Roy Exum
I’ll admit it – this has been a tough week for me, with my beloved friends Pat Dye dying on Monday and Johnny Majors on Wednesday. The two icons were both eulogized this week as surely the greatest football coach of all-time. Pat is in various Halls of Fame for doing at Auburn what Bear did at Alabama and Johnny, for Lord’s sake, was the greatest player and then the greatest coach at the University of Tennessee, with due respect to General Neyland.
My lot was to be cast in amongst both as the head at the Chattanooga News-Free Press sports department and, as my primary task was to build the best sports section in the country, Pat and Johnny became two of my closest personal friends and, this week, I can remember one funny story after another.
So, this week’s Saturday Funnies will veer somewhat away from my usual format, where I simply copy some of the hilarity that arrives in my weekly stack of email, to share a funny personal tale or two, with some “guests,” as you will see.
Here we go:
‘NAT’S FIXING TO GO TO JAIL’
It was nearing the midway point during the season one year where there were no SEC games on the schedule that would rise your pulse. It was just one of the rare freakish Saturdays where I could find not one SEC team that wouldn’t beat their opponents by two possessions (football-speak at least two TDs by the opponent by the end of the game: you can only score a max of 7 points one possession and ain’t no way after an opponent gets whipped silly they’ll ever get you on two possessions late in the fourth quarter. Believe this: A blind hog never found two acorns …)
So, I’m at Auburn and down on the field before the game. Auburn is warming up, and Coach Dye comes up … ‘How long you need (to write) before you’ll be free after the game? “I don’t know … a little over two hours, I’m guessing.”
“Look here … there is a pile of us going to the cabin (at Stillwaters, a resort community about 45 minutes from Auburn) and we got some real characters lined up for thick steaks … you got to come on! We’ll both be done ‘bout the same … meet me at 7 p.m. at the (private) back door of the locker room.”
Game on. Auburn won by about 30 so it was an easy game to write. I was just finishing a column when one of the Auburn managers came scrambling in the press box and out of breath, gasping, “Coach says something’ happened! You got to come now! Where’s your stuff, I’ll carry it …”
Another manager was pulling Dye’s car around as we came running and I was thrilled with delight; with him was Pat’s brother Nat, every bit as lovable as Pat himself. The car ain’t stopped on the gravel before Nat dived through the back door, curling up his huge self on the floorboard. “Roy, you’re driving!” yelled Coach, “and don’t worry about a speeding ticket … we got to get outa’ town!”
I go a-flying, trying to dodge crowded post-game intersections to find State Hwy. 50, and Pat is slumped real low on the passenger side with some battered fishing hat on. “Coach Dye, if you don’t mind my asking … which of the three of us is the fugitive?”
“Oh, let me tell you,” said an angry Pat from under a Cabela’s striped fishing lure, “Nat was waiting on us at one of the tailgate areas and overheard some drunk saying how stupid I was on a fourth-and-2 call, which, incidentally, was the exactly right call. So, Nat, our genius back there(!),” Coach thumbs toward the back seat, “wanders over and clobbers this loudmouth … and I mean, hit him! Damn near killed him is what they say! They hauled his stupid, ‘bout dead self to the hospital and the police have Nat’s description. The law (is) looking high and low for him.”
I reach over the back of the front seat, as I am driving through the night at 90-to-nuthin’, shaking Nate’s britches’ leg, and yelling, “Bless it, Nat, what did you hit him for … now they’re gonna’ arrest me for ‘harboring a fugitive!’ Nat, you ain’t worth that! What am I gonna’ tell the judge on my behalf? Why’d you hit him?’ …
In all my years as a writer, after asking ten-gazillion questions and collecting priceless replies, came one of my Top Ten honest answers of all time. In the same syrupy Southern drawl that Pat was born with down near Augusta, came the muffled truth: “’Cause, Roy, the man needed hittin’.”
I thought I was going to have to pull over, unable to operate the car because I was laughing so uncontrollably, and neither I nor the Dye brothers could stop until will got inside the Stillwaters’ gate. Lordy, what a time.
“The man needed hittin’” Nuff said.
* * *
ANOTHER QUICKIE ON NAT
There was a pile of us one spring down in Destin, a mid-week two-day getaway, and Pat and Nat were going on with one another, and Pat told others of us at the table, that Nat slept every night with some coon hounds and bird dogs sharing his bed. If that wasn’t funny enough – Pat Sullivan, the Heisman winner, rolled over on me he was laughing so hard, but it turned out there was a good reason why.
The Dye boys grew up in Blythe, Ga., a town that’s never had more than a thousand people, and is in Richmond County, same as Augusta but miles removed from anything and everything. The Dye house, like many across the Deep South long ago, was built atop six-foot brick risers, the fact being in the dead of the summer, when the heat was so unbearable, air could circulate beneath the house and … this is true … make it a bit more livable.
One night, Nat and Pat got to going on with each other, that included a fist or two, and Old Man Dye threw Nat out of the house, I’m talking down the long front steps and locked the door. Again, the Dyes lived in strictly agricultural settings, way out past “the sticks.” The nearest anything – including a paved road – was miles away. So, in the winter cold, Nat crawls up under the house where the dogs gathered each night, covered himself with two or three warm dogs, and endured the chill. Ever since, Nat was bound and determined to sleep with a couple of man’s Best Friends, and I’ve seen it. Yes, I have. You remember that old rock ‘n roll band, “Three Dog Night?” That’s our boy Nat.
Nat was two years older than Pat, him the first Dye to play for Wally Butts at Georgia where he was a team captain, just like Pat was his senior year in Athens. Difference was Pat was “spooky quick,” and played with such a heart he was a two-time All-American in the early 60s. How good a player was Pat? I’ll tell you, like Johnny Majors he was too small by NFL standards (Both played one year in Canada) but one day Pat got a call from Bear Bryant wanting to know if Dye, with no experience, would come coach the Crimson Tide linebackers.
That’s where I got to know Coach Dye, when he was one of Bear's assistants, and our friendship stuck tight.
* * *
“AT ALABAMA, THEY NEVER RUN OUT OF SCOTCH … “
One year on the Skywriters Tour it was late, close to 2 in the morning, and those still up were the “last dregs” as those who could last until the nightcap were called. We were two inches before heading to bed. There were just six or seven of us, with two or three wandering in and out of this hospitality suite at the top of the Hyatt Regency, and I was sitting and laughing on this big ole sofa with Johnny.
Listen, Johnny Majors was a perennial favorite among the Skywriters – a band of the top sports editors across the South (yes, I was a tag-along) who would take a legendary 10-day trip every August to each SEC school. Majors was one of very few head coaches who would spend the whole night if it took it, to put the last of our wild breed to bed. He’d tell wonderful stories, explain what “really” happened on memorable plays the year before.
We could have charged admission, Majors was so good on this one night a year tell-all, and if you always wondered what Florida’s Steve Spurrier said to Georgia’s Ray Goff at the coaches’ meeting where both had to be restrained, this is the night Johnny would tell you. “Johnny let’s say Steve and Ray hadn’t been held ‘til their common sense returned … what side of that fist fight you like?” John would squinch up his face, giggle just so, and reply to his listeners’ delight, “Probably too close to call … but if you write it, make sure you include I said I’d have finished third!”
Back to the night … we were all ready to go to bed when a late comer wandered to the bar, got some ice in his glass and then said to no one: “Just my luck … we are out of scotch.” Again, I’m sitting with Johnny and, looking back, I never should have said but at the time I felt it was funny: “John, you need to know just one thing – At Alabama they never run out of anything, ‘specially scotch!”
I may have well pushed the ‘Latch’ button on a Titan rocket. John come off that sofa like the same rocket might. “Who’s in charge here! I want them right now!” He grabbed the phone, punched the front desk, and screamed to some hapless night clerk. “This is John Majors! I am enjoying a few moments with my dearest friends and YOU … yes YOU … have embarrassed me, the University of Tennessee, every soul who bleeds orange and the Governor, YES, the Governor! You get a bottle of scotch up here right now. NOW. I don’t care where it comes from, what door you gotta’ kick down … the ball is on the two-yard-line and we are gonna’ score. You got one play to do it and, by gumbo, we ain’t gonna’ fail this chance. I want a bottle of scotch NOW!”
Shakespeare couldn’t have better scripted John’s performance. I’m curled into a fetal ball; I am laughing so hard and by now the audience has swelled to about 30. The late-night card table was turned over in the next room, and Skywriters down the hall came running, out of their beds and trying to pull back on their pants. His outburst would soon be in newspapers everywhere. Not just in the South, but in football columns across the nation, with headlines like: “Never, ever, ‘dare’ UT’s Majors” and “Majors will do anything … to beat Alabama at everything” and “Majors threatens entire hotel in quest for perfection.”
When John slammed the handset back into the phone there was total silence. That’s when he said, in a perfectly calm voice, “I suspect we will have some scotch momentarily.” As if on cue, a hotel night manger rushed into the room, carrying a fifth of scotch tucked under each elbow like he was Haskel Stanback.
Herbie Winches, a funny TV sports anchor, was wearing a T-shirt, boxer shorts and barefoot, when he haltingly approached the beaming Johnny like some six-year-old wearing a too-large UT cap … “Mr. Majors sir … may I have your autograph?”
So, it happened – in the fabled Book of Lore kept by the football gods, yet another gold-gilded page was placed behind many in the chapter, “John Terrill Majors.” It is well established Johnny’s is one of the thickest tomes of them all when it comes to legend.
* * *
‘TELL ME AGAIN, COACH DYE, TO DO WHAT?’
Mark McCarter, a guy I hired while he had yet to shave and was actually a student at Brainerd High, developed into one of the best writers The News Free Press ever had. Mark just wrote a beautiful eulogy to a dear friend of us all, Ray Deering, who became a legend on the Baylor faculty but who could never escape the call of the press box after getting a taste of sports reporting in his early years. (You can read Mark’s salute among the recent “Sports” articles on Chattanoogan.com.)
Earlier this week I sent Mark an email, telling him how much his eulogy meant to me personally, and Mark sent me a funny about Pat Dye. Mark was hired away to become the Sports Editor in Huntsville, where he was named Alabama’s “Sports Writer of the Year” more than several times, had some enviable gigs with NASCAR, and has been an unbridled success.
It seems when he was best writer on any subject in Huntsville, the Alabama Sports Writers had an annual weekend together in the summers and Mark, the only man I know worse at golf than me, was paired in a foursome with Pat Dye, who either Mark or I could beat on a golf straight up. Mark wrote me back on the Ray Deering story, and he included this gem:
“I was in Coach Dye’s foursome at his preseason media gathering. I was playing my typical horrible game and he said, "Boyscoocherassroun." Translated from Dye-ese, it was, "Kind sir, I suggest you readjust your stance and redirect your hips to a position better related to your target zone," Mark wrote. “Dang if I don't put it within 10 feet on a par 3. I turned to him and said, "Wow, these people here are wrong. You CAN coach." I don't remember that he rolled over in laughter at that comment. But he did, albeit briefly, help my golf game.”
* * *
YES, COACH SABAN, JEREMY PRUITT HAS WATCHED THE HOUSE
Here is a wonderful story Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruett just told on himself, which accounted for his first gold-gilded page in the football Gods “Book of Lore.” It was recounted last week on AL.com (think a web version of The Birmingham News).
[NOTE: This is a story written by the talented Mark Heim (mheim@al.com) that appeared on the AL.com website on May 29, 2020, under the headline: ‘Jeremy Pruitt shares hilarious story of when Nick Saban sent him to recruit AJ McCarron in Mobile.’]
Tennessee is on the recruiting tear this offseason.
The Vols, who are recently ranked No. 2 in the 247 Sports composite rankings with 24 commitments, have racked up with six verbals in the state of Alabama alone.
For coach Jeremy Pruitt, like so many others, he had to crawl before he could walk.
Pruitt was one of five SEC coaches who took part in the 26th annual L’Arche Football Preview, which was broadcast on YouTube because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Alabama native, who did stints as the Crimson Tide’s defensive coordinator and director of player development, shared a story from 2008 when Alabama coach Nick Saban sent him to Mobile to recruit then-St. Paul High’s quarterback AJ McCarron.
Saban sent him down ahead of then-offensive coordinator Jim McElwain and then-offensive line coach Joe Pendry. At the time, the Tide was hot and heavy on McCarron, Nico Johnson in Andalusia, Trent Richardson in Pensacola, and D.J. Fluker in Foley.
“Coach Saban told me, ‘Listen Jeremy, we’re in a good spot with these guys. I want you to go down there, recruit them for this week. At the end of the week, I’m going to send coach Pendry and coach McElwain for a home visit with a couple of these guys. I just want you to report to me every night what’s going on,'” Pruitt recalled.
"I’m feeling like I’m doing a great job. I’m calling coach Saban every night. He’s asking me all these questions about AJ McCarron. He goes, ‘There’s a lot of talk about Tennessee coming down and (then-head coach) Lane Kiffin visiting AJ McCarron. Is there any truth to that?'
"I said, ‘No, coach. I sat outside his house every night. I watched who was coming in.'
"So, on Thursday, coach McElwain and coach Pendry fly into Mobile and I pick them up. We’re going straight to AJ’s house. We pull up and I have the right address. The make of the vehicles were all the same. I knock on the door, knocked several times and this little old lady came to the door. Kind of shocks me there. I’m thinking this must be AJ’s grandmother.
"I said, ‘Is AJ here?' She said, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘AJ McCarron.’ She said, ‘No, baby. He lives four houses down that way.'
“So, right then, I had a lot of anxiety thinking I’ve been watching the wrong house for a week.”
His colleagues didn’t let the moment pass without some critical analysis.
"Coach McElwain looked at me and said, ‘Great job, Pruitt.’”
As it turned out, McCarron signed with Alabama, and the rest, they say, is history.
* * *
THIS WEEK’S TOP VIDEOS
This week, with sports dead at a time we’ve never needed to our games to be so alive, there has been argument over the greatest sports movies of all time. Sports is the great melting pot, a place all men are judged by what matters and skin color, as has been proved for over 100 years, amounts to exactly nothing when teamwork, blacks and whites playing as one, is all that matters. Teammates win championships. So, let look at some clips:
* -- The best testament against racism in my time is the 1971 movie, “Brian's Song.” It focuses on the relationship of two men – Chicago's Gail Sayers (black) and his roommate, Brian Piccolo (white). Again, sports is the great equalizer: (It you’re the man, be the man. Earn it.”) and Henry Mancini scored what may be the crowing moment of sports’ great equity. Billy Dee Williams plays Sayers, James Cann is Piccolo. CLICK HERE.
* -- The movie “Rocky” will go down as the greatest underdog-to-champion film ever. Sylvester Stallone is Rocky Balboa and no film is as inspiring as this one. CLICK HERE.
* -- At the top of every sports list is Hoosiers, how a team from tiny Hickory once won the Indiana basketball championship. (My personal favorite) CLICK HERE.
* -- “The Natural,” starring Robert Redford. Called “the greatest baseball movie of all time,” it was immortalized by one simple sentence: “Pick me a winner, Bobby.” CLICK HERE.
* -- Another great piece that gave proof sports will shame racism every time was the Denzel Washington classic, “Remember the Titans.” A new black coach at a white-only school, this one will make you weep at what we each should strive to be. CLICK HERE.
-------
royexum@aol.com