52 Goose Eggs

Required Reading; Required Responding

2011-11-18T00:16:00.003-06:00

Thanks to those Webb School Class of 2012 students who followed the assignment. Jason Bartlett told me that it was an effort at self-validation, but I can afford to ignore that comment. As for the other comments, I am glad that the story resonated with most of you. My only intention was to show that a research project can be a "labor of love" that produces original content. I do hope that many of you have the opportunity to follow stories of your own.
A documentary film project may be just the thing to do as we head towards graduation. Such a project constitutes a "performance task" whose successful execution requires a team of dedicated and engaged participants.

The BCTS story is a great Senior Project subject for a senior who is still searching....

Curriculum 21: Wanting Webb Feet to Step Up

2011-08-07T02:17:00.004-05:00

Summertime, and while the living may be easy the mandated summer reading is not. Our faculty-wide text is entitled Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. Had I picked it off the shelf myself, I would likely have read it in one or two sittings, but the mandatory aspect always triggers the passive-aggressive response. I'm really not different from many of my students, who would love reading 1984 if it had only been their idea instead of a summer reading assignment made by Mr. Smith.

I mention this because the advice for English teachers in Curriculum 21 is to employ as many forms of narrative as possible in our teachings. As I pondered this, I recognized that the old paradigm of publishing one's work long stood in the way of the emerging paradigm of doing what I am doing right now. For years I agonized about writing a book on the Bedford County Training School football story. If not a book, then a magazine piece in Sports Illustrated would have been nice. I did write a very satisfying feature article for the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro--and when I did I was thrilled to see the story in print. In retrospect, however, I have to admit that not that many others saw it in print.

Then I gave a presentation to the Sertoma Club of Nashville--a presentation, by the way, that fits the "different form of narrative" category that Curriculum 21 espouses--and one of its youngest members told me that I should start a blog about my BCTS research.

Jumping into this blog, of course, really immersed me in a full-blooded 21st century form of narrative. And the blog's easy accessibility made these words available to virtually anyone. (Pun not initially intended but retained once it hit me.) My presence in the blogosphere may not have made me the kind of published writer that I spent my first half-century fantasizing about; it in fact took me well beyond those limited confines.

Quite ironic given my neo-Luddite sympathies.

The relevance for my English teaching is obvious: this "newish" mode of communication made my research available to David Climer, the lead sportswriter for the Tennessean, and his article made the BCTS story available to a whole host of readers, including one from Chattanooga who shortly published his own BCTS article on chattanooga.com: http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_205314.asp

The word, once out there, is out there. Let the word go forth.

Instead of collecting dust on the shelves of the fifty-two devoted readers of The Bedford County Historical Review, my words on BCTS were out there for any interested party to easily read.

The moral of this story? I can easily provide my students with opportunities to publish their words--opportunities that were worlds away from me during my high school years.

Then there is another form of narrative that Charlie Abernathy has helped me begin: the process of interviewing people involved with the BCTS story and recording them as part of a documentary film project. Before he left for Hollywood, Charlie dropped a DVD by the house whose title, Henry Final, I did not understand. Once I finally put the DVD into the laptop I'm presently using, I was pleased to learn that he had put together almost one-and-a-half hours of an interview with Henry Cooley, the primary source for everything that concerns BCTS football.

I am not sure how to best share the interviews we have recorded. I am trying to get a few Webb students to take on the task of putting together a documentary film. There is already enough material, I think, for at least a 3o minute film....

To ask students to join in is to task them with a Curriculum 21 initiative. The process of making sense of the BCTS story and putting it into documentary form would challenge them as students of English. Constructing a narrative of this type for public viewing? That is what the specialists call a "performance task."

It is what I call another way to get the story out, to move the ball down the field. Students have easy access to decent recording technology, and they have time that I lack during the schoolyear.

Charlie Abernathy is gone, but surely another Webb Foot will step up and move things along.

BCTS is Number One!

2011-07-03T09:09:00.003-05:00

I have been waiting for the morning to arrive, and today was the day. David Climer published a lengthy and detailed article in The Tennessean about local sports records that are least likely to be broken. Here it is:http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110703/SPORTS11/307030087/10-Middle-Tennessee-sports-records-will-stand-forever?odyssey=mod_sectionstories
I was delighted to learn that Bedford County Training School's streak of 52 shutouts topped the list. Thanks to David for his thorough description of the streak; it puts the spotlight, however briefly, on a remarkable feat of athletic success. I called Henry Cooley this morning to tell him about the article, and I am looking forward to calling others associated with BCTS.

This is, as I've insisted before, a great story--a story full of great people.

It has been a pleasure and an honor to share it with others, and David has passed the story on to an even wider audience.

Interviews of Bo Melson and Will P. Martin

2011-06-15T07:54:00.008-05:00

Yesterday Charlie Abernathy delivered a DVD full of footage from last summer's interview with Bo Melson and Will P. Martin. Melson, who as a boy watched the "Fighting Tigers," was a long-time writer for the Shelbyville newspaper and often published articles about BCTS football. Martin taught and coached at BCTS, and he had a profound influence on Pork Chop Mitchell.

In almost an hour-and-a-half of interview footage Melson and Martin share their memories. Among other things, Melson mentions that the BCTS program was hurt in the early 1950's when many of its prospective students answered the call to serve in the military during the Korean War. It turns out that Mr. Martin served on the draft board in Bedford County, which apparently had a reputation for providing a steady number of volunteers. Given the financial status of many young men in Bedford County, a career in the military was very enticing in those days.

Martin speaks about the Cedar Bucket games and all the hoopla surrounding these Thanksgiving Day events. He confirmed that the A & I band (later known as TSU) traditionally came down from Nashville to entertain the crowds at halftime. The lights were, in fact, shut off, and flashing lights on the band members' hats and shoes became a thrilling part of the show. He also confirmed that a live turkey, painted BCTS blue on one side and Holloway red on the other, was the comical object of pursuit by selected fans. The person who captured the poor creature both bagged their main course for dinner and a prize of five dollars.

Melson notes that the BCTS coaches kept their offensive schemes fairly simple, relying mostly on running plays. When Pork Chop Mitchell began to play at tight end, however, his coaches began to develop a passing game. Martin also speaks at length about Pork Chop's singular dedication to playing the end position. It is no wonder that he ultimately became the prototype for today's NFL player at that position; his formidable size and athleticism matched his genuine dedication to the game.

Martin and Melson both revisit the relatively easy transition from segregated to desegregated schools in Shelbyville during the 1960's. The football players, they say, knew and respected each other, and this was helpful during a potentially trying process. It did not hurt that, oblivious to any adult's objection, Central and BCTS players sometimes scrimmaged in preparation for their upcoming opponents.

There are many more gems contained in the interviews, and perhaps I will be able to post some of the footage on this blog. Before I sign out I need to thank Charlie for recording and editing this material. So many of the key players in this story are 70 or older, so getting their stories recorded is essential.

Charlie is leaving Webb School after a short but very productive few years in our admissions department. He is headed to Hollywood to pursue a career in acting and in screenwriting, and I know for certain that he has in this BCTS story the raw materials for a dramatic narrative that could play well some day on the big screen.

Charlie, it has been a pleasure to work with you on this project, and I wish you nothing but the best in the years to come. As I shared with you before, and as Wayne Gretsky once said, we miss 100% of the shots we don't take. Kudos to you, young man, for going west and taking a shot at achieving your dreams.

Smarts and Speed

2011-01-22T08:43:00.005-06:00

I posted on Facebook a few minutes ago that I was blogging about the beginning of a football program at Webb. Now I suppose it is nose to the grindstone and to the promised blogging.
This I know: Monday in Chapel, right after I announced that the quiz bowl team had qualified for nationals (New Orleans in May), Athletic Director Scott Dorsett asked that all students interested in playing football next year meet with him after Chapel.
That is all I know. I suspect that, if we go ahead with the program, Webb would start by playing in a local 7 0n 7 league, but this is pure speculation. I believe that there are several teams in a league in Franklin, TN., and this would seem like a reasonable way to start. Nobody, however, has solicited my opinion on the matter. In fact, I was completely surprised when Scott called his meeting.
This morning I told Jim Bomar, veteran football player at Vanderbilt and father of a Webb alum, that it looked like Webb was starting up a program. Jim is a member of the 82 Market Men's Club, where all one needs is pure speculation, so I am thinking word will get around about football at Webb, especially among the Cascade football supporters. I told Jim that I already knew that Scott Dorsett could coach, because I watched his girls basketball team decimate St. Andrews- Sewanee not long ago. The girls go at least nine deep, which is a luxury that is rare for girls b-ball at Webb, and their depth is a testament to Scott's guidance. They play with intensity on defense and with deliberate purpose on offense. They move without the ball, they box out, they follow their shots. Many of them were sound fundamentally when they showed up for practice in the fall, but their play as a team is a product of good coaching. If, as I'm told, he has a background in coaching football, he is the obvious man for the job.
Coaching. My quiz bowl players call me Coach Smith and that is good enough for me. After retiring from basketball coaching in 1997, I vowed to stay with academic coaching. While I can't say that I long for a return to the bench, I will admit that I miss having a hand in the games. At my back, though, I always hear, a stack of English essays whispering in my ear. I do not foresee a return to the sidelines.

I told Jim, in jest, that I have not yet been offered the defensive coordinator position. I will say that as my football career drew to a close I was a good outside linebacker and tight end for Campus School's team. I often forget and fail to say, however, that my playing days did not extend past elementary school. From 7th grade on it was basketball and baseball for me, and I dropped the latter after 9th grade to specialize in the former.
I warned my students this week about the dangers of logorrhea, the bane of excessive and disconnected verbiage, and the hypocrisy gods are no doubt threatening to hurl thunderbolts at me and my disconnected wordsmithing. Let me get to the point: I am calling this post "Smarts and Speed" because on Wednesday night, during halftime at the Vanderbilt-Ole Miss game, I happened upon Vanderbilt's new football coach, James Franklin, the subject of my most recent post. I was coming around a corner and he was headed the opposite direction. Unlike, say, a Coach Dooley at UT who had just been introduced to the faithful fans, Franklin was not surrounded by a mob of adoring well-wishers. He appeared to be just another guy like me who was headed to the concession stand. We shook hands and I said, "Coach, keep recruiting smarts and speed." He gave me a surprised look and said, "You get it!" And then we both went on our way.
If Webb does play football, they will have to succeed with smarts and speed, much like Vanderbilt. This I believe. It could happen, and I for one would enjoy watching from the stands--most likely not from the sidelines. Not that I haven't thought about it. Once a coach always a coach, etc., but my lovely better half, my wife Edwina, would probably threaten me with an extended time out for even considering such a proposition. Enough said.
"Smarts and speed." Maybe I should patent that. Not to brag but that was a good distillation of a formula for winning at a "small" school. My teaching colleague and fellow Vanderbilt fan Mary Jo Johnson says that Coach Franklin would do well to adopt the phrase as his mantra.
Have at it, Coach. I'll be in the stands, all in as hope proverbially springs eternal.

All In

2011-01-09T06:05:00.005-06:00

It is 6:09 am here in the Big Room on the Webb School campus. I came over to grab a batch of vocabulary quizzes that I need to grade, but I got distracted. It's that basketball jones thing. It's that time of year.
Now that I have discovered ESPN3 (yes, I am a slow learner), and now that I have an LCD player in my classroom, I can watch replays of Vanderbilt basketball games by projecting them on the wall of my classroom. This capability, on an early Sunday morning, virtually assures that my basketball jones will prevail over the quotidian demands of grading quizzes.
I say that I can watch Vanderbilt basketball because that is all the basketball that I allow myself to watch. In other words, I have contained my basketball jones. I have tried to set limits. Edwina and I have season tickets at Memorial Gym, and attending home games and watching the occasional away game fulfills my craving for college hoops.
We did the same thing for college football, and I suspect that this will continue. Instead of watching ballgames that have little or no meaning, I watch games that involve ye olde alma mater. This level of involvement is enough in our busy lives.
I called this entry "All In" because that was the buzz-phrase when Vanderbilt recently hired James Franklin as head coach of the football program. "I'm all in" was the mantra that both Franklin and Chancellor Nick Zeppos deliberately repeated at the press conference when Franklin's hiring was announced.
Being "all in" at Memorial Gym is easy. Kevin Stallings is one of the best coaches in the country, and he and his staff have assembled a talented bunch of players who themselves are "all in." Watching these games, as a former player and coach, I am usually thrilled to see Vanderbilt's players exemplify the team approach to college basketball. Stallings is a demanding coach who expects his players to work within a system, and when it works it works very well. The basketball team wins games.
Why all the babbling about Vanderbilt? I originally wanted to write this morning about Perry Wallace, the first African-American student to compete in sports at an SEC school. Vanderbilt was the university that promoted integration in the SEC, and its hiring of James Franklin is an extension of that story. When Franklin was hired (and now I am finally getting to the BCTS narrative) I could not help but think of a certain young African-American coach who was hired many years ago to start a football program at Bedford County Training School. He, needless to say, won games.
Franklin is young and talented and hungry for success, and he will recruit players who are young and talented and hungry for success. His level of success at Vanderbilt will never match that of BCTS football in the glory years, but few programs (read all the other entries) have achieved that level of success--which is why I started this blog in the first place.
As I said above, it is easy to be "all in" as a Vanderbilt alumnus when I visit Memorial Gym. It is great to show up with the expectation that the team is going to win. Honestly, it would have been naive to show up at Dudley Field the past two years with the same expectation. The last two years of our "Vanderbilt only" plan, we have had great seats for home football games, and with the hiring of Coach Franklin I plan on renewing our season tickets. It will take time to turn things around, and Franklin is one of many coaches to arrive in Nashville with ambitious goals.
Why do I think that Franklin has a shot at changing expectations? He is young and gifted and hungry for success, and he is a proven recruiter who now seems to have the financial support needed to go hunting for players who are young, gifted, and hungry.
I am all in because I want to be all in. As an alum I cannot take off the black and gold and wear orange during the football season. I can't do it. Vanderbilt may have taken a chance on Franklin when many thought the program needed a veteran head coach, but I think it was time to roll the dice and see how things play out.
Franklin is a winner who may well change the expectations of those of us who return to Dudley Field in the fall. He will be all in, his players will be all in, but it remains to be seen how many season ticket holders will be all in.
For now, back to basketball. I've had ESPN3 on pause while I've typed out this first (and likely final) draft of this morning's musings. Vanderbilt is schooling South Carolina on the road, and it is time to go all in...again.

Anecdotes

2010-07-07T11:00:00.005-05:00

I have good news: Charlie Abernathy and I are scheduled to interview both Bo Melson and Will P. Martin this Saturday. We taped our first interview with Henry Cooley in "my" classroom at Webb School, but Charlie suggests that we move operations to Bond Library for this next taping. This takes me out of the comfort zone of Big Room 11, but I am willing to make adjustments if needed. Charlie has taken charge of the production of what we hope will emerge as a documentary, and his technical expertise is badly needed for this to happen.

Henry has played a huge role in arranging Saturday's interviews, and he plans to be there as well. He also indicated to me yesterday that Ms. Mary Gray, a long-time teacher of English at BCTS and elsewhere, is leaning towards sitting for an interview. Virtually all members of the BCTS community mention her and her legendary teachings when they are asked about academics at the school. It will be a genuine pleasure to hear her talk about her decades of teaching experiences.

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I spoke last time about narrative truth, and I want to talk briefly today about the anecdotal side of my research. As I speak to more and more people about the BCTS story, I hear more and more stories. In the last blog I mentioned the need to screen stories, and this is necessary as I continue my research. There is, however, a beauty to be found in the briefest of anecdotes, and as Charlie and I try to tell the larger story the smallest of stories can add color to the tapestry.

This morning while I was working out at Barton Gym an older colleague of mine shared his memories of watching the Cedar Bucket games. He said that he cannot remember going to any of Central's games, but that he went to several BCTS-Holloway showdowns on Thanksgiving Day. He went to other regular season matches, including one that pitted BCTS against a team from Lewisburg. He vividly remembers standing on the sidelines and watching Lewisburg's quarterback take a beating from BCTS' formidable defense. Sometime late in the second quarter, the quarterback hit the ground hard after another fierce hit. He stayed on the ground, seeking comfort on the sidelines beside his teammates, and begged his coach to take him out of the game. The coach told him, much to the amusement of the BCTS fans, to get his butt back on the field.

This is a snapshot of a memory, but enough snapshots, when melded together into a larger picture, can collectively tell a great story.

Made to be Broken?

2010-06-29T12:43:00.002-05:00

The old adage tells us that "Records are made to be broken," but BCTS's record of 52 consecutive shutouts will not be broken anytime soon. David Climer, who is writing an article for the Tennessean about local sports records, seems to agree with me. He e-mailed the other day to express his interest in the BCTS record, and I am looking forward to talking to him about the Fighting Tigers' accomplishment.
The 52 game streak is listed in the TSSAA record book as having occured from 1942-49. I double-checked the record this morning when I open David's e-mail, because authentication is critical. Old sports stories can easily take on the aspect of old fishing tales, and I want to make sure that I have my facts straight.
An example of a "fishing story" I encountered in my BCTS research is this reminiscence shared by a graduate of Holloway High School: while I was in search of the Cedar Bucket, I heard from a lady who claimed that she competed in a footrace against Wilma Rudolph in high school. "I would've beaten her," she said, "but I had a bad cold and she beat me by a step." Another Holloway graduate summed up his disdain for, and dominance of, Jim Mitchell during a Cedar Bucket matchup: "I sat on Pork Chop." Both stories, while possibly true, leave a fishy aftertaste.
Naming no names, but some of the stories I've heard in my research have seemed a bit farfetched, and part of my task is to sort them out. That said, all of the stories, in their colorful telling, seem to enliven their tellers with the boost of energy and excitement that high school memories often elicit. Nothing is more enjoyable than to see a 70 year old come alive as he or she recounts the glory years of youth.
And any good story that is well told, fishing or otherwise, has its own kind of truth brought about by its own kind of narrative magic.

Summertime, and the Living is Easier

2010-06-02T13:28:00.005-05:00

I like to call it "moving the chains," this business of advancing the BCTS story down the field. Now that Webb has graduated its class of 2010, now that the grades and grade reports are in, I have more time to devote to this work.
Webb School benefitted tremendously from Gordon Bondurant's year as interim headmaster. At a short ceremony a few days ago, the faculty met to thank this first-class gentleman for his many contributions during his brief tenure. At this gathering, I happened to tell a younger colleague and former student, Charlie Abernathy, about my BCTS project. It turns out that Charlie is interested in helping me tell the story via a documentary film, and he and I are just beginning to explore the possibility. Charlie's enthusiasm for the story will no doubt help move the chains.
Charlie wants me to conduct the interviews for the film, so today I called Henry Cooley, who of course is ready at any time to be interviewed. Others who are at the top of the list include Bo Melson, sportswriter for the Times-Gazette who covered the Fighting Tigers and other Shelbyville athletes for several decades, and Professor Will P. Martin, who taught and coached Henry Cooley, Pork Chop Mitchell, and many others during his career in education.
Given my newly found "free" time, I am reviewing many of the notes I took over the past few years. I have scribbled more than 125 pages of notes in my BCTS composition book, and it is fascinating to revisit my research and remember the joys of discovery.
There are many things in those notes that I've never recorded in here. For example, Pork Chop Mitchell also played baseball for Prairie View A & M. He caught the attention of the St. Louis Cardinals, who eagerly offered him a tryout. Mitchell declined, and shortly thereafter he was drafted in the 4th round by the Atlanta Falcons. The rest is the history that I am trying to uncover.
For several years, Mitchell held summer football camps for the youth of Shelbyville, and Henry has shared many photographs of Mitchell and his invited guests, many of whom were former NFL players. I do not think that I have mentioned much yet about these camps, and I am sure that I have not mentioned that Mitchell served as a volunteer coach for many teams during his later years, including Shelbyville Central. Many boys from the Shelbyville area remember Pork Chop's instruction and guidance over the years. Many more remember that they were never turned away from the camps because of their inabilty to pay a registration fee.

I had lunch today at the Cedar Bucket, a dining establishment that has recently moved from Shelbyville to Murfreesboro. It looks like business is good, and based on my own meat-and-three experience today, I can see why. Most of the memorabilia at the Cedar Bucket pertains to Holloway High School, but I believe that Henry, Charlie, and I can slowly bring BCTS back into the picture.
After all, the bucket was owned by the Fighting Tigers until the very last year that the two teams competed. The least we could do is get one of those "ghost team" photographs, perhaps a copy of the one that is displayed in Shelbyville at Legend's restaurant, and have it displayed prominently at the Cedar Bucket.
That would balance things out a bit.

Teaching

2010-04-23T10:51:00.006-05:00

I am a teacher of English, and often I become so accustomed to covering students' essays in bloody red ink that I forget how difficult it is to write. One remedy, sharing my published writing with my students, always forces me to revisit the difficult process of selecting an interesting and manageable topic, adequately researching the material, organizing my thoughts in outline form, putting those thoughts on paper, and then editing and revising multiple drafts before I am satisfied with my "final" copy. After such a revisit I am unlikely to claim that writing is an easy task.
Today I hope to share my piece, which is found on this blog, entitled "In Search of Pork Chop Mitchell and the Cedar Bucket." The best part of my search was my driving interest in discovering more about a story that I genuinely cared about.
If I can remember, I will try to tell them that we cannot manufacture interest or enthusiasm. We must ask the questions we find most compelling, and we must engage ourselves fully in our pursuit of answers.
The process of finding things that we really want to write about is one of the toughest tasks of any writer. And honestly admitting that writing can be painstakenly difficult is one of the necessary admissions of any teacher.

The Blind Side

2009-12-18T13:06:00.003-06:00

I recently loaned my copy of Michael Lewis' "The Blind Side" to Dennis Webb, present mayor of Bell Buckle and former high school football player. He read it, loved it, and with my permission passed it on to colleagues at work. A first printing of this book has increased in monetary value since the feature film hit the theaters in November, and as a collector I am usually protective of such books, but this is one that should not "rust unburnished" on the shelves of my study. While there are some good books written about sports, they are rare, and the story of Michael Oher is one that ought to be shared. The story's value increases as it circulates, and that is the only value that matters.

The Bedford County Training School material I collected and wrote during my sabbatical year has been rusting unburnished since last summer. The chance to share the story through a museum exhibit at the Fly Building offers a way for me to revisit material that I may not have mentioned yet in this blog.

For example, a few days after most of the old and abandoned BCTS schoolbuildings burned to the ground, Mike Bone moderated a discussion between Henry Cooley, Pork Chop Mitchell, Will P. Martin, and another gentleman whose name escapes me. The panel discussion sheds light on the history of the school, and all of it was recorded by a local film crew. Henry Cooley shared a copy of a DVD that contains this valuable discussion, which takes place in the old BCTS gym--one of only a few buildings that survived the devastating fire in 2007.

I mentioned the radio broadcasts--or at least one of them--in a previous entry. Henry recorded two of them on audiocassette. He also recorded a television feature that sportscaster Rudy Kalis did on the Fighting Tigers several years ago.

All of this material has been sitting on the shelves in my study. All of it is worth sharing, and the Fly exhibit will also allow me to share many of the old newspaper clippings and photographs that Henry entrusted to me.

At the Bradley Academy exhibit in Murfreesboro, there is video footage of one of the Cedar Bucket football games between rivals BCTS and Holloway. Maybe we can figure out a way to feature some of this footage in the Fly exhibit. Henry and many of the BCTS alums most likely have no idea that such rare footage exists; it would be a thrill to share it with them.

I hope that I can take time over the Christmas break to start work on the exhibit, and Ralph Waldo Emerson's words of encouragement come to mind: "Do the thing and you will have the power."

After a day of putting exams and grades and comments behind me, I look forward to feeling the power that comes with taking that first step.

A Museum Piece

2009-12-15T13:11:00.002-06:00

I gave my English exams on Saturday, leaving me more days than usual to avoid grading them. One of my favorite means of avoidance has been thinking about reviving this blog. There is nothing like a heaping stack of essays to make me run for diversions.
Running errands yesterday in Shelbyville, (suddenly there were all these things that had to be done to create preconditions for grading essays) I decided to stop by the Fly Building to see if any of my BCTS material was on display. I corresponded last summer with a young lady who was serving as an intern at the Fly; we had discussed the possibility of adding a BCTS display to the museum there. I sent her some of my materials, including everything on this blog, but I did not hear back from her.
So it goes. Yesterday I learned that my material was not on display. I had the good fortune, however, of crossing paths with Janice Cole, the Fly's director. She took me on a tour of the museum and, as I told her about the BCTS narrative, she showed a keen interest. Her schedule at the Fly is fairly light in January, and she is interested in promoting the very kind of BCTS display that I had envisioned.
Of course, there is work to be done so that I can clear the table for this project. There are, let's see, 57 students of mine--all of whom wrote three different essays for Saturday's exam. 171 essays? Merry Christmas to me.
Something tells me that my New Year's resolution will be to advance the BCTS story down the field, both with this blog and with the historic display at the Fly.
For now, though, things are a bit more pedestrian. I have to open up a sizable can of T-R-Y and grade these bloody essays.
Anne Lamott says that "procrastination is the enemy of the people," and I wholeheartedly agree. I must take up sword and shield and do battle with the Procrastination monster. Then I'll get back to the fun stuff.

Trading Cards

2009-06-23T08:16:00.000-05:00

My mother threw my old trading cards away when I went away for college. I can't blame her. They were sitting idly in the attic of our house, remnants of my boyhood obsessions, and I, suddenly a somber if not self-important student of philosophy in college, had expressed no recent interest in them. In fact, I was disdainful towards the athletic department at Vanderbilt, believing that tens of thousands of dollars to purchase state-of-the-art stadium lights for Dudley Field was money that could have been better spent on purchasing library books. In my philosophical rejection of the obscene amounts of money spent on athletics (and this was in the early 1980's!), I missed some SEC opportunities: Herschel Walker running the ball for the Georgia Bulldogs, or Charles Barkley, the "Round Mound of Rebound," playing basketball for the Auburn Tigers. I could go on with the list of phenomenal athletes who played against Vanderbilt in that era, but my point is this: I did not want to consider the possibility that college sports and a serious study of philosophy were not necessarily mutually exclusive pursuits. Or something like that. I at least try to reconcile the two things now, as difficult as that can be.

I was an angry young man, willfully pissed that umpteen thousand early-1980's dollars were going to enhance the lighting of the Hershel Walker highlight reels.

Check out his college highlights from back in the day. There are a lot of guys in gold helmets chasing Walker from behind, except for the guys in gold helmets that he had already bowled over.

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I digress. Here are the cards, which I found as links on a website of the Atlanta Falcons. I don't have them all, but most of them are here:

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/03/Trading_Cards_031808/mitchell1971.aspx

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/03/Trading_Cards_032508/mitchell1972.aspx

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/04/Trading_Cards_040108/mitchell1973.aspx

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/04/Trading_Cards_040808/mitchell1974.aspx

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/05/Trading_Cards_050708/mitchell1975.aspx

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/05/Trading_Cards_051308/mitchell1976.aspx

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/05/Trading_Cards_052808/mitchell1977.aspx

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/06/062408_Trading_Cards/mitchell1978.aspx

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2009/02/Trading_Cards_020309/mitchell1979.aspx

I will likely re-read them, because with each reading I am reminded of how brilliant and enduring an athlete Jim Mitchell was. No wonder I idolized him in my youth, before my desire to wear the helmets of continental philosophy and deconstruction got the best of me.

Thursday Night Lights Out*

2009-06-17T16:35:00.000-05:00

Ever since I began my BCTS research I've revisited some of my favorite sports films: Hoosiers, Hoop Dreams, and Remember the Titans immediately come to mind. A few months in I started searching for new stories, however, thinking that perhaps I had a new story, and it was then that I stumbled upon the NBC pilot for its television adaptation of Friday Night Lights.

I admit that my research on BCTS football-- the 82 game streak, the 52 consecutive shutouts, the firebrand of a coach who brought discipline and success to a high school program--has prompted fantasies about writing a screenplay for a feature film. These have remained largely fantasies, and will likely stay so.

However, after watching all three seasons of Friday Night Lights, after learning that the series has been renewed for two more seasons, and especially after discovering the final plot twist at the end of season three, my fantasies have been revived.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story line, the third season of FNL ends with Coach Taylor being replaced as coach of the Dillon Panthers, the victim of small-town politics. He is reassigned to coach at East Dillon High, which is slated to reopen the next fall with its antiquated facilities after having been closed for many years.

The final shot of the season has Coach Taylor and his wife Tammy standing in the middle of the old football field at East Dillon, surrounded by substandard bleachers, lost in the uncertainty of it all. Amidst this dreary setting, though, there lurks the thought nurtured by any true believer in the virtues of the underdog: the promise that in its heydey this field was the setting for some very gifted athletes playing some very good football.

The field and stadium of East Dillon are remarkably similar to the field and stadium where Bedford County Training School used to play its brand of very good football. Texas, like Tennessee, had its own segregated interscholastic leagues before its native son Lyndon Johnson pushed for civil rights in our country. The similarities are compelling.

What if? What if the writers for Friday Night Lights were to incorporate a rich football tradition at East Dillon, very similar to that of Bedford County Training School, into its storyline? The list of phenomenal football players from Texas high schools who played in the segregated system and later played in the NFL is impressive. There are any number of Pork Chop Mitchell's for the writers to choose from.

What if? What if the writers were to incorporate the small-town racial tensions that were an inevitable part of that bygone era? What if Coach Taylor were to hire some of East Dillon's old football stars to coach their grandchildren, the ones who still live on the "wrong" side of the dividing line that sends certain kids to East Dillon, where there is neither a Jumbotron nor a disturbingly wealthy and influential booster club?

What if? What if some of East Dillon's legendary teachers came out of retirement to teach kids on the "wrong" side of the dividing line? What if they had to see history repeat itself as they fought for funding for AP programs while, on the other side of town, the Dillon Panther coaching staff was showered with yet another cutting edge computer system?

There are a lot of "What ifs?" for development. There are a lot of possibilties, and the racial and social issues in the 21st century of course ought to include Hispanics, a group that has been largely ignored during the first three seasons of the show. Fortunately, there are two seasons worth of stories left for the writers to construct, and they can still add several interesting curves to their narrative arcs.

I would love to correspond with these writers, because I think there is gold to be be found if they dug deeply enough in examining the many "What if's" that the BCTS storyline, properly appropriated, can generate for Friday Night Lights.

A treasure trove of social commentary is not that far from the surface.

*During the classic Thankgiving Day battles for the Cedar Bucket, the famous marching band from Tennessee State University (then called Tennessee A & I) often performed at halftime--in the dark. Apparently it was a tradition for the lights to go out so that the band could light up the place with its sharp music and even sharper choreography.

I am told that some people, indifferent to football, came strictly for the "Lights Out" show during the Cedar Bucket days.

I swear that there is gold for the taking here.

Racism

2009-05-26T16:34:00.000-05:00

It has been too long since my last post, and I am afraid that my only reason is cowardice.
My football career ended when I was in 6th grade, when I put away the shoulder pads for good after three years of playing YMCA ball for Campus School in Memphis. By the time I was a 6th grader, I was a decent player, but what I mostly remember is the sheer terror I felt, as a rookie 4th grader, when we were forced to run "head-on" drills in practice.
The drill is simple: the players assemble in two single-file lines, with the ones who are first in their respective lines standing about ten yards apart. Once the whistle blows, the two at the front of their line are supposed to run head-on into each other, one-on-one and may the best man (or boy) win. This was what later became known to me as "smash-mouth" football. There is no evading your opponent; there is only full-speed contact. Brute force. Might did make right.
I remember standing in line and counting heads on the opposite line, hoping that I would not have to run a head-on with a giant 6th grader. There was one boy, the largest and the hardest-hitting of the older boys, whose name I still remember: Tommy Tilson. I would lie, cheat, or steal to avoid a head-on with that kid, and I'm certain that I did all I could to avoid him.
My point is this: racism is the Tommy Tilson of my BCTS narrative. I have avoided much mention of it so far, but today I bought a book that forced me to do a head-on with this subject. The book is The Children of the South, written by Margaret Anderson.
Anderson writes about her experience as a teacher in the public high school in Clinton, Tennessee. Clinton High was the first school in Tennessee to desegregate, a process that began peacefully but shortly became a nightmare of hatred and violence for an otherwise quiet town in East Tennessee in the 1950's.
One of the lowlights of the story occurs in the fall of 1959, when the school was destroyed: dynamite, courtesy of the lily-white "Citizens' Council," did its deadly work. No children were in the building at the time of the explosions, but the damage was nonetheless devastating for the community and the rest of the country.
My story of playground cooperation in Shelbyville is a thing of beauty, but not everything concerning race relations in Bedford County was always so beautiful. In fact, there was a firebombing in that story as well, a firebombing and subsequent burning of the Bedford County Courthouse by a mob of angry whites during the trial of a black man accused of raping a white girl. The burning of the courthouse occured in the 1930's, and the story of BCTS' victory streak begins in 1943. No matter how much I want to avoid it, I cannot: not everything about race relations in Bedford County was as beautiful as the story of blacks and whites playing sandlot football together. And 1943 is not very far removed from the burning of the courthouse.
The burning of the courthouse in Shelbyville made national news. It, like Tommy Tilson, was no small thing.
I suppose it is time for a head-on.

*****************************************************

Here is Time magazine's account of the courthouse burning and the events that preceded it: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,754475-1,00.html#

RADIO INTERVIEW AT WLIJ

2009-04-22T14:01:00.000-05:00

Pictured, left to right: Henry Cooley, Samuel Whitmon, Cecil Whitmon, Will P. Martin, Henry B. Hamilton, Lendell Massengale, Samuel Abernathy.

Several years ago these gentlemen assembled for a radio interview, hosted by Will Overcast, on Shelbyville's WLIJ-AM. Henry has given me a copy of the broadcast, but it is on cassette tape and will have to be transferred to a different format for me to post it here.

For now, let me go left to right for some brief introductions:

Henry Cooley: the man who has worked hard to keep the BCTS story alive

Samuel Whitmon: played for BCTS during the golden era of 1943-50*

Cecil Whitmon: played for BCTS during the golden era of 1943-50

Will P. Martin: taught and coached at BCTS/Harris High School

Henry B. Hamilton: played for BCTS in the 1930's

Lendell Massengale: coached and taught at BCTS/Harris High School

Samuel Abernathy: played for BCTS during the golden era of 1943-50

Henry tells me that there are fewer than ten players from the 1943-50 era who are still living, and pictured above are a handful of that company. As I am introduced to them and their roles in the BCTS story, I have obviously been impressed by their successes on the football field. I've been even more impressed, however, by the contributions all of them made in their adult lives. Influenced by Professor E.C. Finley and their other teachers at BCTS, they have gone on to coach, teach, and lead in innumerable ways, giving back to others what they once received from their elders.

*For just one example of the influence that many BCTS players later had others, both on the playing field and in the classroom, see http://www.onnidan.com/02-03/news/august/tnst0814.htm for a review of Samuel Whitmon's career. One of the best quarterbacks ever to don the blue and gold at BCTS, he mentored thousands of young people at Fisk University and Tennessee State University.

RITES OF PASSAGE

2009-04-22T13:50:00.000-05:00

My mother, my wife, the author, and my father at the University of Virginia in May 1992.

I want to do more with today's post than time will permit. What I want to do is talk about how, in the 1940's and 50's, an era of racial segregation, the game of football brought Shelbyville's whites and blacks together on a practice field adjacent to Central's official playing field.

Bedford County Training School played its home football games on Shelbyville Central's field. Central, which was the "white" school before desegregation, played its games on Friday nights.

The beauty of the story, however, comes from what the players chose to do on the weekends. They played football together, not as blacks or whites, but as young people pursuing their collective passion.

I have written many words on this phenomenonal story, but Shelbyville's sandlot story continues to amaze me. It has also forced me to think back to my own experiences on the playground. It has made me understand how seemingly meaningless contests, in retrospect, combined to provide a most meaningful rite of passage:

For many of us, the seriousness of a child at play was most intense on the playing fields of our youth. If we force ourselves to travel back to those playing fields, many of us can revisit the crucible where character was forged. I know that I learned to become a man on those playing fields, most of the time with no adult intervention, and I suspect that many of you know exactly what I am talking about. A remarkable phenomenon occurred on a regular basis: a society-unto-itself was created by willing adolescents. Whatever the game, we had to establish the rules of the game and we had to agree to play by the rules. There were no adult officials in striped shirts to keep us in line. We kept ourselves in line.
What better way was there to prepare ourselves for the challenges of our adult lives?

On the playground no outcome is predetermined, your family’s status or the color of your skin is irrelevant. What matters is how well you play the game. On the playground your parents’ way of keeping score disappears. Your talents are tested with no guarantees of success, and this is the way it has to be for real growth to take place. Despite the rough and tumble of often fierce competition, a potential Hobbesian war of all versus all usually becomes a workable and orderly realm; young people construct their own worlds within the boundaries of the playing field, accepting the social contract where playing by the rules is the mark of a good citizen. Those who do not play by the rules are the outliers, and they eventually either adapt to expectations or find other places to play. It is democracy in action.

How, you may ask, does all of this relate to the Fighting Tigers Bedford County Training School? In a very interesting way. I am told by many former players that skin color was of no real significance during the playground matches. Captains were agreed upon, and they picked their players. They picked the players who could play the game. They picked the players who could move the ball down the field. They picked the players who could prevent the other team from advancing downfield.

I recognize that there was no such thing as a color-blind, utopian meritocracy on Shelbyville's playing fields. But I do know that when I asked my father, an accomplished football player in the late 1950's at East High School in Memphis, if blacks and whites played sandlot games together back in the day, he insisted that this did not take place in Memphis until much later.

I have been told that when BCTS (then known as Harris High School) closed in the 1960's in order to fully integrate Shelbyville Central, the transition, while not an easy one, was eased because many of the blacks and whites knew each other well before desegregation took place.

That is a great story that is in stark contrast to my own experiences back in the early 1970's, when the process of school desegregation in Memphis was rife with conflict and turmoil.

Time is short this evening, and there is so much more that I want to say.

I'll save it for a later post.

PORK CHOP MITCHELL: A STARTER AND A STAR

2009-04-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Jim "Pork Chop" Mitchell started playing football for BCTS when he was in the 8th grade. And, as he was quick to point out to anyone who cared to know, he started on the varsity team as an 8th grader. He played on the offensive line initially, but eventually he was moved to tight end when coaches began to recognize his unique combination of size, speed, and soft hands.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the quest for good football equipment at BCTS was an ongoing one. Pork Chop was issued a pair of pants for his first game that were several sizes too large. Just happy to be in the game, however, he tightened his belt and played his best. "I must have done a pretty good job, because when I showed up for practice the next Monday there was a brand new pair of pants waiting for me."

Nothing succeeds like success. In five years of playing football for BCTS, four years of playing college ball at Prarie View A&M, and eleven years of playing for the NFL's Atlanta Falcons, Pork Chop Mitchell started every single game he ever suited up for. Altogether, he was a starter, and a star, for twenty consecutive years.

**********************************************************

Here is a Topp's trading card issued early in Mitchell's NFL career. His talent was apparent to all who saw him play:

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/media_library/Photos/2008/03/Trading_Cards_031808/mitchell1971.aspx

THE FISK CONNECTION

2009-04-20T05:57:00.001-05:00

As organized sports go, fielding and outfitting a football team is extraordinarily expensive. Professor Sidney W. Harris, the longtime principal at Bedford County Training School, was famous for his ability to work wonders on a very small budget. The story of how the Fighting Tigers came to don the blue and gold colors for the first time certainly attests to his legendary abilities.

Harris, a graduate of Fisk, paid a visit to Nashville in 1937 with one goal in mind: he wanted to land the best football coach he could find for BCTS. According to Will P. Martin, a Fisk graduate who also coached football at BCTS, Harris approached Fisk's athletic director and made his needs emphatically and unequivocally clear, "I want an All-American."

Harris asked and he received. The athletic director pointed him towards Edward Finley, who had played center at Fisk for three years in the 1930's. After a brief conversation, Finley agreed to move to Shelbyville to begin a career in coaching. Wasting no time, Harris then asked Fisk's athletic director if he had any football equipment to spare.

Again, Harris asked and he received. A trip to the locker room yielded all the free second-hand equipment that Finley needed, and the Fisk blue and gold on the discarded jerseys immediately became BCTS' school colors and stayed so for years to come.

The Fisk connection was not restricted to athletics, however. Sidney Harris established an academic pipeline as well, and some of the best teachers at BCTS over the years were proud Fisk graduates.

Incidentally, Edward Finley was never called Coach Finley. He was known to players and students alike as Professor Finley, a teacher of young men and women. His training at Fisk clearly paid quick dividends, as it took him only two years to begin to field a highly competitive team at BCTS.

Ghost Team

2009-04-19T10:57:00.000-05:00

The caption to this photograph, which was taken by Bo Melson for the January 8, 2007 Shelbyville Times-Gazette, reads: "Memories and more went up in flames earlier today when fire flared up in the old portion of the former Bedford County Training School on Elm Street. The building, which later housed Harris High School and, following integration, Central Junior High and Harris Middle School, burned to the grounds as high winds hampered personnel from Shelbyville Fire Department and Volunteer Fire Services, Inc. Cause of the fire, reported at 2:33 a.m., was undetermined, fire officials said."

Henry Cooley, as I've said repeatedly, is the authority on the Bedford County Training School football legend, but there are some gaps in his knowledge. One of the team photographs from the 1940's designates that team of Fighting Tigers as the "Ghost Team," and Henry has told me that he has no idea what the name means or how it came about.
To me, though, everything about the BCTS story makes it clear how any of these teams could be considered a "Ghost Team." The stories that Henry and a few others have tried to preserve are easily lost, easily forgotten, easily relegated to the proverbial dustbin of history. Stories may not disappear as quickly as abandoned school buildings, but abandoned stories that are not preserved and protected can steadily vanish over time.
In January of 2007, part of the BCTS story went up in flames when the old school buildings burned to the ground. The old gym survived the fire, but virtually everything else was destroyed. This almost total loss, coupled with the death of Jim "Pork Chop" Mitchell the next fall, gave further impetus to my desire to research and write about all of the "Ghost Teams" that once made headlines but now seemed to be vanishing into nothingness. A curiosity became a compulsion, and it was then that I knew that I would have to contact Henry Cooley.
When I called Henry last August to introduce myself, he and I arranged a visit to my house on September 11. Henry came to my house, as I've said before, with a diverse collection of memorabilia, but the most precious of these was a brick that Henry had salvaged from the smoldering remains of the fire that previous January.
Henry wanted me to have the brick, which he had painted blue. In gold letters he wrote on the front of the brick "B.C.T.S. FOOTBALL FIGHTING TIGERS NATIONAL RECORD 82-0-4." Blue and gold were the team colors, colors that BCTS shared with Fisk University--a connection that I'll explore in a later post.
Henry knew little about me; he only knew of my interest in the story. His trust in me to help him share this story is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received, and my desire to tell the story is reignited every time I look at the blue and gold brick that survived the fire.

Coach Finley and Rufus White

2009-04-18T21:56:00.000-05:00

Here is the photograph I promised in the previous post.

The author of this feature story describes his first encounter with Rufus White: "Between practice plays, Finley called the first string right guard over to the sidelines. He is Rufus White, 18 years old. He weighs 272 pounds, most of it either bone or muscle. White is a sophomore and unless he is called into the army he'll be around next season, too."
In 2009, weighing 272 can barely qualify one for a spot in The Biggest Loser lineup, but in 1948 Rufus White made for one formidable Fighting Tiger.

60 GAMES UNDEFEATED

2009-04-18T21:21:00.000-05:00

Most of the newspaper clippings that Henry Cooley gave me are in better condition than this one, but it remains one of my favorites. The headline reads "60 GAMES UNDEFEATED," so we know that these players kept the unbeaten string alive during the 1948 season, when this article was published in the Nashville Tennessean Magazine. I also like the figure of E.C. Finley, always a fierce and demanding disciplinarian.
The words underneath the headline read "A 272-pound right guard has something to do with it, but the coach of the Bedford County Training School's team with unbroken luck since 1943 claims that he hasn't a single secret to his name."
In the article, however, Coach Finley does share his defensive mantra: "Tackle anybody who looks like he might have the ball." This may not qualify as a secret, but his strategy was clearly a successful one.
I will try, in a later post, to share the accompanying photograph of Coach Finley and 1oth grader Rufus White, the right guard who weighed 272 pounds.

TRYING TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT

2009-04-17T09:54:00.000-05:00

One final note: there is some dispute regarding the length of the unbeaten streak. Henry and others contend that the streak is 86 games in a row without a loss, but official records can only confirm a streak of 82.
Either way, the Fighting Tigers' accomplishment was extraordinary.

KEEPING THE STORY IN CIRCULATION

2009-04-17T09:17:00.000-05:00

Here we have the author on the left, helping Henry Cooley hold up the sign that he is about to attach to the back of his new truck. For years Henry has kept his own personal "historical marker" on the back of his vehicle, showing his pride and keeping the BCTS football story in circulation, at least around the streets of Shelbyville.
We are pictured in front of Richard's Cafeteria, an eatery located near the original site of Bedford County Training School.
I highly recommend the meat and three option at Richard's.

TAKING THE SNAP FROM CENTER

2009-04-17T08:23:00.000-05:00

Above is a photograph of the 1956 BCTS starting offense. The caption underneath, as published in the Times-Gazette, reads: "From left to right in the line are: right end, David Chunn; right tackle, Roy Clyde Smith; right guard, Floyd Mitchell; center, Henry Cooley; left guard, Wayne Singleton; left tackle, Freddie Sutton; left end, Eugene Ray. In the backfield are quarterback, Joe Frank Jones; right half, William Harris; fullback, Lloyd Mitchell and left half, Lewis McGee."

Twin brothers Lloyd and Floyd Mitchell were Jim "Pork Chop" Mitchell's older brothers, and left end Eugene Ray presently serves as Bedford County Mayor. Henry Cooley, appropriately, is pictured at center, ready to snap the ball and get the whole thing started.

***************************************************************************

I posted yesterday's team picture on my Facebook site, and I am now aware that with this blog and other postings comes responsibility. If the BCTS story is as valuable as I believe, how can I best do it justice? Now that Henry Cooley has handed the story, or snapped the ball, to me, how can I advance the story in the right direction?
My answer comes from a favorite comedy, What About Bob, whose title character resolves to take "baby steps" on his path to personal growth. Bob, played by Bill Murray, strays hilariously from the path, but he does keep moving, and sometimes keeping things moving is all one can reasonably do.
As I have written the past few months about the football team from BCTS, I have kept the metaphor of "moving the chains" in mind. Football fans will recognize the phrase as one that represents earning a first down, as an offensive unit steadily moves the football down the field. The team does not get points until the ball reaches the end zone, but a steady accumulation of first downs, over time, will eventually earn points. Patience and persistence do pay dividends.
A steady accumulation of short posts, over time, may do justice to the story. That is all that I can reasonably hope to achieve here.
****************************************************************
A friend responded to my Facebook posting by complementing the following caption that I composed for the photograph: "Edward C. Finley (second row, far left) was the coach who guided the Fighting Tigers to 78 wins and 4 ties from 1943-50. For years this undefeated streak of 82 games stood as a national record for high school football teams.The team from BCTS continued its streak of shutting out opponents (31 straight at the time of the photograph) all the way to a remarkable 52 consecutive games. This remains a national record which may never be broken."
Knowing that I had at least one reader made such a difference, as I responded to her complement by posting even more information: "After I spoke to the Sertoma Club in February, one of their members encouraged me to start a blog on the BCTS story. I've taken a few baby-blog steps at 52 Goose Eggs, named in honor of the Fighting Tigers' victory streak.By the way, during a three-year stretch the team did not allow its opponents to cross the midfield stripe. As Coach Finley put it, 'The only time our opponents ever crossed the 50-yard line was after each quarter, when we changed the ends of the field.'"

What a difference having a reader makes!

STATE CHAMPIONS 1944-45

2009-04-16T08:13:00.000-05:00

This is the photograph, published years ago in Shelbyville's Times-Gazette, that first attracted me to this fantastic success story.

I am pleased, after several failed attempts, that I have learned how to post old photographs and documents to 52 Goose Eggs. In the days to come I hope to add to the BCTS collection a whole folder full of materials that Henry Cooley shared with me last fall. During recent renovations to our house, I misplaced the folder, but last night I finally located it. Again, this is a story that wants to be told, a resilient story that I am pleased to share with anybody who shares my fascination.

In Search of Pork Chop Mitchell and the Cedar Bucket

2009-04-02T12:25:00.000-05:00

This is an article of mine that was published last October in the Daily News Journal of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

A year ago last Sunday he spent the evening celebrating his 60th birthday. The morning after, a friend discovered his unconscious body on the front porch of his Shelbyville home. Jim “Pork Chop” Mitchell was rushed to Bedford County Hospital, where he was shortly pronounced dead.
The end game had been, in many ways, a losing one for Jim Mitchell. He had lost his eyesight due to complications with diabetes. He had lost the impressive physical conditioning and muscle mass that had once made him one of the NFL’s most formidable tight ends. Less than a year before his death, he had mourned the losses sustained to the remaining buildings of Bedford County Training School, most of which were destroyed in a devastating fire.
His larger story, however, was full of victories, including the known (a storied career with the Atlanta Falcons) and the unknown (his participation in the proud legacy of Harris High School, previously known as BCTS).
I spent three years of my childhood in Atlanta, and I knew plenty about Pork Chop Mitchell’s success as an All-Pro player for the Falcons. What I did not know was that Mitchell came from an extensive tradition of athletic and academic successes at Bedford County Training School. My search for more information on Pork Chop’s life led me to one of his best friends, Henry Cooley, the unofficial historian for BCTS. Cooley, who played center at BCTS in the mid-1950’s, was delighted to tell me the story of the golden era for the Fighting Tigers. From 1943 until 1950, the BCTS Fighting Tigers of Shelbyville played 82 consecutive football games without a loss. For three of those years they did not allow an opponent to advance the football past midfield.
Cooley’s story was one of pure domination, and several of the Fighting Tigers’ victories came at the expense of Murfreesboro’s Holloway High School. Holloway and BCTS, Henry told me, met annually for a much-anticipated Thanksgiving Day ballgame. At stake was the cedar bucket, a prize which the winning team took home, along with bragging rights for a year. Most years the Fighting Tigers won the bucket, which they hung from the ceiling in a central hallway at BCTS.
The last year of competition, however, the team from Holloway won the cedar bucket. “And nobody,” said Cooley, “has seen it since.” My curiosity was heightened, and my search for the cedar bucket began as I sought and collected stories from others. Some said that it was initially on display in a trophy case at Holloway, but that someone had stolen it years ago. Another story suggested that the cedar bucket, along with other “old school” memorabilia, had been found in the garbage at Holloway, carelessly discarded during a summer renovation.
Sorting through the competing narratives, I called upon a dear friend, Sandy Sanders, a librarian and a former colleague of mine at Webb School, to assist me in my quest. During our lunch last week at Clearview, we mapped out various approaches, but Sandy’s primary plan involved a visit to Bradley Academy Museum and Cultural Center.
Before I could even sign in, Sandy approached Katherine Chesterfield, a volunteer guide. Wasting no time, Katherine unlocked and opened the door to a room devoted to showcasing the history of Bradley Academy and Holloway High. Katherine flipped a switch, there was light, and there it was. Paydirt! Six! Touchdown!
I learned plenty about the cedar bucket, now on display in a glass encasement. It was built in 1942 by Mr. Booze Smith, just a year before the BCTS streak of 82 games began. The bucket, specifically created to enhance the rivalry between Holloway and BTCS, was donated to the Bradley Academy Historical Association by Pa Rob and Ethel Smith. The wooden handle of the bucket was worn in the center, as one would expect of a trophy that had hung for years from the ceiling.
I was, of course, thrilled to discover and learn more about the elusive cedar bucket, but our visit to the museum taught me something far more profound. I learned that Dr. George Smith and others had succeeded, after a long struggle, to save and renovate the Bradley Academy building. Along with the cedar bucket, he and others had collected and showcased countless documents which filled the museum and preserved the past. Thinking of the burned remains of BCTS, I understood how easily stories of the past can disappear. If life is, in part, a series of competing narratives, Bradley Academy’s museum is a rich repository of winning stories. It is full of stories worth telling, and telling well.
Henry Cooley had shared so many BCTS stories with me, and I was delighted, on the night of my discovery, to tell my story to him. We discussed a visit to the museum, possibly on October 25 when the “Heritage Festival” is celebrated and admission is free. As I look toward our visit, I know that Henry will be thrilled to walk through the door of the Holloway exhibit and see the cedar bucket. It is even more gratifying, though, when I think of the stories that await my friend and me when all the other doors inside the museum open as well.

52 Goose Eggs*

2009-04-02T11:33:00.000-05:00

Take a pack of cards and throw them in the air. Now look around and imagine that each card represents a shutout in a football game. As you collect the cards, as you pick up each one, let every card represent the effort required to keep an opponent scoreless. Imagine how difficult it would be t0 keep your team's opponents from scoring in 52 consecutive games. A single shutout is an accomplishment for any high school team; 52 in a row seems almost impossible. Yet this is what the football team from Bedford County Training School accomplished during a string of 82 games without a loss from 1943-1950.

This blog is devoted to examining the Fighting Tigers' impressive streaks of 52 consecutive shutouts and 82 consecutive games without a loss, legendary accomplishments that have received scant attention despite the impressive numbers. My intention is to give this amazing story the attention that it deserves.

*For those of you who may not know, a "goose egg" is a score of 0, a digit that, obviously, visually resembles an egg.
52 goose eggs, all in a row.