Hargis: Intensity, state success in Pirates-Warriors rivalry unmatched

The referee instructs the captains before the coin toss.  The Marion County Warriors visited the South Pittsburg Pirates in TSSAA football action on September 2, 2016.
The referee instructs the captains before the coin toss. The Marion County Warriors visited the South Pittsburg Pirates in TSSAA football action on September 2, 2016.

Sometime late this afternoon, the South Pittsburg football team will exit its field house, board two buses and make the eight-mile trip into Jasper, where archrival Marion County awaits. It will be the 93rd time the high schools have met, but in a storied series known as the state's most antagonistic, tonight will mark the first time the two proud programs have met when each is ranked No. 1 in the state.

They have played countless times when one or the other sat atop state rankings, but earlier this week both the Pirates in Class 1A and Marion's Warriors in 2A moved up one spot from last week, adding even more focus to what already was a high-stakes meeting between this area's most accomplished programs.

Although there are more than 40 churches located in the two towns, the Lord's command to "love thy neighbor" is set aside for a few hours tonight.

Here are some of the aspects that make up Tennessee's most heated rivalry:

* The Pirates and Warriors have won more state championships (nine combined), more title-game appearances (20), more playoff wins (132) and more all-state players (105 combined) than any other program in the 60-school radius of Chattanooga's tri-state area. The other seven Chattanooga-area schools with state football titles have combined for 10.

* South Pittsburg is the only program in Tennessee that has played for a state title in all six decades that the TSSAA has had a playoff format.

* In the early to mid-1990s Marion County won four titles in five years, compiling an envious 56-1 record during that time.

* Either the Pirates or the Warriors have played for a state championship in eight of the past 10 years. In the other two seasons, considered throw-aways by those programs, each reached at least the quarterfinals.

* In 2001 the game became so physical that five players had to be taken away by ambulance.

* South Pittsburg once went for two points after its last four touchdowns to run it up in a 64-0 win that caused Warriors coach Troy Boeck to exchange verbal jabs with Pirates coach Vic Grider near midfield afterward.

* Jasper is the county seat, and since 1910 the official name of the high school there has been Marion County. Warriors fans play on South Pittsburg's "little brother" complex by proudly reminding Pirates fans which team carries the county name on its helmets. Conversely, Pirates fans view that as an act of arrogance and refuse to use their rival's official name, calling it "Jasper" instead, and saying it with the same contempt normally used when Baptists refer to consuming alcohol.

* The towns of Jasper and South Pittsburg both have populations of around 3,200. However, each school's stadium seats more than either town's population.

* In 2013 South Pittsburg players and students griped about being made by school administrators to stand on the sidewalks in Kimball and give Marion's team a send-off for its quarterfinal game at Trousdale County. As the buses passed, one Marion player raised his hand and flipped off the South Pitt contingent.

"See, they don't want us out here any more than we want to be here!" yelled a South Pitt student.

* For several seasons players from both sides would walk halfway onto the field for the pregame coin toss, then turn their backs on each other, refusing to acknowledge the opposing side.

* Prior to the 1995 game, one year after the Warriors had shut out the Pirates in a season in which both teams went on to win state championships, Marion students made T-shirts that said, "No. 1 in the state, No. 2 in the county."

* During warm-ups prior to the 2002 game, Grider and Marion coach Tim Taylor got into a very animated argument at midfield after Grider accused Taylor's staff of having a spy scout the Pirates' practices in the week leading up to the game.

* South Pittsburg students uprooted both goal posts at Marion prior to the 1994 game and used diesel fuel to kill the grass in the shape of a large "P" at midfield of the Warriors' home turf.

* Marion's cheerleaders rode in on Harley-Davidson motorcycles before a game in the mid-1990s, and South Pittsburg's student section unfurled a sign that read "Hogs on hawgs."

* Grider's dislike for his rival runs so deep that since the state championship game was moved to Cookeville, each of the four times the Pirates have traveled there to play for a title, rather than take I-24 to the Jasper bypass, he has ordered the team bus through the heart of Jasper, with police sirens wailing and lights flashing.

"That's just to remind every one of those suckers that while they're sitting in their office or their kids are sitting in class, we're still playing football and they'll have to watch us. You better believe I remind them that they're not as good as us."

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

"Me and (Marion's) Jacob Saylors are supposed to visit Berry College on Saturday. We're friends but we'll ride separately. There's no way we could ride together after the game. We'll all help each other up after a play, but then we want to come back and knock each other back down again."

- South Pittsburg all-state senior receiver Cade Kennemore, who accounted for three TDs, including the game-winner with 12 seconds remaining, in last year's meeting

"For me as a senior, it's bragging rights for the rest of my life. We definitely show a lot of respect, but at the same time when we step out on that field we're not friends anymore."

- Marion County three-time all-state athlete senior Jacob Saylors

"People would ask me about rivalries all the time, because everybody thinks theirs is the biggest or the best. But I always told them that the biggest rivalry in our state, by far, is Marion County and South Pittsburg football. Nothing even comes close. People should see for themselves or else you just don't realize how much those two places don't like each other. It's not pretend, either: They genuinely do not like each other. There isn't an area in our state with more tradition and sustained excellence as those two programs. You wonder how you could have two small schools be so close together and be so outstanding over such a long period of time."

- Former TSSAA executive director Ronnie Carter

"The emotion of that game makes it the most intense rivalry in the state, bar none. Every other rivalry I've been involved with - Soddy-Daisy/Red Bank, Baylor/McCallie - is more civil. You don't deal with the same level of animosity. I've been cussed at ballgames before, I'm used to that, but for that game there were people I go to church with who were cussing me for being on the opposite side. I'm not joking. Both schools have that same identity, and both teams are impeccably coached.

"When I worked at Baylor and Rhodes College, people introduced each other by what their career is now. At South Pitt and Marion they introduce each other by what they accomplished in high school. They'll say, 'This is Billy. He was an all-state guard in the (19)70s.'"

- Former Marion County head coach and South Pittsburg assistant Troy Boeck, who has also coached at Baylor and Soddy-Daisy

"There's no question that there is more pressure on the players and coaches to win that game than any other. The level of play is as good as anywhere I've seen. We have no choice but to be good because we know they will be, and we will all be judged by how we play in that one game. It's not a stretch to say you can feel hate coming at you from the other side, and I'm sure they feel the same way. Most people that grew up in one of these two small towns never leave, so they have to see the same people the rest of their life. They're so tightly packed in that it actually makes the rivalry more intense, and their identity, their whole self-worth is tied into which set of teenagers performs on one Friday every year."

- Marion County coach Joey Mathis, a native Georgian who was a stranger to the rivalry before becoming a Warriors assistant in 2014 and took over as head coach prior to the 2016 season

"Any time you competed against your brother or best friend, you wanted to beat them so bad you couldn't stand it. And usually you'd wind up in a fight."

- Former Marion coach Ken Colquette, who went 14-3 against the Pirates from 1980 to '96. For a 10-year period, 1987-96, the Warriors never trailed at any point against the Pirates.

"People that are born in these two towns are taught to hate the other. It's in your blood. People work together and go to church together, but we just flat-out don't like each other. The two towns have never gotten along and never will. I'm not sure anybody from outside this county really gets just how much these two teams and towns don't like each other. I know there's somebody on their side who'll go to their grave despising me. Probably more than a few. That's pretty special.

"The people who crack me up are the people who say, 'I want them to do good when we're not playing them.' No, you don't. That's bull. You want their kids to go on and do well after school. But when they're wearing that purple uniform, you want them to lose every game.

"The one word you keep coming back to, at the end of the day, the reason both sides feel the way we do is because of pride. We're both hell-bent on outdoing each other.

Them calling themselves Marion County has never bothered me. I won't call them that. If I said Marion County my mom would slap me. I just take a lot more pride in saying I'm from South Pittsburg than worrying whatever they want to call themselves."

- Vic Grider, who along with his dad, the late Don Grider, are the winningest father-son coaching tandem in state history. Don Grider coached the Pirates from 1969 to '92.

"I've never been a part of a rivalry, at any level, that was as intense. Nothing compares to the emotion around that game. The Baylor/McCallie game is pretty heated, but I don't think it's as scary as far as how the people feel about each other."

- Former Marion County all-state player Eric Westmoreland, who became an All-SEC linebacker at Tennessee and played for six seasons in the NFL. He has been an assistant coach at Baylor for 10 years

"The difference in the Baylor/McCallie rivalry is those people have so many other things going in their lives. It's not an everyday part of their life for the rest of their life. I never understood the enjoyment of another person failing until I saw one of my sons grin when the other struck out. That's what that rivalry is. I didn't know what hate was until South Pittsburg. It's a begrudging respect that you don't want to give to them. If you're giving everything you've got every play and the other guy is giving everything he's got on every play, that's the essence of that game."

- Former Marion County all-state linebacker T.J. Gentle, now an attorney in Chattanooga. His two sons play for McCallie.

"I have never been more ready to just go out and destroy people in my life. I wanted to punish as many of them as I could. I wasn't going to avoid any contact. I wanted to break them. Still to this day I can't stand Jasper."

- Former South Pittsburg all-state running back Eddie Moore, an All-SEC linebacker at Tennessee who played for five seasons in the NFL

"We have people at our school that won't shop in South Pitt or even go to the Cornbread Festival because they don't want to give that town money. Now that is hatred."

- Marion County assistant coach David Moore, who played for the Warriors from 1968 to 1970

"It don't matter if your daddy is a doctor or if you even have a daddy, you can make a name for yourself by what you do in that game. It's electrifying. I'm not kidding when I say you felt a little uneasy about what could happen from how those people feel about each other. If you put every police officer in the county out there and the riot did happen, they couldn't stop it."

- Dale Pruitt, who is closing in on 300 wins - most claimed at three Alabama programs - and coached Marion County for two seasons. His son is Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt.

"It's two programs with a lot of tradition and pride and two communities that want to prove they're better than the other. There's so much competition and jealousy on both sides, it's not a stretch to say there's quite a bit of hatred. The best example I've got is that when I came back to work here I had a little old lady from Jasper come up to me in Walmart and tell me, 'You boys don't own this valley anymore. I just wanted you to know that.' And she wasn't playing around."

- Former South Pittsburg coach and principal Danny Wilson

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