Mark Wiedmer started work at the Chattanooga News-Free Press on Valentine’s Day of 1983. At the time, he had to get an advance from his boss to buy a Valentine gift for his wife. Mark was hired as a graphic artist but quickly moved to sports, where he oversaw prep football for a time, won the “Pick’ em” box in 1985 and took over the UTC basketball beat the following year. By 1990, he was the newspaper’s lead sports columnist, a title he still holds today after a couple of Tennessee Sports Writer of the Year awards and a box full of other honors. He joined the staff of the Chattanooga Times Free Press when the Free Press and Times merged in 1999.
Mark hails from Hopkinsville, Ky., and graduated from Centre College.
Contact Mark at 423-757-6273. or mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.
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Forty-eight seconds remained on the scoreboard, No. 1 Kentucky leading Vanderbilt by five frail points, the Commodores' Jeffery Taylor about to launch a 3-pointer from the top of the key.
ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas rose from his hotel bed at 5:45 Central time Saturday morning. Top-ranked Kentucky wouldn’t tip it off against host Vanderbilt for another 15 hours and 15 minutes.
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Freddie Freeman couldn’t believe it. As the Atlanta Braves Caravan bus carrying Freeman, Jason Heyward, Rhea County’s Cory Gearrin and new hitting coach Greg Walker drew near the back of the Taco Mac restaurant along Broad Street on Thursday morning, the fans waiting to meet their baseball heroes was at least 100 strong.
The game clock was under 55 seconds. The shot clock was somewhere between three seconds and two, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs a somewhat comfortable six points ahead of Elon.
KNOXVILLE — If you don't think coaches are eternal optimists, forever looking at glasses half-full, forever certain that tomorrow's national championship (or at least an SEC East crown) is only a few plays away, you haven't yet listened to the University of Tennessee's six new football assistants.
Ten years ago next month, former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga chancellor Dr. Bill Stacy made perhaps the most difficult personnel decision of his professional career.
Fab. That's his name. That's his game, especially as it pertains to seven-foot sophomore Fab Melo's mammoth impact on the Syracuse Orange's college basketball season to date.
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Fall football practice at Ole Miss was barely three weeks along in 1999 when then-Rebels head coach David Cutcliffe had to make an uncomfortable phone call.
