Nearly 16 years later, D.J. Shockley doesn’t mince any words about that particular game.

Despite this reporter’s best efforts to soft-pedal the questions around the 2004 Georgia-Georgia Tech game, it really is hard to dance around how he played. Shockley, to his credit, doesn’t shy away from his own brutal assessment of how he performed that chilly November afternoon.

He used words like “terrible” and “awful” and then “terrible” again.

“I was terrible in that game, man, just say it,” said the former Georgia quarterback with a laugh. “You’re trying to be so nice, but it’s OK to say I was terrible.”

Fair enough, but there were several contributing factors at work. That day, the temperature at kickoff in Sanford Stadium was 46 degrees with a supposed slight chance of rain. Well, there was nothing slight about the elements that day.

The rain came down steadily throughout the game, including a few brief periods of sheets of water cascading across the field. The temperature dipped as well, mixing with the frigid rain to make for miserable conditions more suitable for a January in Sussex than a fall Saturday in Athens.

How have you been sleeping lately?

I’ve been struggling over the last few months. Even if I am lucky to fall asleep quickly, I often find myself staring at the ceiling at 4 a.m. There is plenty to think about these days.

Perhaps the Groundhog Day effect of COVID-19 has me more anxious than usual. Maybe it’s the stories in the news that beat me into a feelings coma day after day. Maybe I shouldn’t have started a business during a pandemic. 

But there is a question — it’s almost a realization at this point — that haunts me more often than it should, especially in those moments when my eyes are shut but my mind is wide open.

“What if Georgia has their Steve Spurrier?”

A century later, the details are a bit murky. But one thing we can say with relative certainty is that in the third inning of a game at Comiskey Park on September 26, 1920, Joe Jackson went all out to make a catch on the dead run, robbing a Detroit Tigers batter of extra bases. 

In I.E. Sanborn’s Chicago Tribune account, Jackson stole a hit from Ty Cobb. According to Harry Bullion in the Detroit Free Press, the play was a “phenomenal running catch that killed a certain triple” for Bobby Veach, who batted behind Cobb in the Detroit order. 

Either way, there was little doubt that the pride of Greenville, South Carolina still had it, at the plate and in the field. At age 33, he was in the midst of his best season since joining the White Sox five years earlier. He would end up among the American League’s top five in nearly every offensive category, including his .382 batting average, 218 hits, 20 triples, 12 home runs and 121 RBIs. 

Though the White Sox still had four games left to play after that 8-1 win over the Tigers, the teams’ matchup the following day would finalize all of those remarkable stats. For on Monday, September 27, 1920 — though he couldn’t have imagined it at the time — Shoeless Joe Jackson would play his final major league baseball game. 

Georgia football

You can’t miss them.

At every home game (and a few away), the Spike Squad supports Georgia football from Section 109, donning their famous spiked shoulder pads and painted all over.

Since its formation in 2010, the group has established itself as a staple to Saturdays in Athens, growing in number and popularity through the years.

But the Spike Squad’s impact goes further than bringing noise and excitement to Sanford Stadium. Its members have stories from across campus and beyond, and plenty of hard work behind the scenes to bring Georgia football fans their energy.

By David Hudson with Joe VanHoose

In the past 64 years, three outstanding southern Indiana High School Basketball stars have been drafted by the NBA’s Boston Celtics.  

Most recently, Romeo Langford, who starred at New Albany High School and played a one-and-done season at Indiana University, was drafted in 2019. The Celtics signed Romeo to a four-year contract worth $16.5 million. 

Of course, most everyone knows about Larry Bird, the legend, who signed with the Celtics for $3.25 million after his Indiana State Sycamores finished runner-up to Michigan State and Magic Johnson in the 1979 NCAA Final Four. Bird played his high school ball at Springs Valley High School in French Lick. 

And then there’s Jack Butcher.

Even in a wheelchair, former Florida basketball star Patric Young is a hulking presence. 

His ripped torso fronts a 250-pound, 6-foot-9-inch frame that once dominated Southeastern Conference basketball opponents as a two-time All-SEC forward and Defensive Player of the Year at the University of Florida before signing with the New Orleans Pelicans and eventually competing professionally in Europe. 

It is a chilly mid-November day in 2022, and he is about to give his first motivational speech at Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Corporate Headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida. It’s not the speech he ever saw himself giving even a year ago.  

A car accident in July in Nebraska damaged Young’s T-7 and T-8 vertebrae, which resulted in losing the use of his lower body. The mishap occurred a week before he was to be married. 

NASCAR kicks off its Playoffs Sunday evening in South Carolina, wrapping up an abbreviated race week at the famed Darlington Raceway unlike the Pee Dee has seen in the track’s 70-year history.

While up to 8,000 race fans have been approved to attend the Southern 500, there will be tens of thousands of other seats that will remain unfilled this weekend.

This Southern 500 marks the first year I haven’t seen a NASCAR race at Darlington since 1992. I doubt they’ll notice my absence. On the other hand, this marks the first real race week at Darlington without “Mr. Raceway” around. That would be Harold King, my great uncle, who died in March at the age of 96.

Uncle Harold had a career at Dixie Cup, helped launch the funeral service that put him in the ground, and served on both the Darlington City and County Councils.

When I found out that Steve Spurrier had broken my heart on January 4, 2002, I saw it on the ESPN Bottom Line. I walked into the hall bathroom at my mom’s house and started to cry.

Spurrier’s departure was sudden and unexpected. I just knew that he was going to grow old coaching at his alma mater, swaggering down the sidelines while his offenses ran up and down the field, scoring touchdown after touchdown and keeping us in the national championship chase season after season.

Spurrier’s 2001 team at Florida fell a two-point conversion short of playing for another SEC championship with a shot at the national title in the Rose Bowl on the line. On my birthday that year, Florida beat Nick Saban’s LSU Tigers, 44-15. The Gators beat Mississippi State, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida State and Maryland — all ranked teams — by 52, 14, 37, 24 and 33 points, respectively.

Many of the major pieces of that 2001 team were coming back in 2002. Rex Grossman at quarterback was to be a Heisman Trophy frontrunner. Certainly, Spurrier was ready to make a run at a second national championship.

I was wrong.