With apologies to Doug Flutie and Boston College in 1984, Jacksonville State's last-second bomb to shock Florida State last week may go down in history as the Hail Mary to end all Hail Marys.
It was 8:20 Central Time on Monday morning when Bryan Robinson received the text from his son Taja during Bryan's shift at the Lodge Manufacturing factory.
To watch the Tennessee Volunteers and the Pittsburgh Panthers play football on television on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was to feel their Johnny Majors Classic was mere background noise, and soft noise at that, as perhaps it well should have been.
According to ESPN's statistical probabilities regarding which Major League Baseball teams will reach the postseason and which won't, the Atlanta Braves - who entered Tuesday night with a 1.5-game lead over Philadelphia - have a 69.7 percent chance of making the playoffs to the Phillies' 39.2 percent chance.
No disrespect to the stunning first-weekend performances of Alabama over Miami and Georgia over Clemson, but my favorite moment from the Labor Day weekend slate of college football games had nothing to do with the Crimson Tide or the Dawgs.
According to his younger brother Randy, "Skipper" Fairbanks was boxing for the University of Miami in 1953 when he couldn't take being away from Chattanooga a minute longer.
Nine years ago, Sale Creek High School football coach Ron Cox and assistant Roy Shipley were standing in a hay field near the community's elementary school when Shipley turned to Cox and said: "Wouldn't this be the perfect spot for a football stadium?"
What a waste of a perfect early September evening at Finley Stadium.
Normal. That's what we all surely long for, if not outright BEG for and PRAY for as this 2021 college football season begins.
It couldn't happen now. Turn down the LSU head football coaching job to remain at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga? Anyone who would do that wouldn't be seen as sound enough in mind to be considered for either position.
