Mother Nature stepped in last night and gave us yet another memory to revisit as we went both backward and forward in a musical event that meshed days gone by and words and music to  live by that are filled with love, hope, and optimism for the future.

The Moody Blues played to a sold-out… you couldn’t put someone else in the venue with a shoe-horn…crowd.

As usual The Moodies did not disappoint.

Here is Justin Hayward and John Lodge working out the final details of the last song of the first set…  The Story in Your Eyes.

As soon as this song was finished and it was announced that the band would take their customary 20 minute repose before finishing the second half of the show, an official from the The Fraze Pavilion stepped onstage and told us all to clear the amphitheater.  There was lightning  near and we needed to take cover.  We did just that.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I found shelter without having to resort to walking to our car.

In the midst of the mass of humanity we were “subjected” to in these close quarters,  we were relegated to confusion, slight aggravation, and a hint of agony.

Carrie and I could see each other.  She was on one side of a room and I was on the other.  We made eye contact frequently and I so missed having her by my side for the time we stood there…dry…thankfully…but listening to dialogue that came out of rejected episodes of Seinfeld or some other show I could not stand and have failed to make it through a complete episode of.

Some guy knew he was the Earth’s gift to women and must have been hard of hearing because he was filling all of us in on his ways of wooing women.  He was not being nasty mind you.  He was just annoying.  Just know this…the guys around him were laughing at him…they were not taking notes.

One guy standing behind me was downright loud as he felt compelled to shout into his cell phone as if that was really going to make his voice project that much louder than if he would have moved the cell phone closer to his mouth-part.

When Carrie and I finally got together after we were given the all clear to return to our seats for the second half of the show…which I thought may have been in doubt…we were very glad to see each other as usual.  She had her stories about the characters around her and I had my stories about the characters around me and we both decided we could have done without either experience.  But guess what?  It will be there to reflect on….and as a reference point to further appreciate each other all the more.

It was mid-June 1992 when I saw The Moody Blues at Deer Creek just northeast of Indianapolis when a bad cloud came up and wreaked havoc on the show that was a double-bill with our guys and Chicago.  The Moodies were supposed to play first that night.  I was ready for the band to hit the stage and suddenly their roadies broke down their equipment and set up Chicago to play instead.

Ironically, as Chicago…the group…was playing in place of the Moodies, the Moodies were on a grounded plane in Chicago…the city… trying to get to Indy.  They finally showed up.  Man it was late. I will never forget the clap of thunder that punctuated the final note of Nights in White Satin.  The weather got worse in a hurry and the boys ended the show two songs shy of their ordinary finish.  I drove home on I-65 South that night/morning and I have said this before, but I have never typed it.  I drove home that night on I-65 in a fierce storm.  I did not see another headlight going north or south from the Franklin exit down to the Henryville exit.  That was rock and roll!  The natural light show I saw that night was better than anything I ever saw from Pink Floyd.

It was good to see The Moody Blues last night.  More so, it was even better to HEAR them last night.  A live performance is special.  The Moody Blues know that.  That is why they are still at it…I think that is a case of…speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Go Herd!

So I have been challenged.  I will answer said challenge.  Yes, I enjoy talking about and referencing college football.  I like it much more than pro ball.  I will even answer the bell and make a habit of making predictions each week on speaktherights.com as the college football season rolls on.

I can’t pick’em all.  So I will give my prediction on ten games a week that interest for whatever reason.  So be it.

Ole Miss will beat Boise State…there is too much to lose here for the Rebels to lose.

Bama will beat West Virginia…yes, Brother Tim, I do believe the Tide is a good team.

Kentucky will beat Tennessee-Martin….because they better.

South Carolina will beat Texas A&M …and everybody else.  They will be champs.

Miami (Fl) will beat Louisville…Florida State won the national championship last year…more                                                          than enough to motivate Miami  to beat ACC newcomers.

Indiana will beat Indiana State…if Coach Wilson wants to come back to work Monday.

Mississippi State will beat Southern Miss

LSU will beat Wisconsin

Auburn will beat Arkansas

Marshall will beat Miami of Ohio…the Year of the Herd will begin.

I am so delighted that my friend Jerry Brown will be coaching for the Brownstown Central Braves this Saturday as they take on the Charlestown Pirates at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.  The game is tentatively scheduled for a 2:40 PM kickoff.  I wish I could be there.

Jerry’s son, Clay, is the quarterback of the Braves, he’ll be able to say he played quarterback on the same field Peyton Manning played on.   Clay is a senior this year.  The Braves should be pretty tough.  They were 12-1 last year with a fraction of the number of seniors they have this year.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I will be in Oxford, Ohio watching the Thundering Herd of Marshall play on Saturday.  They play the Miami of Ohio Redhawks Saturday afternoon.  A report will be forthcoming.

More than anything, I hope all the guys out there playing will do so without the incident of injury.  Nothing can deflate the optimism and quality air out of a team like a devastating injury.  Still, it happens each year.  Just ask Ohio State.  They lost their starting quarterback to injury this week.

Man.  I will be so glad when it cools off.  Carrie warned me it would get hot in August.  Remember those cool days in July?  I do.  I miss them.  I used to write these posts on a comfortable screened-in back porch.  My pipes can’t take the heat and humidity.  If I go out to write on the porch right now, I would probably have a hard time breathing and would not have a very good time.

The cooler weather will certainly be here soon.  I am so looking forward to it.  Let the leaves fall where they may.

Until then we will find a way to continue to….speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

You may have heard of Minnesota Fats, Indiana Jones, Carolina Steve,  The Florida Boys, Texas Pete.  They have nothing on Alabama Tim.

Alabama Tim is a Crimson Tide football fan and he needs help.  His is a bit delusional about how good his team is this year.  I would say the Tide would have a better chance if Tim was their offensive coordinator.  The offensive coordinator is problematic for the Tide this year and many Tide fans can already admit it.  Not so for Alabama Tim.  Please think about him this season.  It won’t be easy on Brother Tim this year.

There are too too too many little deer running around my environ to make me un-nervous.  I am already nervous.  This fall when they are a little bigger and hanging out with their older cousins and moms and dads, the majority of them will be attempting to make contact with my vehicle as I drive down the road.  I can feel it.  I have felt this way before.  It works that way.  To date I have hit five deer that have caused significant destruction to the vehicles I have hit them with.  My head will be on a swivel soon enough as I drive down the road.

In less than 48 hours I will be sitting here watching the Ole Miss Rebels play the Boise State Broncos in a game played in Atlanta, Georgia.  Nothing left to say about that.  Bring it on.

I wrote a post early in the speaktherights.com history of posts about a wonderful lady that made a huge impact on my life during a most impressionable time.  Vallerie King was a youth pastor at the church I attended as she was going to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  I hope she reads this.  I can report to all of you that I remember the date of her graduation…it was December 20, 1985.  I was not there.  I regret that.  At the church I now attend, we recently were blessed with a new pastor.  Her name is Pastor Jill.  The pastor she replaced was Pastor Jack.  Anyway, I have no problem with having a female pastor.  I am sure that there are some in the world of faith that probably don’t share this belief.  So be it.  They can go somewhere else….to church, that is.  Pastor Jill’s delivery so reminds me of listening to Vallerie when I was a teenager.  She is that good.  Our church is blessed to have her.

Education in this country is nothing like I was prepared for.  When I was in college to learn how to teach we were engrossed with teaching methodology…which has come in handy over the years.  We also…twenty years ago…spent quality time talking about diversity and multiculturalism and learning styles that have actually helped many of us take a thing called differentiated instruction by the horns and make progress with it.  What we were not prepared for is the T-Square political mentality that is driving kids off a contrived do this…do that…pass this test…and you too will become this…wooden plank that is not based on learning styles and diversity…or what kids want to do with their lives.  Politicians have only been able to screw this up because the kids aren’t old enough to vote.  Answer me this.  I hear all these stats about how low our test scores are compared to other countries.  If this is the case, then why are so many foreign students coming to America to go the college?

Right now I need some help.  Nothing a bag of low-fat Jollytime Kettle Corn and a diet ginger ale can’t take care of.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Speaking the rights.

I think Justin Hayward and John Lodge would agree with me.

Danny Johnson

This evening I surfaced from the basement after my workout.

For those of you keeping score…I did 40 minutes on the elliptical and another 15 minutes on the stationary bike.  It was a good workout.

I recently acquired a couple of dvd treasures.  Justin Hayward (the Voice of The Moody Blues) has a new live album and accompanying dvd of a live show he did last August in Atlanta.  I have watched it all.  And I also acquired the complete series of Hill Street Blues.  The cop show ran on NBC from 1981 to 1987.  I call it my favorite TV show of all time because it is.

I never thought I would get to see the Hill Street collection.  After 27 years, there are some things one tends to give up on.

I watch DVDs as I exercise.

I meandered into the kitchen, my sweaty self, after my downstairs workout.

My dear wife, Carrie, was putting dinner together in the kitchen.  I murmured a few words and she asked me what I was saying. I told her it was nothing.  Then, I thought twice about it being nothing.  It was something I had thought about all day.

I spoke up.

I looked at the clock on the stove.

I proceeded to tell Carrie it was about 17 years to the day I talked to a friend of mine on the telephone.

I don’t remember what we talked about seventeen years ago.  I do, however, remember exactly how our conversation ended.  Just like every other one had ended for about four years.

It ended like this:

Corner King:  Later on, Brother.

Me:  Later on, now!

That is how our conversation ended.  I heard it in my head all day today.

I was on the phone today with Pete Rutherford and left a message with Kelly Samons.  Our fourth, Gus Stephenson is up for the date we set.  We are trying to figure on when we can play the Corner King Classic.

I mentioned in a previous post that I am soon to be playing in a golf tournament called The Corner King Classic.

We started the Corner King Classic in 2000.  We have gotten together and played this match annually ever since.

That phone exchanged  between me and Malcolm Todd “Corner King” Lincoln, Sr. was last time I talked to my dear friend.  He died the next day.  I am still heartbroken.  He has a son, Malcolm, Jr.  He is a senior in high school.  The Corner King would be proud of him.

And so it goes.  I hope I win my third consecutive Corner King Classic this year.

The last outing the Corner King and I had together was going to a Moody Blues concert in Ft. Wayne on June 15th seventeen years ago.

Speaking the rights…like I know the Corner King would want it.

Danny Johnson

Our dear friends from New Hampshire had their final summer family getaway (kids go back to school in New Hampshire after Labor Day) this past week,  as they visited our Nation’s capitol.  Carrie, my dear wife,  got a text message about all their visiting of the major highlights one looks to explore when one is in Washington, DC.

One of the places they visited was Arlington National Cemetery.

I have visited Arlington National Cemetery a couple of times.  It is one the most sobering places on the planet, if you were to ask me.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Changing of the Guard are significant moments on hallowed of hallowed ground.

Arlington is also the place where John F. Kennedy is buried and you can see the “Eternal Flame” at his grave site.  JFK was about space exploration, wasn’t he?

All the history of Arlington can’t begin to be touched with what little space and time we have here.  I can, however, convey here that I was once moved beyond the words I will try to type as I complete this post on speaktherights.com.

It was the 2nd day of April, 1997.  I was co-co-leader of a school trip to Washington.  I was in charge of a group of four parents that were in charge of four or five students.  I was in a supervisory role.  When not supervising, I was site-seeing and had a great deal of time to do so.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  The cherry blossoms were in full bloom.  It was a lovely clear, sunny day.  Later that night, I would observe the flourishing tale of Comet Hale-Bopp floating above the Jefferson Memorial looking like it belonged there .  In the afternoon I witnessed the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier.  It was so still I think  I heard sounds I have not heard before or since.

When I left the tomb, I walked down a side of a small hill it seems….and happened upon something I was not prepared for.  It was the marker that paid tribute to some astronauts.  I was face to marker with the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial.  It was as if I ran into my part of my past head-on.

I was a high school senior strutting down the hallway that January 28, 1986 day.  In a few months I would be a high school graduate.  I was met in the hallway by my buddy, Virgil Ragland.  Virg knew I paid closer attention to the space program than most.  He knew I had not heard.  His look was bothersome.  He then told me that the Space Shuttle Challenger had blown up 73 seconds into its attempted flight.  I was done for the day.

That was a tough time for a country not used to watching the news and seeing wars being full of US troops and air planes.

I wrote the following words some time after the Challenger disaster, as I was reflecting on the effect the tragedy had:

“Spirits, if not broken, were certainly bent.”

This many years later, I don’t have a phrase that can add to that.  When I think about it, it still makes me very sad.  That would be a start of a senior high school semester that would see more heartache as graduation loomed, including car accidents and the death of a classmate three days before graduation.

As  I was sitting at my desk at the school where I worked in 2001,   I was reading a story about the Space Shuttle Challenger’s fifteenth anniversary; the article made some points about what could have helped.  That’s hindsight for you.  So often too much too little too late…but now we know.

After reading that article, I came home and got my guitar out.  I wrote the following song:

The Sky Looks Much Smaller Now

The whole world can change in a minute and thirteen seconds                                                  The sky’ll never be the same… since that glare in the heavens                                                     We all watched on TV…I couldn’t cry so I screamed…

Hey you up there…can you hear me now?                                                                                       Hey you you’ve challenged everything                                                                                                 Hey you up there…can you hear me now                                                                                           And the sky looks…                                                                                                                               Yeah the sky looks…                                                                                                                             The sky looks….much smaller now

I was senior in high school another man of steel just like all my friends                                         Until the day it happened…felt like the beginning of the end                                                              We all watched on TV… I couldn’t cry but I screamed….

Hey you up there…can you hear me now?                                                                                       Hey you you’ve challenged everything                                                                                                 Hey you up there…can you hear me now                                                                                           And the sky looks…                                                                                                                               Yeah the sky looks…                                                                                                                             The sky looks….much smaller now

If we believe all we have heard, the space shuttle era is over as far as NASA is concerned.

I wish this country still had a stated goal larger than the planet we are spinning on.

Somberly speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Just speaking the rights.

I am ready to start a campaign denouncing any football broadcaster’s use of the phrase “in space…”

This makes me ill.

I think this verbiage is an insult to Neil Armstrong.

What is wrong with calling the “open field” the open field?

Why call it space?

Pure stupid tax.  But there is plenty of that to go around.

Just goes to show you any bad phrase can come to life if handed to the wrong people.

Danny Johnson

These days I don’t watch too much network television.  It is not worth watching.  Too much violence.  Too much sexual innuendo.  Too much raunchiness.  Too many fools.

Talk shows these days.  Why is it people like to watch folks fighting and cussing at each other as they figure who was sleeping with whom and what the paternity test found out?  That is some sick stuff.

Why do people watch cop shows that show footage of people being exploited by television as they are being arrested?   I don’t think it is lowering the crime rate.  It is, however, raising the stupid viewer rate.

Do we really like to see folks that have it worse than we do to that degree?

I don’t get it.

A month or so ago I posted about television and how I miss and pine for days gone by.  I still do.

Thank the Good Lord football season is here.  I’d rather watch a pre-season football game between the Eagles and the Steelers (which I am watching now) than anything else on the 200 other sorry channels I have to choose from.

I miss Sanford and Son.

I miss Hill Street Blues.

I miss M*A*S*H.

I miss Monday Night Football, the way it was when I was a kid.

I miss Barnaby Jones.

I miss St. Elsewhere.

I miss Ed.

Ed was the last TV series I kept up with and the bowling alley lawyer called it quits in 2003.

I miss Chicago Hope.

I miss Mannix.

I miss the Midnight Special.

I even miss Fantasy Island.

What I really miss, especially this time of the year, are the great tones and wisdom of Keith Jackson.  Keith called college football on television for as long as I can remember up until 2006.

Keith was as down-home as they come.   He was the classic example of less is more.  Always succinct with his delivery, Keith was straight-forward and entertaining.

My favorite two Keith Jackson calls went something like this:

Calling an Ohio State-Michigan game in the 1970s, Keith was witness to an Ohio State offense that ran the ball and ran the ball and ran the ball some more.  They put a guy in motion to the left on some plays and to the right on others….and they never passed it to him.

Keith Jackson (late in the game):  Ohio State with the ball at the 48 of Michigan.  Schilchter under center as Williams goes in motion to the left…he’s run three miles today.

USC playing I do not remember…the team was punting to USC and Keith made a call that went something like….

Keith Jackson:  The punt is a high hanging effort…Smith is under it and calls fair catch…he’s got a crick in his neck from looking at it so long.

Wow.  That was Keith Jackson.  Man, I miss him.

I called high school football games on the radio for a number of years.  I could not tell you how many times I thought about Keith Jackson.  I borrowed his “Oh My Goodness“….  I unashamedly used his phrase when previewing a game…”It should be a good one.”

Ultimately my partner, Gus Stephenson, and I had a style of our own that was well-received.  I am thankful for that.  I miss calling games with him.

These days I still love to hear Mike Patrick call a game.  I hope he is still at it this year.

I also wish M*A*S*H was still on Sunday Nights in case the football game is a stinker and I could mash the remote….we call it a masher…to another station.

Just speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I was thinking about my Aunt Pupi on my drive home from work today.  I have a healthy commute to and from the school where I work.  108 miles round-trip to be exact.  I do have time to think.

Today I thought about Aunt Pupi and how I figured this would be a good thing to share.

Originally published in another publication in the fall of 2006, this is a tribute to my Aunt Pupi.  She lived in Alabama.

A Gift from Italy

Somewhere in a newly moved into nursing home room in Selma, Alabama, there is a gift from Italy waiting to die.  My aunt, Antonio Hines, age 91, has a swollen brain and is unresponsive to any earthly stimulus. She had a feeding tube removed.  No argument here.  Her lungs are still working.  Her heart is still beating.  And while I have heard over and over again that it could be “any time now”, if it’s up to her heart, who knows how long it will be before that gem gives out.  Well, God knows.

Aunt Pupi. Pupi is what she has always been called.  That’s pronounced pooh-pee.  It’s a strange name, but one you get over when you spend a great deal of time with her.  In the last twenty years the only times I have noticed her name as peculiar is when I have spoken of it to someone for the first time.  I’m usually asked for a replay when I mention Aunt Pupi.

In the northwest corner of a boot of a country called Italy, there is a city called Trieste.  That is where Aunt Pupi is originally from.  She had planned to visit her sister next year, the last living sibling she has.  When I was a child Aunt Pupi would tell me stories about Trieste.  From what I gather it must be one very windy place.  She told me there are ropes on the city streets that are there for folks to hold on to when the wind starts to blow exceedingly stiff.  I never imagined such a thing, but she told her stories with such authority behind that thick Italian accent it made me feel like I was there.

One of my mother’s seven brothers, Uncle Paul Hines, was in Italy during World War II.  Uncle Paul met Antonio and thus began one of the greatest love stories you never heard of.  I just say that because even at a young age I knew these two were madly in love with each other.  Uncle Paul died in 1989.  He had suffered from emphysema for a long time.  His lungs just gave out.  A couple years later Aunt Pupi and I were speaking of him and I got a little wistful I suppose.  She shook her head and said, “I miss him so much.”  There was a thickness about her accent again, it gave more credibility to what she said than anyone else in the room.  I can still hear her talk of how she missed him so much.

Now I’m missing her.  But, heck, I’m also thankful I just got to know her as well as I did.  Uncle Paul was about twenty years older than my mother.  That’s a whole other column in itself given that she had sixteen brothers and sisters.  To this day I don’t know why my mother and Uncle Paul turned out to be as close as they were.  In the 1970s and early 80s, Aunt Pupi and Uncle Paul, without fail, would drive from Selma, Alabama up to Indiana in October to visit for a week or two.  They loved the fall colors and Aunt Pupi always stocked up on apples from a place in Bedford.  Have mercy did she ever like to cook.  And was quite good at it, I might add.

The stories I get the most mileage out of include the one when she was eating olives…the green ones…out of the bottle.  We never had olives sitting around the house when I was a kid, but Aunt Pupi always brought some.  I was quizzing her one-day on what the olive tasted like.  She said, “You must try.”   I took one in my hand and smelled of it.  Then I placed it in my mouth.  Yuck.  I thought it was hideous.  Aunt Pupi looked at me and said, “You must think it is peach…” as she chomped away at yet another olive.

After Uncle Paul died, Aunt Pupi would come up to stay with Mom and Dad two or three times a year, sometimes for three weeks at a time.

I guess I’m at a place in my writing where I’m supposed to leave you with a memorable line or an attempt at something clever.  The truth is I don’t feel like I even got warmed up.  Aside from that, I ain’t quite ready to say goodbye yet.  I’ll just raise a glass to Italy.

“All Night Radio” is a song by our friend Tim Krekel.  He writes/sings about listening to the radio in his room late at night when he was a kid.

I heard this song on my ipod today and I got to thinking about how much I have enjoyed listening to the radio over the years.  I’ve enjoyed radio for many reasons.

My favorite AM radio station of all time was WLS 890 Chicago.  When I was teenager, I caught the last years of this station being known as “The Rock of Chicago”.  They played great rock and roll music and I heard some tunes on that station that I never heard on our local Louisville, Ky stations.  One song I so remember was a tune called “What About Me” by a group called Moving Pictures.  I never once heard that on Louisville radio.

Each night at 10 PM Eastern Time you could hear the Top Nine at Nine.

There were great personalities on WLS.  Les Grobstein did Sports.  DJs were Chuck Britton…I think he is the voice following the “WLS!” jingle on the clock radio you hear on Ferris Bueller’s  Day Off.

My favorites were Uncle Larry Lujack and Little Tommy Edwards in the mornings.  You got to remember this was, as Krekel’s song suggests, all night radio at its finest.  The sun had to be way down before you could think about picking  WLS up….then it would fade away about the time the sun would slice the Eastern horizon in the morning.  Lujack and Edwards did a funny segment every morning called “Animal Stories”.  Nothing was sacred as they would talk about animals of all kinds and in all circumstances.  I could not explain the “Animal Stories News-team Anchormen” to you in seven weeks.  You can “Youtube” it.  My dear wife, Carrie, will tell you it will make you laugh or it won’t.  She has yet to laugh about it.

One last WLS note.  I remember lying in my bed at night as a kid with a transistor radio with a raised antennae in one hand and a single white ear piece plugged into the radio as I was listening to Barry Manilow sing “I Write the Songs” which was, ironically, written by a guy named Bruce Johnston.

Other AM radio highlights:

Listening to WAKY 790 out of Louisville on the bus when I was a kid in elementary school.  I wrote on an earlier post that it was on that bus, listening to that radio station, when I heard a sound that would change my life.  It was the guitar riff in the song “I Can Help” by Billy Swann.  As I reported  earlier, over thirty years later I would find myself in a recording studio playing songs I had written with the same guy…Tim Krekel…that played guitar with Billy Swan.

WAKY had its share of great DJs.  Bill Bailey the Duke of Louisville.  Bob Moody.  Gary Burbank.  Lee Masters.  Johnny Randolph.  And Coyote Calhoun.

Great story:  I was doing an editorial piece for WHAS TV-11 in Louisville in 1989.  A polite young lady was giving me a tour of the facility, which also housed WHAS radio and WAMZ radio which was and I suppose still is big time Country Music radio station.  We met Coyote Calhoun, now the afternoon drive guy and program director of mega-Country station, in the hallway.  Coyote had his cowboy boots on and had just gotten back from a big Country Music Award Show where he had been honored for his work.

When the young lady introduced me to Coyote I said the first thing that came to mind: “Yeah, I know you.  I used to listen to you on WAKY when I was a kid.”

Coyote was a bit put off.  He kind of pursed his lips and turned his head.  The next thing you know I am being whisked away by my guide to another side of the building.

I don’t care that Coyote played country music.  Good for him.  Just don’t make me listen to his show.

Other radio highlights:

Rob Ray in Middle School bringing in a transistor and an ear-piece to listen to the Cincinnati Reds opening day on WLW.  Rob could get away with that.  I would have gotten caught.  At least he passed me a few notes updating me on the score and if someone hit one out.  Thank you, Marty.

WWL 870 out of New Orleans.  This was a truck driver’s paradise of a radio station in the 1970s.  “The Road Gang” is what they called the broadcast team.  We’d listen to it as we were traveling South to visit relatives.  They gave weather and interstate reports all over the country.  I remember they’d have comedy on there too.  There was one skit called “Dammit Ray and the Talking Outhouse”.  I hope one day I can find it again.

Today my favorite radio station is an FM station.  96.3 WJAA in Seymour is awesome.  Robert Becker owns and runs the place and he’s like Frank Sinatra doing it his way.  Plays what he wants…says what he wants.  Tom Petty couldn’t have said it better.  I know who he was singing about.

I will not leave out 650 WSM the Home of the Grand Ole Opry.

“This portion of the Grand Ole Opry sponsored by Cracker Barrel.”

Now that is speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Football Season is here.  The NCAA season will be in full swing the last weekend in August.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I will be covering the Marshall Thundering Herd  as they visit the Miami (OH) Redhawks in Oxford, Ohio on Saturday, August 30th.  Kickoff is 3:30 PM.

The Marshall Thundering Herd will do well this season.  I am calling for the Herd to go 12-0 in the regular season.  They will then host and win the Conference USA Championship game and proceed to be somewhat media darlings as they get to play in a New Years’s Eve or New Year’s Day Bowl…one of the BIGGIES.  The Peach Bowl?  Maybe.  The Orange Bowl?  I hope so.  The quarterback, Rakem Cato and his favorite receiver, Tommy Shuler, are both from Miami.  So to start the season in the smaller Miami and end the season in the big Miami would be apropos.

This will be good and bad for the Herd faithful.

West Virginia is going to continue to stumble in the Big 12.  I believe they will fire their coach, Dana Holgersen, at the end of the season and offer that job to current Marshall coach, and WVU alum, Doc Holliday.    I have no doubt Chuck Landon, the Huntington Sports Columnist, is prepared to barb away at Doc on this matter.

Go Herd or Go Home!

Lets look at three conference races that will appeal to many of us…but not all of us.

The Atlantic Coast Conference.

The ACC is made up of two divisions.  There are seven teams in the Atlantic Division and there are six teams in the Coastal Division.  I think they should have named these sub-groups the Ocean Division and the Beach Division.  Marketing would enjoy this much more.

Note:  I am not writing about the ACC because the University of Louisville joined said conference this year.  I liked it better before Louisville got there.  I pull for the North Carolina schools.

Here are my predictions as to how these teams will finish in their prospective division:

Atlantic Division                                                     

1.  Florida State-    Injury and themselves are worst threats.

2.  Clemson-  Howard’s Rock will be rockin’ this season.

3.  Louisville-  The welcome mat is out for Petrino until he burns it.

4.  NC State-  Things have to get better in  Raliegh.  A kind schedule could mean 8 Ws.

5.  Boston College-  Coach Addazio has his work cut out for him…he can shell the corn.

6.  Syracuse-  If they’d move out of that dome they’d win against warm weather schools.

7.  Wake Forest-  Left BB&T Field off my list of football venues.  I was wrong.  Team is bad.

Coastal Division

1.  Virginia Tech-  Beamer -ball is back in a big way.

2.  Duke-  The heart wants to put’em #1.  Coach Cut has worked miracles.

3.  Georgia Tech-  Their option “O” can  still give  teams fits finding the ball.

4.  Miami (Fla)-  There is always trouble.  Canes of old didn’t have social media woes.

5.  Pittsburgh-  Give them credit…they have same Head Coach for 3 years now.

6.  Virginia-  The Cavaliers have a tough road.  Schedule is brutal.

Over the years I have seen nine of these teams play in person.  The four I have missed are Pitt, Syracuse, Clemson, and Georgia Tech.  I weep not for any of them.

North Carolina is our adopted second home.  Carrie and I visit there as often as we can.  What is so special about it?  Well…the first time I crossed the Virginia state line into North Carolina, Carrie was sitting beside me looking out the window.  This was the first destination we ever found together,  having neither of us been there before.

I enjoy keeping up with the happenings of the ACC during football season.  I know it is a historically strong basketball league; I won’t hold that against them.  Yes… I do watch basketball when it matters:  March…and only March.

I also pull hard for Duke because they were stinkers for years and former Ole Miss Coach David Cutcliffe has brought them out of the doldrums and onto the high seas.  They won ten games last year.  It used to take’m six years to win ten games.

Wake Forest

Ole Miss @ Wake Forest 2008

THE BIG TEN

Like the ACC, the Big Ten is also made up of two divisions.  One division is called the EAST DIVISION and the other is called…imagine…the WEST DIVISION.  Believe it or not the names of these divisons are an improvement.  They used to be called the Leaders and Legends…talk about nose out of joint attitude.  But, that is what you get from the Big Ten…they tend to be a little class conscious.  Reference Indiana University Football ticket prices.  I guess they don’t think they will fill the place if they charge  5 or 500 dollars. Their tickets are too too high. The rain’s gotta start and stop somewhere.  This where the adage “you get what you pay for” lost its credibility.

I know my barbecuing of IU may come as a surprise to some that have read about my affinity for Memorial Stadium where the Hoosiers play.  Where they play and how they do business are two totally unrelated variables.  I still love the place.  I wish I loved what was in it.

Indiana’s Memorial Stadium…The Safest Place in America on Saturday.

Enough of the social commentary already.  Let’s talk football.

BIG TEN predictions…yes… I know they have 14 teams.  Makes a great deal of sense.

BIG TEN EAST

1.  Michigan State-  Sparty is ready.  Lost one game by 4 points last year.  Look out.

2.  Ohio State-  If they stay healthy, they could make a great deal of noise.

3.  Michigan-  The Big House will recover.  Struggled last year.  Still is 3rd not enough.

4.  Penn State-  Could be 2,3, or 4.  Coach Franklin is that good.  See Vandy work.

5.  Indiana-   Hoosiers need to justify doubling the new coach’s salary over the last one.

6.  Maryland-  New kids on the block.  First season in Big Ten.  Odd appendage.

7. Rutgers-  New like Maryland.  Bring with them the TV Cow of the NYC market to milk.

 Iowa will shell the corn.

BIG TEN WEST

1.  Iowa-  They are singing “This is Gonna Be My Year” in Iowa City.  Ball bounces their way.

2.  Wisconsin-  Swissconsin and the fans of Bucky are happy again.  And cold.

3.  Northwestern-  Feels odd picking NU over Nebraska.  Think it’ll happen.

4.  Nebraska-  The Cornfield of the West belongs in the Big 8…but it doesn’t exist anymore.

5.  Minnesota- Coach Kill will be sharing time with the Vikings at TCF Bank Stadium.

6.  Illinois-  The Illini will wish they had Red Grange in their huddle.  Great place to visit.

7.  Purdue-  They just plain eat it.

With the addition of Maryland and Rutgers, I now have two teams in the Big Ten that I have never seen play…those two.  This past summer I drove on the New Jersey Turnpike and went past the exit to go to Rutgers.  It looked like Big Ten country about as much as Gene Simmons looks like he belongs in The Moody Blues.  Oh what Big Ten purist have to put up with in the wake of cash-driven college sports looking for the next big city market to get a piece of.  Next year the Big Ten will probably branch out with the addition of the University of Edmonton or London State.

Drum roll please…

The League that matters.  The League that if they didn’t beat on each other every week for eight weeks no one else in the country would have a chance.  The other schools in so-called power conferences look not at the scores of SEC games….they want to see who got hurt?   Ohio State fans are pinning their hopes of getting to the national championship based on whether or not a hoss of linebacker from Ole Miss put the hurt on Alabama’s best back and knocked him out of commission.  The whole country knows it.  Most of them resent it.  It is just a matter of priority.  Football rules in The Southeastern Conference.

THE SEC

I love the intensity of SEC football.  They get it started in a hurry.  During the first week of the season, South Carolina is taking on Texas A&M in a HUGE conference game.  That kind of intensity and sense of urgency is on fire from week one in this conference until they settle on a Champion the first weekend in December.

An Ole Miss fan as far as the SEC goes, I have seen every team in the conference play over the years with the exception of Florida and Mississippi State.

This year’s SEC predictions from speaktherights.com:

The SEC is, like most conferences these days, split into two divisions…primarily so the winner of each division can play for the championship at the end in front of a huge crowd while…the legend continues (my apology to Keith Jackson).

SEC EAST

1.  South Carolina-  The old ball coach is finally going to sling it again and throw his visor.

2.  Georgia-  Coach Richt is a survivor. There is a TV  show by the same name.  He’s it.

3.  Missouri-  Belong in the SEC East like Rutgers belongs in the Big Ten.

4.  Florida-  Happy days are not here again for the Gators.  Injuries and trouble abound.

5.  Tennessee-  Butch Jones will have them moving on up…but another year of growing pains.

6.  Vanderbilt-  Derek Mason has a tough job following James Franklin.

7.  Kentucky-  Need to change name from Wildcats to Mildcats.

SEC WEST

The greatest division of football on the planet.

1.  Alabama-  Hate it. Wish it was the Rebels.  I’ll be like an Ohio State fan looking for injuries.

2.  Ole Miss- Coach Freeze is a winner.  Hope Ole Miss has sense enough to hang on to him.

3.  Auburn-  So many starters returning, you’d think I was a Homer.

4.  LSU-  It is time for LSU to stub their toe….or Mike to get a thorn in his paw.

5.  Mississippi State-  Their Hail State campaign was a meteorologist’s nightmare.

6.  Texas A&M- Johnny football gone.  The whole dynamic and culture needs rebuilt.

7.  Arkansas-  Pig Sooooie?  All I can say…Razorback fans be prepared to hold your nose.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t put a pic of Dad and me at Notre Dame last year.  I haven’t been that cold since.

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH-UPS

ACC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:   Florida State v. Virginia Tech

Winner: Florida State by virtue of their team speed.

BIG TEN CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:  Iowa v. Michigan State

Winner:  Iowa… though I am the only one believing.

SEC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:  South Carolina v. Alabama

Winner: South Carolina…the head ball coach retires as king.  The Gamecocks will win it all this year.

Enjoy the 2014 Football Season.  I know I will.  In fact no one has it better than I do each and every college football season.  I can look at Carrie and say we are going to Nashville to see Ole Miss play and she will have one question… “What time is kickoff?”   I am a blessed man.

As the season goes on I’m sure I’ll find time to speak the rights about it.

Danny Johnson