South Pittsburg: ‘Cornbread and Thoroughbreds’
By Scott Herpst
SOUTH PITTSBURG --- Nestled here in the Cumberland Plateau in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains near the Alabama and Georgia state lines is tiny South Pittsburg, Tennessee (pop. 3,300).
A trip to South Pittsburg is a step back in time - literally, Mayberry come to life.
Parking downtown is free and people buy clothes and other dry goods at Hammers Department Store. The taste of the town is the old-fashioned burgers and milkshakes from the Dixie Freeze, cooked the same way they were decades ago.
Most outsiders associate South Pittsburg with cornbread.
The town is home to the world-famous National Cornbread Festival, where for two days every April, thousands flock to celebrate of one of the south's delicious specialties.
Nevertheless, for the other 363 days out of the year, this is a football town.
Drive into South Pittsburg on a Friday night during the fall and you'll see a city bathed in orange and black. Storefronts proudly display their Pirate spirit with signs and posters in the windows. Atop every street post flies Pirate flags.
"It's like raising thoroughbreds," said Carl Mount, South Pittsburg alum who has been the team's statistician for the past 23 years. "Some people in town came up with the saying this past year that we're known for thoroughbreds and cornbread. Just like raising good thoroughbreds is a tradition in Kentucky, our tradition here is raising up good football players."
“Just like raising good thoroughbreds is a tradition in Kentucky,” said Carl Mount, a South Pittsburg High School alumnus who has been the team’s statistician the past 23 years, “our tradition here is raising up good football players.”
South Pittsburg is the only school in Tennessee that has played in a state final in every decade since the TSSAA began classification in 1969. Standing at the city limit is a huge orange and black sign detailing all of the state-title teams.
The Pirates won that first Class A championship in 1969 and others in 1994, ’99 and last season when they steamrolled their way to a 15-0 record, capped by a dominating 52-20 victory over McKenzie in Murfreesboro.
“There’s nothing like it,” coach Vic Grider said. “The only thing I can compare it to is the day my daughter was born. That’s the ultimate thing in my life right now, but winning a state championship is pretty special. Not so much for me but for the kids. They take so much pride in it, and it’s something that no one can ever take away from them.”
Principal Allen Pratt came to South Pittsburg from Maryville in 1997 as an assistant coach. After a brief stint as a head coach in northwest Georgia earlier this decade, Pratt returned to South Pittsburg.
“When the football season goes well, your school year goes well,” Pratt said. “Our school year was super great this year, and it’s attributed to the success of our football team.”
Jim “Hootie” Dunwoody played at South Pittsburg in the late 1950s and has filmed or taped the football games for more than 30 years.
“The tradition has been part of my life for about 60 years,” Dunwoody said. “I remember my father was taking me to games by the time I was 8 or 9 years old.
“If you go anywhere in the state and tell someone you’re from South Pittsburg, 90 to 95 percent of the time people will ask you about the Pirates,” he said. “We’ve become that well-known, and the winning never gets old.”
Steeped in tradition
From football’s beginnings at the high school in the early 1920s, South Pittsburg was a force. The team won more than 80 percent of its games in the first three decades.
“Tradition is a way of life for us here,” Mount said. “It doesn’t matter what aspect of life you’re talking about — whether it’s football or business or whatever — people are attracted to winners, and the desire to win and be No. 1 is what makes us Americans.”
The name Grider has become synonymous with South Pittsburg football.Don Grider, a Pirates player in the 1950s, played four seasons at Tennessee Tech before returning home to begin teaching and coaching. His first year as head coach, the Pirates beat Tennessee Prep School for the inaugural Class A state crown, and he remained head coach until 1992.
Although he never won another state championship, he guided the Pirates to state finals in 1974, ’85 and ’86.
He died shortly before the start of the 2007 season, following a long battle with diabetes. He is buried on a hill in a cemetery overlooking the football stadium.Mount played for Grider in the mid-1970s and remembers him as a strong-willed person.
“It didn’t matter what color you were or who your mama and daddy was,” Mount said. “If you got the job done, you played.”
Grider passed the torch to Danny Wilson, now the head coach at Cleveland High School, in 1993. A year later, the Pirates played in their first state final since 1986 and won their second TSSAA championship.
Wilson left after the 1996 season for a job in Maryville, his hometown, but the school didn’t have to look far to find his replacement. The successor was already on the staff.
Like father, like son
Some have said it was Vic Grider’s destiny to be head coach of Pirates. He played for his father from 1981 to ’85 and grew up on the Pirates sidelines. He is set to begin his 17th season on the coaching staff, with two state titles as head coach. Brother Heath Grider, who played from 1987 to ’90, was an assistant on both of those championship teams.
The brothers are proud to have built on their father’s legacy.
“I do take pride in it, but it’s so much more than me and my family, though,” Vic Grider said. “We are just the people who were put in this spot to lead this program at times. This all goes back years before we got here.”
He said he loves his job.
“Dad once said, ‘It’s fine to be lucky and fortunate to be where you’re at, but you better take advantage of it,’ and I think we’ve done that,” he said. “There is not a day goes by that I don’t feel fortunate to do what I get to do.”
Legends of the fall
Pirates stars become legends for life in South Pittsburg.
Longtime fans can recite the starting lineups for all four state championship teams. Townspeople love telling about the great ones — such as Jimmy Wigfall, a star tailback in 1969, and 1976 grad Bo Haden, who played professionally after a career at the University of Louisville.Brothers Marcus and Vincent Banks were standouts on the 1994 championship team.
Eddie Moore was a second-round draft pick of the Miami Dolphins. He led the Pirates to the 1999 state title before starring at linebacker at the University of Tennessee.
Mount likes to tell the story of David White.
“David played fullback and middle linebacker for us, and he was one of Don’s favorites,” Mount said. “He was maybe the toughest guy I ever saw play here. He was cut up so bad over his eye once during a game that you could put your finger down in the cut and wiggle it around. The trainer was going to sew him up with no Novocain, and David is saying, ‘Hurry up. I’ve got to get back in there.’ He had blood running from his eye all down his face, but as soon as he got sewed up, he was right back out there.”
Vic Grider said South Pittsburg has had a lot of great players but “made a living off of those average ones.”
“Good teams always have one or two great players, but it’s those average ones that usually determine a football game,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate to have a bunch of those guys who are willing to do anything they need to do to make South Pittsburg football successful.
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s a thrill to coach guys like Eddie Moore, Sam Pickett, Tim Starkey and Robert Robinson, but some of my best memories are about those guys no one talks about much.”
Said Mount: “I was just a kid from the other side of the tracks, but I was somebody because I played Pirate football.”
It’s all about pride
“It was a pride thing back then to wear the Orange and Black uniform, and it’s a pride thing now,” Dunwoody said. “It’s just instilled in you from the start.”
Beating Marion County is as important to most South Pittsburg players and fans as winning the state championship. The county-seat school seven miles away in Jasper is another program rich in tradition with four state championships.
“Every game against Jasper is special,” Dunwoody said.
The South Pittsburg and Marion County series is the longest-running continuous rivalry in the state. Before state classification put the schools in separate leagues, the game often determined conference championships. For years it was played on Thanksgiving Day.
“I remember my senior year we both came into the game 9-0,” Mount said. “The winner advanced to the playoffs and the loser stayed home. Games like that just add fuel to the fire.
“Athletes come and go in cycles, but even in down years, the gate from that one game will carry a program,” he added. “We have to keep the flames burning so we don’t lose the rivalry. There’s a lot at stake in keeping it a big rivalry.”
While big home crowds are a part of South Pittsburg tradition, the Pirates take thousands on the road for playoff games.
“This last (state) championship game was literally ‘the last one in town, turn off the lights,’” Dunwoody said. “The only ones that weren’t in Murfreesboro that night were the ones that absolutely couldn’t go. Everyone else was there.”
Vic Grider said he was even more overwhelmed than usual at the support for the 2007 title game.
“That’s the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I don’t know who they all were, but I know they couldn’t have all been South Pittsburg people because we’ve only got 3,300 in this town.”
Said senior lineman Trevor Barnes: “When you come out on a Friday night and they are all cheering, there’s no better feeling in the world. But walking out up there in Murfreesboro and seeing the stands packed with people was just crazy.”
BOYD-BUCHANAN BUCCANEERS 2A-3
HEAD COACH: Grant Reynolds (3rd year, 8-15) COUNTY: Hamilton
2007 RECORD: 4-7 REGION RECORD: 3-1
LETTERMEN (RET/LEFT): N/A STARTERS (OFF/DEF): 7/7
SPEED READ An experienced offensive line and the return of their starting quarterback have the Bucs thinking region championship in 2008.
TOP PLAYERS Nic Hughes (Sr., QB), Seth Emery (Sr., LB), Cole Webster (Sr., OL/DL), Jordan Nason (Sr., FB/LB), Garrett Payne (Sr., OL), Taylor Gilley (Sr., RB/DB), Ben Beasley (Jr., RB), Devin Caldwell (Jr., OL/DL), Taylor Shull (Jr., ATH)
TEAM PLAYBOOK Excitement for Boyd-Buchanan's 2007 season was tempered very early last fall when Nic Hughes, one of the state's most promising young signal-callers, suffered a knee injury in the first game of the year. However, to the Bucs' credit, the team and coaches were able to regroup in time to make a run at the Region 2A-3 title. Now with Hughes 100 percent once more, the Bucs are thinking more than just a region crown. The Pro-I offense starts with the 6-2, 215-pound Hughes while Taylor Gilley and Jordan Nason combined for nearly 1,000 yards on the ground last fall. All three will benefit from an experienced line up front led by three-year starter Cole Webster, senior Garrett Payne and rising junior Devin Caldwell. Boyd-Buchanan boasts one of the region finest pair of linebackers in seniors Nason (64 tackles, seven sacks) and Seth Emery (over 100 tackles, six sacks, three interceptions), although additional depth must be found to compliment Webster and Caldwell on the line. The Bucs aren't blessed with an abundance of speed, but their grind-it-out style could have them in yet another showdown with region rival Tyner for the title.
SOUTH PITTSBURG PIRATES 1A-3
HEAD COACH: Vic Grider (12th year, 113-27) COUNTY: Marion
2007 RECORD: 15-0 REGION RECORD: 7-0
LETTERMEN (RET/LEFT): 31/13 STARTERS (OFF/DEF): 5/6
SPEED READ Until someone proves otherwise, the Pirates remain as the team to beat in all of Class A.
TOP PLAYERS David Jones (Sr., RB/LB), Montrell Mitchell (Sr., RB/LB), Kartrez Bibbs (Sr., RB/CB), Ty Robinson (Sr., WR/DB), Will Maynor (Sr., OL/DL), Trevor Barnes (Sr., OL/DL), Keaton Jones (Sr., OL/DL), Matthew Wayne (Sr., OL/DL), Chase Robinson (Sr., TE/DE), Terrell Robinson (Jr., QB/DB)
TEAM PLAYBOOK For all of its rich history, there's one thing South Pittsburg has never done - win back-to-back state championships. That could easily change this season as the Orange and Black appears to be back in a big way. While the Pirates will certainly miss the services of 13 valuable contributors from last season's state title team, the cupboard is far from bare. David Jones is coming off a "quiet" 2007 season that only saw him rush for 1,127 yards and 15 touchdowns to nab All-State honors. Add to that the fact that Jones was the region's Defensive Player of the Year and the Most Valuable Player of the Clinic Bowl. But while keeping up with Joneses is one thing, keeping up the Robinsons is another. Athletic junior Terrell Robinson will take the rein under center while seniors Ty Robinson and Chase Robinson are big targets at receiver and tight end respectively. On defense, the Pirates will also bring back secondary speedster Kartrez Bibbs, who missed 12 games last year, and his 4.4 speed. The only question - if there is one - centers around an offensive line that will have to be somewhat rebuilt, but retooling in the trenches is nothing new for the Pirates, who seems to thrive on finding new stars each season. Although the team doesn't have as much depth as usual, it has its usual abundance of speed and athleticism and that should be good enough for a 15th region title and just possibly a fifth state championship.
South Pitt vs. Boyd Buc (All-Time)
2007 SP 47-7
2006 SP 19-14
2004 BB 49-0
2003 BB 24-6 & BB 20-7
2002 BB 44-12
2001 BB 46-13
2000 BB 26-12
1999 SP 17-14 & SP 35-21
1998 SP 41-6 & SP 34-10
1997 SP 39-21
1996 BB 17-6
1995 SP 56-6
1994 SP 49-0
1993 SP 48-0
1992 SP 60-6
1991 SP 34-16
1978 SP 41-8
1977 SP 54-6
Total wins SP-14 BB-7
Largest Margin of Victory. SP by 54 in 1992. BB by 49 in 2004
Former Alcoa star Randall Cobb will be the starting quarterback when the Kentucky Wildcats travel to Starkville to play Mississippi State at 2:30 EDT on Saturday.
"We've got to take it to the field."
Alabama leads the all-time series with the Vols 45-38-7.
By Terry McCormick
