To provide full disclosure, I admit that I am biased here.
In sports, it can be frustrating and pointless to play the “what if” game. But, what the heck, I’m going to do it anyway.
Quarterbacks are in the news this week. QB battles are the talk of the NFL and many collegiate teams have named starting signal-callers.
Give everyone credit, we are trying to play high school football in the Mountain State this fall.
Over the years, consolidation has taken away many of the schools in our area.
Seth Ramsey wasn’t sure this day would arrive.
Sports fans are bored. We’ve missed our local and national sporting events.
The West Virginia University sports family recently lost two former athletes, both from the southern part of the state.
The news this week of the water issues in the coal camp community of Gary in McDowell County saddened me greatly.
I’ve been a sports fan for 60 years and worked in sports and athletics for over 50 years.
When local television was in its infancy in the 1950s and ’60s, it did not get much bigger than Shirley Love in southern West Virginia. At a time when the population was robust in the southern coalfields, everyone knew him.
Life is short and ever changing. For older sports fans, one of those changes is watching our sports heroes age. In our minds, we do not allow them to age. We still remember them as they played.
Our state does have some history of hosting international high school basketball. In the spring of 1975, a high school all-star team from our state played a traveling Russian all-star team in the old Charleston Civic Center arena.
One of the saddest aspects about life in our state in the last 50 years has been the disappearance of many community high schools.
This is Father’s Day weekend and it’s also a time to celebrate our state’s birthday. June is also traditionally a month for weddings and anniversaries.
West Virginia is a small state with no professional teams. We love college athletics in our state, particularly football and men’s basketball.
One of the most famous works of poetry is “To an Athlete Dying Young,” written in 1896 by British poet A.E. Housman.
As everyone knows, these are unusual times. Here are some things that I miss and some things that I don’t miss.
We are missing sports. Now that we have no live sporting events, the national networks are filling the time by showing old games. They are also making lists.
The southern coalfields of West Virginia lost one of their greatest athletes in late April.
The summer of 2009 was a special college football time for West Virginians. The 2009 College Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony in South Bend, Indiana, featured a strong Mountain State flavor.
This has been a tough week for baseball fans in the Kanawha Valley. For many of us, it is hard to imagine a baseball world without Cal Bailey, who died last week at age 77.
Life has not been much fun for the last month. What can I say? I am a sports guy and I miss baseball, spring football, the NBA and satellite sports talk radio. I love the old westerns, but I have seen enough of “Wagon Train,” “Rawhide,” “Gunsmoke” and “Laramie.”
Those of us who love sports and athletics are going a little stir crazy. I worked in college athletics and sports media for over 40 years, so I’m used to a frenetic and frenzied pace.