“How smart are Southern college-football coaches? Your fall sanity relies on their analysis, decision-making, and roughly hewn moral code. Not since the Iraq War have so many men of potentially unsound intelligence been entrusted with our complete faith.” — Clay Travis, “An I.Q. Test for College Coaches”
With stories on horseracing, baseball, hunting dogs, fishing, and much more. Essays by John Updike, Ron Rosh, Jill McCorkle, and others.
Additional contributors include M.O. Walsh, Mary Miller, Mark Edmundson, David Payne, Belle Goggs, Taylor Bruce, John T. Edge, and more.
Publisher’s Note
by Ray Wittenberg
Editor’s Box
by Marc Smirnoff
Gone Off Up North
by Roy Blount, Jr.
South Carolina native Kirby Higbe played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, hung out with Hemingway, and opposed the hiring of Jackie Robinson.
Local Fare
by John T. Edge
Do you need to be a rocket scientist to enjoy good food?
Dealer’s Choice
by Hal Crowther
There are worse things than sports scandals happening in this country, aren’t there?
People
by Belle Boggs
A profile of a fierce competitor for Civil War relics.
Essay
by Michael Parker
Sober, divorced, and middle-aged, he wanted to channel his inner athlete.
People
by Farrell Evans
Brian Pope may be the fastest and most enigmatic man in the South—or at least in Oxford, Mississippi.
Crime
by Taylor Bruce
The mysterious death of a baseball player from Georgia.
Writing on Writing
by David Payne
Why are Northern writers “national” and Southern writers “regional”? On economics, media bias, and literary status.
Writing on Writing
by George Singleton
How you, too, can become a millionaire writer!
Southern Scenes
photograph by William Eggleston
15 SECONDS
by Kane Webb
On the powerful compulsion to drive more than 500 miles and sleep on floors for three nights just to join 150,000 people in watching a two-minute horse race.
LEAK
a story by Mary Miller
Her world seems to be coming apart, starting with the hole in her ceiling.
PINS
a story by M.O. Walsh
This is how you play the game: Start with a lover you’ve never met.
ONE LIFE
a story by Mark Edmundson
What happens when you take a strange, 300-pound janitor up on his invitation to come over to his trailer for dinner?
SENSE OF PLACE
James Perry Walker’s 1970’s-‘80s photographs from Mississippi and Tennessee.
Dog Show
by Mike Powell
Badminton
by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
Mississippi Knockout
by Jim Ruland
Talk Radio
by Melissa King
College Town
by Beth Ann Fennelly
Bareback Riding
by Marianne Gingher
Rainout
by Robert Parham
Fly Fishing
by Ron Rash
Coach Quiz
by Clay Travis
New Orleans Chessman
by William Caverlee
Underdogs
by Any Selsberg
Hunting Dogs
by Jill McCorkle
Arkansas Hogs
by Rainer Sabin
Godly Grub
by Wright Thompson
Quarterbacks
by Brooks Haxton
Cockfight House
by J. David Stevens
Baseball
by John Updike
“Man At The Summit” (2006) by Eric Zener