Knoxville sports memories over 40 years from Mike Strange | CPT PPP Coverage
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Knoxville sports memories over 40 years from Mike Strange appeared on www.knoxnews.com by Knoxville News Sentinel.
While I’m on the injury list recovering from surgery – hope to be back for Kentucky or UConn – I’ve been reminiscing about my 40th anniversary of arriving in Knoxville, October 1983.
Last week, 40 personal thoughts. This week, 40 sports memories.
1- First Tennessee football assignment, a watch party at the Holiday Inn World’s Fair when the Vols beat Alabama in Birmingham in ’83.
2- Vol fans taking over New Orleans for the Miami-beatdown Sugar Bowl.
3- Disbelief that Tennessee hasn’t been back to the Sugar Bowl since 1990.
4- Best high-school football game – Oak Ridge at Central, playoffs, Todd Helton’s senior year.
5- Tony White scoring 51 against Auburn in Stokely.
6- Haywood Harris and Bob Rhinerson getting quotes from an Alabama shot-putter from Iceland when UT hosted the SEC meet.
7- Listening for Bill Petty in the Neyland Stadium press box to give the official gain (or loss) and yard-line after every play.
8- Covering my first bass tournament. I was the fish out of water.
9- The grace of Allan Houston, on and off the court.
10- My first California jaunt, the Lady Vols in the 1984 Final Four at UCLA.
11- A Miracle in South Bend.
12- Johnny Majors’ exit press conference happening at, of all places, a Wilson World Inn in Memphis.
13- The anger of the players at the presser to announce Phillip Fulmer being relieved.
14- Lane Kiffin’s bizarre exit session topped them all.
15- Thompson-Boling Arena’s transformation into one of the best campus arenas anywhere.
16- The romp at Texas announcing the Bruce Pearl Era.
17- 1 vs 2 in Memphis 2008, best hoops game I covered.
18- The UT men’s only Elite Eight game, St. Louis, 2010. Almost.
19- The Shaq-Carlus Groves-Dale Brown brawl in the ’92 SEC tournament.
20- Being interviewed by Scott Simon in ’97 for NPR’s feature on Peyton Manning.
21- Receiving a handwritten note from Peyton after my 2018 induction into the Tennessee Sportswriters Hall of Fame. (And one from Charles Davis.)
22- Taking my son Aaron to UT practices. He was squirted from a hose by Fulmer and hung on a rim by Ron Slay.
23- Being at the Maui Invitational when I learned colleague Gary Lundy had died in the newsroom.
24- Landing at McGhee-Tyson after a basketball trip to New Mexico right as Clint Stoerner fumbled.
25- Summer basketball in Europe, 1997. John Wilkerson and I will always have Paris.
26- Trying to break the Knox County pina colada record one night at a seaside bar in Puerto Rico.
27- Watching Albert Haynesworth, armed with a stick and with trainer Mike Rollo hanging off his shoulders, going after an offensive lineman in practice. Fulmer stopped it.
28- Eight days in 2001: the ecstasy of Florida, the agony of LSU.
29- The Hail Mary at Georgia.
30- The naked protesters living in the trees by the stadium at Cal-Berkeley.
31- Bernard Dafney scoring on a fumblerooski in Starkville in 1990.
32- Covering the Vol men’s 1991 NCAA outdoor track title in Eugene, Oregon.
33- Oklahoma’s rally in the 12th inning to beat the Lady Vols in the 2013 Women’s College World Series championship.
34- NCAA tennis in Athens, Georgia. Great atmosphere.
35- Vol baseball becoming appointment viewing again.
36- Being a block away at the Atlanta Olympics when the bomb exploded.
37- Andre Agassi’s post-match presser in Atlanta. He made Bobby Knight look like Mister Rogers.
38- Colleagues Mike Griffith and Dave Hooker trying to talk me into tagging along to a NASCAR race. I never did.
39- But I was there for the Battle at Bristol football spectacle.
40- Something I never thought I’d see. It happened in the last UT football game I covered – the Vols beat Nebraska.
Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.
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