we would change into our football practice uniforms in a little locker room that was called “the dungeon”.  The dungeon is gone now.  I remember it vividly and I am thankful for that memory.

After we dressed for practice, we 4th, 5th, and 6th (they were already at the middle school) grade football players would walk three and a half blocks to the town park where we would practice in the outfield of the little league baseball field most of us played on during the summer.

Oh…our coaches?  The were waiting for us at the park.

We were nine, ten, and eleven years old and we were plenty enough independent and trustworthy  to ride a bus to another school, go to a locker room and change into a practice uniform, and then walk to practice field a half a mile away…and never see an adult until we got to practice.  Did I say simpler time?

I am so glad I was there.  That place doesn’t exist anymore.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson