by design | Mar 27, 2023 | Columnist, Mattingly
‘One of the best times I’ve had in sports’ By Tom Mattingly When the Tennessee Volunteers basketball team won the SEC championship on March 6, 1967, in Starkville, Miss., Knoxville Journal sportswriter Ben Byrd gave the team a nickname, the “Fearless Five.”...
by design | Mar 20, 2023 | Columnist, Mattingly
‘Don’t you all take your football seriously?’ By Tom Mattingly These “rivalry games” in the SEC sure are fun, even though they are very intense from start to finish, 365 days a year. The banter on the chat boards, supposedly uninhibited, wild, and wooly, is part of...
by design | Mar 13, 2023 | Columnist, Mattingly
The ball is not heavy By Tom Mattingly Legend has it that an enterprising journalist once asked Southern Cal head coach John McKay why he gave the ball to O. J. Simpson more than 20 times a game. His response was, “It’s not heavy.” It is an article of faith that...
by design | Mar 6, 2023 | Columnist, Mattingly
‘A cold and rainy afternoon in Nashville’ By Tom Mattingly The “experts” say tie games aren’t memorable, to the point the powers-that-be at the NCAA abolished the tie as a viable ending to a game, starting in 1996. Now the collegians play overtime, the game awarded to...
by design | Feb 27, 2023 | Columnist, Mattingly
‘Inordinately quick, combative, and hard-running’ By Tom Mattingly Super Bowl LVII is now in the rear-view mirror, but the memories of former Vol All-American guard John Michels (Feb. 15, 1931 – Jan. 10, 2019) coaching in four Super Bowl games remain fresh in...
by design | Feb 19, 2023 | Columnist, Mattingly, Stories In This Week's Focus:
A for-sure ‘Vol for Life’ By Tom Mattingly Gus Manning, a respected and legendary figure in the University of Tennessee Athletic Department and across the expanse of the campus and state, and wherever Vol fans gather, died Feb. 12 in Knoxville. Across Vol Nation, soft...
