I’ve said many times I think I’ve been to football games that had to set some kind of record or another.
Among these would be the coldest high school football game ever played in the South.
When I make this claim, I use three examples. All were playoff games for Copper Basin.
The first was sometime around 1980 at Gaitlinburg-Pittman. The field was somewhere on a mountain above Gaitlinburg.
When Harley Procter, the newspaper’s sports writer, and I left Blue Ridge, it was a fall, short-sleeve kind of day.
On the football field, by the end of the first half, the shutter on my camera froze. Snow began spitting down on us. We weren’t prepared.
The next two experiences were about 20 years later, both in the farthest reaches of North Tennessee – Oneida and Coalfield. They’re in the mountains where you can just about throw a rock into Kentucky.
I can’t recall the specific details of which memory goes with which game. But at one the hot chocolate had ice and at the other the coffee was cold before it crossed the concession stand counter, despite the huge, stainless steel pots used to brew it.
And the upper deck of Neyland Stadium in Knoxville can bring chilled bones when the wind howls in from across the Tennessee River. (That’s just a side note to say I haven’t forgotten the Vols, I just don’t have much to say).
Then, there was what had to be one of the wettest, muddiest little league football games ever played. It was over the mountain in White County, sometime in the mid-1990s.
I dare say all of us parents of football players have seen such contests, the ones where we really didn’t want our soaking wet, filthy children in the truck for the ride home.
The reason this one stands out was because, as we were going home, we looked over at a local car wash to see one of our players getting soaped and rinsed.
I think from that game on, no matter the weather, there wasn’t a car or truck at the field without a change of clothes.
And now I think I have another record memory to add: the shortest high school football game in history.
Copper Basin’s game with North Georgia ended after only 2:33 of playing time Friday night. It was about then that the first lightning popped across the sky and officials sent everyone off the field. That would have been about 7:45. I think it was around 9:30, with the sky still lighting up with white streaks, that the game was officially put into the record books.
So, what does all this prove? Just something we all know too well: all of us talk about the weather, but none of us do anything about it.
Glenn Harbison is publisher/editor of The News Observer. He can be reached at 706-632-2019 or by email at glenn@thenewsobserver.com.