Northern Nash's Big Day

Northern Nash has been on a downer in football for the past several years. There's not much to cheer about after games where victories have been concerned.

Tonight Northern Nash will watch the Super Bowl with intense pride as one of its own takes the field for the Arizona Cardinals.

J.J. Arrington, a 2001 graduate, possibly could be the first person to touch the ball in the Super Bowl if the Cardinals received the opening kickoff.

Arrington, a third down specialist and kick returner, is nursing a knee injury which happened in the NFC Championship game. It will be a game-time decision whether he plays or not. Tonight's
stage in front of the world is one of those games that if you can manage to put your pants on, you play.

Arrington will be the first Nash County player since Julius Peppers, who played in the Super Bowl for the Carolina Panthers earlier this decade.

You have to go all the way back to Jim Clack in the 70's for a Nash County player winning the Super Bowl.

I'll be pulling hard for J.J. and the Cardinals.

Yesterday's Carolina-State men's basketball game ended on a sour note with a Carolina player being tossed out of the game. The subs were mopping up for Carolina when Michael Copeland went to the basket for a fast break layup with less than five seconds to play. Ben McCauley tried to strip the ball from Copeland in a rather forceful way.

Copeland charged at McCauley and the good reaction of one of the game officials rather forcefully pushed Copeland away from any possible fisticuffs.

Copeland was tossed out of the game.

I thought it was rather odd that a player gets tossed out of a game and no technical was called.

Yesterday's announcers had preached the whole game that Carolina led the country in scoring with still 32 seconds on the time clock. In other words, fast break scoring. MCCauley took exception of Carolina trying to continue that pace ahead by 15 with less than 10 seconds to play.

There is a real fine line in sports when do you call off the dogs on both side. Carolina had just emptied the bench with less than a minute to play and State still had most of their starters in the game.

Back when I was doing football play-by-play in Ahoskie, they may have been called Hertford County by then, we were playing Beddingfield and midway through the fourth quarter HC had the subs in and on one series, Beddingfield had blitzed and HC punted on a fourth-and10. The next series on third and 10, HC threw a screen pass which got a first down to help run the clock and HC keep the ball.

Alton Britt, the legendary announcer of Wilson County football who was sitting only a couple of seats from where I was doing the game, made the comment that with the big lead, HC was trying to run up the score.

I fired back that if Beddingfield would quit blitzing then there would be no need to run plays that beat blitzes.

There comes a time in every game that all sides have to realize the game is over.

Yesterday's ending looks different depending on which color you wear.