WHAT’S CAUSING ALL THIS? | By MITCH LUCAS / Calling all toys
“I work in the toy department of life.”
Went to SEC Media Days last week in Dallas and was blessed to meet a gentleman – Rick Baker, the President / CEO of the Cotton Bowl – who told me that compared to the jobs of others, his position very much felt like that.
What a great description. I’ve been trying for 30 years to describe my job in an accurate way – from covering football and baseball, basketball, volleyball – heck, horseshoes, even. You name it.
Mr. Baker nailed it in just one sentence.
I’ve been way closer than you’d want to be to Golden Gloves boxing; I’ve been in a pro wrestling ring; I’ve ridden in an actual NASCAR stock car (promised in my prayers if I got out of that thing, I wouldn’t get in another); been way higher in the air than I ever wanted to go without a vehicle being a part of it; been hit in the back of the head by Johnny Reb’s cane at an Ole Miss basketball game; and sat in the room while Nick Saban debated with a reporter which one was the most curious.
It wasn’t always that way. There were some hard days.
During my very first job in Columbus, Mississippi, I had a rainy day and had to go on one wreck after another. The final one was an awful one, a fatality wreck involving an 18-wheeler and some teenagers that led me back to sports. Went in, took my rain gear off and pretty much told them I was either moving to the vacancy in sports or I was out.
They did move me over, fortunately for me. We all have rough days – for the news people, though, a lot of times, that means someone got hurt, or worse.
I didn’t want to deal with it. I don’t know; maybe that means I wasn’t strong enough. I’m also pretty tender-hearted. There’s that.
My two oldest children were very small a few years later, when I was back in news. I somehow managed to tune out the scanner on Sept. 11, 2001, and did a decimal point-tax error story where an accounting firm’s decimal mistake ultimately cost the county several hundred thousand dollars.
I once was sort of threatened by a shady guy, literally wearing a trench coat, in my office, when I was doing a drug story on a raid by the state of Mississippi. I threw him out of the office, and then realized what I’d done and spent a few weeks wondering what would happen when I cranked the car.
Time to go back to sports. And to stay there.
About 22 years ago, I wanted to slow down. Took the job as sports editor in Kilgore in 2002 to do just that, and do some freelance work. I got here only to find out that Kilgore High School was a state title contender in about four sports. My slow-down lasted about two months before I found myself covering state champions.
In short, I was not just working in the toy section – I was the manager.
Time flies when you’re having fun, and we’ve had fun, made lifelong friends and I hope they can say the same about me.
But if you haven’t heard, I’m no longer at the newspaper here. I’m now the editor and publisher of ETBlitz.com, a website that covers many of the local high schools and Kilgore College, and finding out that I much would rather be wearing the “writer” hat than the “businessman” hat.
My job has always been making people think, often making them feel better. It still is.
When the teams here won, I told people why, best I could figure. When their teams lost, I told people why, best I could figure, and how, and did my best to make ‘em feel better.
After all, it’s just a game.
Whatever it was, it was just a game.
And the 2024 football season, volleyball season, cross country, tennis, drill team, band – it’s all about to kick up again with the start of a new school year. We just covered the Southwest Junior College Football Conference media day in Tyler on Thursday. It’s not around the corner. It’s here.
But you know what? That’s ok. I’m not looking for “clicks.”
If I can write a column, a game story, a paragraph – a SENTENCE – that makes anyone’s day better, then I feel like I’ve gotten my job done.
It’s never a bad day in the toy department of life.
