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Holiday Leftovers ~ Let Cooter Be Cooter!
12/22/2016 David Nance |
Author's Note - Don't you love Holiday Leftovers? You know, those dishes that just didn't get finished off but are brought out later and enjoyed. This is another of the articles that didn't get finished at "mealtime" but has been brought out later. This article is like one of those. Please enjoy.
There was another record set this year at one of the NASCAR tracks. The good news, it was for attendance. The bad news is it was not for racing but for College Football.
On September 10, 2016 at Bristol Motor Speedway, the then Number 9 ranked University of Tennessee Volunteers played the Virginia Tech Hokies in the Battle at Bristol. Official attendance at Bruton Smith’s ½-mile high banked football field was 156,990.
Some described it as College Football meets NASCAR. At first blush it looked like a race crowd from a few years back. The place was packed and the atmosphere electric as evidenced by the National Anthem ceremony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnSeHblEcOY&sns=em
If you didn’t know better and just surfed into the broadcast you could have easily thought it was a Bristol night race before the Cars of Tomorrow came on the scene. Back then, Bristol was so full, the race crowd could even do the card tricks that awed the football fans this night. And to look at it, the only way you knew it wasn't a race was the colors worn by the crowd were primarily two colors instead of the multitude that used to be found on race day; the infield wasn't wall to wall haulers, but instead replaced with a lined grass field and the half-mile of concrete was dark and silent. But other than that you could have just added, "Drivers, start your engines!" and you would have thought you'd been time-warped back a decade or so.
I have been fortunate to go to UT's Neyland Stadium a few times to watch the Vols at the invitation of two of my hometown friends and UT grads, Anthony Crunk and Russ Fredrick. Both are huge UT fans and Anthony kept season tickets long after he left Knoxville and moved to Delaware. Russ continued to live there after graduation which meant an occasional trip south to get together and see some live SEC football with then 95,000 of their closest friends.
On that night, Bristol did a pretty fair impersonation of Neyland, except it dwarfed the true football stadium and that infernal concrete track around the field kept the fans a little too far away from the field. But it was a close enough resemblance so that when UT got the game in hand in the second half I expected to hear the student section started yelling "Let Cooter be Cooter!"
As I recall, the first time I heard this cry at Neyland was in the early 2000's. Puzzled, I turned to Anthony and asked what was that (or something like that). He explained that when the game was in hand the students would yell that to let Coach Phil Fulmer know it was time to pull the starter and put in the backup quarterback and fan favorite, Jim Bob Cooter. He further shared that Jim Bob was a Tennessee boy and though he wasn't sure of the origins of the cheer he observed that Jim Bob Cooter was the best name in UT football.
http://www.utsports.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/cooter_jimbob00.html
I couldn't agree more.
Coach Fulmer only answered the students' cry three times in Jim Bob's 2003-2005 career there. Cooter went on to be Cooter after his college career ended. He did so in many ways. In football, he returned to UT and became a grad assistant before entering the NFL coaching ranks at Indy, Kansas City and Denver. He is now the Offensive Coordinator for the Detroit Lions. If his success there continues and the Lions were to make the Super Bowl this year, the grassroots movement to run him for President in 2020 may gain enough traction to make that a reality.
There was another record set this year at one of the NASCAR tracks. The good news, it was for attendance. The bad news is it was not for racing but for College Football.
On September 10, 2016 at Bristol Motor Speedway, the then Number 9 ranked University of Tennessee Volunteers played the Virginia Tech Hokies in the Battle at Bristol. Official attendance at Bruton Smith’s ½-mile high banked football field was 156,990.
Some described it as College Football meets NASCAR. At first blush it looked like a race crowd from a few years back. The place was packed and the atmosphere electric as evidenced by the National Anthem ceremony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnSeHblEcOY&sns=em
If you didn’t know better and just surfed into the broadcast you could have easily thought it was a Bristol night race before the Cars of Tomorrow came on the scene. Back then, Bristol was so full, the race crowd could even do the card tricks that awed the football fans this night. And to look at it, the only way you knew it wasn't a race was the colors worn by the crowd were primarily two colors instead of the multitude that used to be found on race day; the infield wasn't wall to wall haulers, but instead replaced with a lined grass field and the half-mile of concrete was dark and silent. But other than that you could have just added, "Drivers, start your engines!" and you would have thought you'd been time-warped back a decade or so.
I have been fortunate to go to UT's Neyland Stadium a few times to watch the Vols at the invitation of two of my hometown friends and UT grads, Anthony Crunk and Russ Fredrick. Both are huge UT fans and Anthony kept season tickets long after he left Knoxville and moved to Delaware. Russ continued to live there after graduation which meant an occasional trip south to get together and see some live SEC football with then 95,000 of their closest friends.
On that night, Bristol did a pretty fair impersonation of Neyland, except it dwarfed the true football stadium and that infernal concrete track around the field kept the fans a little too far away from the field. But it was a close enough resemblance so that when UT got the game in hand in the second half I expected to hear the student section started yelling "Let Cooter be Cooter!"
As I recall, the first time I heard this cry at Neyland was in the early 2000's. Puzzled, I turned to Anthony and asked what was that (or something like that). He explained that when the game was in hand the students would yell that to let Coach Phil Fulmer know it was time to pull the starter and put in the backup quarterback and fan favorite, Jim Bob Cooter. He further shared that Jim Bob was a Tennessee boy and though he wasn't sure of the origins of the cheer he observed that Jim Bob Cooter was the best name in UT football.
http://www.utsports.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/cooter_jimbob00.html
I couldn't agree more.
Coach Fulmer only answered the students' cry three times in Jim Bob's 2003-2005 career there. Cooter went on to be Cooter after his college career ended. He did so in many ways. In football, he returned to UT and became a grad assistant before entering the NFL coaching ranks at Indy, Kansas City and Denver. He is now the Offensive Coordinator for the Detroit Lions. If his success there continues and the Lions were to make the Super Bowl this year, the grassroots movement to run him for President in 2020 may gain enough traction to make that a reality.
No matter what the future holds for Jim Bob, some think he now has the best name in all of sports. It has become so popular that it's been reported that Bears Coach John Fox even likes saying it. If the Lions win the Super Bowl a lot of people will like saying it.
Whether he has the best name in sports can be decided by others but I am sure if Jim Bob Cooter had been a stocker instead of a football player and coach he would have had the one of best names in stock car racing. Oh, it wouldn't have been with the current pack of drivers. The name Jim Bob would stick out like a monster truck at Daytona and just wouldn't fit in with all the Ryans, Kyles, Jamies, Jimmies, Chris, Austins, Caseys, Kaseys and Dennys of today.
In this corporate-support-dependent world of big time stock car racing, I'm not sure if Jim Bob would get an interview with them much less a sponsorship, no matter how good a driver he might be. Or on the other hand, any corporation who might want a three-named driver to represent them would probably not be welcomed into the club. Remember this IS the Series who wouldn't allow redneckjunk.com to sponsor a car because it was "detrimental" to the series' image.
But if you turn racing back a few years Jim Bob Cooter would fit right in with all those drivers whose names sounded like race car drivers names - Fireball, Speedy, Buck, Tootle, Shorty, Possum and Parnelli. Or G. C., L.D, A. J., Tiny, Curtis, Cotton or Reds. And there was Blackie, Dink, Pop, Gwynn, Herb and Clarence. Finally, two of my personal favorites-Van Van Wey and Jesse James Taylor.
It was fun back then and Jim Bob would have fit right in. It doesn't take much imagination to see the Fayetteville TN product sliding his car on the dirt at Hickory, beating and banging his way to the front for the win. As the track announcer calls out the winner's name, the frenzied crowd rises up and over the roar of the pack shouts the famous cheer.
It may take more imagination to once again see 160,000 fans in those Bristol seats but this time cheering not for 22 athletes fighting over "this funny little punkin” as Andy Griffin once described it in "What It Was, Was Football"…
…but again cheering for forty of stock car racing’s finest, fighting for five hundred laps on a half mile of concrete for the win and all the fame, fortune and benefits that goes with it.
Tonight, the lights shine down on what was once a race track infield now football field and in the shadows, as if an afterthought, are the race cars as the silent reminders of what made it all possible. I hope that one day soon the infield will return to the shadows and the spotlights will shine down on the pavement that surrounds. And the cheers from a packed stadium of fans will not be for their favorite team or even for the best name in sports but for their favorite of the flying forty, hurtling around the high banks at incredible speeds.
May the cry that night be,
"Let racers be racers!"
And may it be soon… very soon.
Whether he has the best name in sports can be decided by others but I am sure if Jim Bob Cooter had been a stocker instead of a football player and coach he would have had the one of best names in stock car racing. Oh, it wouldn't have been with the current pack of drivers. The name Jim Bob would stick out like a monster truck at Daytona and just wouldn't fit in with all the Ryans, Kyles, Jamies, Jimmies, Chris, Austins, Caseys, Kaseys and Dennys of today.
In this corporate-support-dependent world of big time stock car racing, I'm not sure if Jim Bob would get an interview with them much less a sponsorship, no matter how good a driver he might be. Or on the other hand, any corporation who might want a three-named driver to represent them would probably not be welcomed into the club. Remember this IS the Series who wouldn't allow redneckjunk.com to sponsor a car because it was "detrimental" to the series' image.
But if you turn racing back a few years Jim Bob Cooter would fit right in with all those drivers whose names sounded like race car drivers names - Fireball, Speedy, Buck, Tootle, Shorty, Possum and Parnelli. Or G. C., L.D, A. J., Tiny, Curtis, Cotton or Reds. And there was Blackie, Dink, Pop, Gwynn, Herb and Clarence. Finally, two of my personal favorites-Van Van Wey and Jesse James Taylor.
It was fun back then and Jim Bob would have fit right in. It doesn't take much imagination to see the Fayetteville TN product sliding his car on the dirt at Hickory, beating and banging his way to the front for the win. As the track announcer calls out the winner's name, the frenzied crowd rises up and over the roar of the pack shouts the famous cheer.
It may take more imagination to once again see 160,000 fans in those Bristol seats but this time cheering not for 22 athletes fighting over "this funny little punkin” as Andy Griffin once described it in "What It Was, Was Football"…
…but again cheering for forty of stock car racing’s finest, fighting for five hundred laps on a half mile of concrete for the win and all the fame, fortune and benefits that goes with it.
Tonight, the lights shine down on what was once a race track infield now football field and in the shadows, as if an afterthought, are the race cars as the silent reminders of what made it all possible. I hope that one day soon the infield will return to the shadows and the spotlights will shine down on the pavement that surrounds. And the cheers from a packed stadium of fans will not be for their favorite team or even for the best name in sports but for their favorite of the flying forty, hurtling around the high banks at incredible speeds.
May the cry that night be,
"Let racers be racers!"
And may it be soon… very soon.
