At this time of the year, there is a lot going on in the sports world. Our in-state schools are doing a very nice job staying competitive this college football season.
Who would have thought a decade back that Florida State would work its way back into the middle of the ACC pack or that Wake Forest would rise to the Seminoles’ former level. (Saturday, the Deacs knocked off FSU, 35-30.)
Every time Texas coach Mack Brown sees Florida State on the losing end of an ACC game, I think he hates having left Carolina. He loved his job there and was really landing the best high school players in the state, but the home crowd was getting restless for a win over the Seminoles.
Brown took Texas to a national championship several years ago, but that may not be enough to save his job after a 55-17 loss to Oklahoma Saturday on the heels of a losing season for Longhorn nation. After last season, in fact, he suffered the humiliation of having the athletic department fire his assistant coaches and give him no say in their replacements.
Duke, meanwhile, is one of the area’s big stories this year. Their 3-2 record at midseason is rare, and it’s been a long time since the Blue Devils were at the top of ACC football, 22 years to be exact. You may be surprised who their coach was that year: none other than “Ol’ Ball Coach” himself, Steve Spurrier.
A Heisman Trophy winner from Florida, Spurrier was slow to get into college coaching. He put in several years as a head coach in the old United States Football League with the Tampa Bay Bandits.
But Clemson is the class of the ACC for now. Going into last week’s game, the Tigers were the first-ever league team to knock off three straight top 25 teams. This feat earned them a spot in the nation’s top 10.
Their victims were Auburn, Florida State and Virginia Tech.
Local teams impress
We have three county teams in the playoff picture in high school football, and two of them (Freedom and Draughn) are very much in the running for a conference championship if they get some help.
It’s been some time since we had a team go very deep in the playoffs, but this year’s Patriots may do just that. Only one point separates them from a perfect season, and they seem to have no major weakness.
Where once they depended on their passing game to get the job done, they now have an equally strong running game. They put 400 yards of offense on their stat sheet almost every game, and Friday night, they were nearly even rushing and passing with 220 and 222 respectively.
There aren’t many high school teams that balanced.
Succop ties kicking record
Hickory High graduate Ryan Succop kicked five field goals a week ago in leading his Kansas City Chiefs to victory over the Minnesota Vikings. He tied one of the all-time great kickers, Jan Stenerud, with his five kicks at Arrowhead Stadium.
Roy Waters is a sports columnist for The News Herald. Waters was baseball and basketball coach at Salem High School from 1955-66, where his teams won 18 championships. In 2007, he was inducted into the Burke County Sports Hall of Fame.
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