"All Four County Teams Won ?"

I was watching the Don Dowling Show on CCTV this past Monday night when the host, Royce Reagan, made an observation. And while Royce is well known for making observations about Auburn folks, this observation had absolutely nothing to do with Auburn. Royce noted that this past Friday night all four of the county’s varsity football squads won. He and Dowling then speculated on how long it has been since all four of the county’s varsity football teams won on the same night.

Royce speculated that it had been 50 years. "No" replied Dowling," it couldn’t have been that long." "O.K," Royce said, "47 years." As they laughed and speculated some more, Dowling put me on the spot. "I bet Clint Cox will know, he’s a history buff about the county’s programs. We might even read something about this in the Jackson County Times," Dowling commented. I chuckled for a moment and appreciated that Dowling gave our paper a plug. But then it hit me. The pressure is on. Could I rise to the occasion? I couldn’t let a shout out like that go unanswered.

I suspect Dowling remembered my love of sports history from his days at Marianna. He probably recalled that I wrote the Bulldog Flashback that appears in each Marianna football home game program. That, along with our Yesteryear feature brought me to his mind. And he’d be right about my love for local sports history, especially about Marianna football. I have a notebook that has information about almost every team in Marianna’s 83 years of playing football. But unfortunately that notebook does not include much information about the other county schools.

So after hearing Dowling call out the first thing that quickly came to my mind is, "Where would I find all four of the county team’s records?" There is no one that I know of that sits around and compiles all the county sports records. That would be nice if they did but I don’t know of anybody that does.

The only place I could think of would be the Florida High School Athletic Association. A check of their website revealed they do have the schedules and outcomes from previous 6 seasons. So I researched the records and guess what. In the past six seasons there has not been a single week in which all four county varsity football teams won. Unable to go any further back, I decided to rephrase the question. When was the last time that no county varsity football team lost a game? Simply Put, that would be October 8, 2004. Sneads won 14-12 over Liberty County, Cottondale beat Baker 40-21 and Graceville drilled Panama City Christian 54-0. What about Marianna you might ask? They had an open date and did not play.

From the front porch: Uncle Bob said it is true that love is blind but marriage was certainly an eye opener.