(Author’s note: I am choosing not to write this with the dialect. Assume the southern accent, slang, usage, spelling…)
5/1/1886: Bubba Watson here. I’m a lucky guy. Always have been. Born in 1861, the year that miserable traitor Lincoln wouldn’t let us go our own way, in the boonies of North Carolina, ta a family that had nothing. Poor as the colored folk. But we managed, barely.
Grew up tall enough an’ athletic enough to have Wofford College, here in Spartansburg, SC, let me play basketball for them and pay for my college education.
When I graduated they took me on as an assistant coach, an’ this year, when the head coach retired they gave me the job, so here I am, a head coach on my 25th birthday. I call that lucky! Now it wouldn’t pay enough to live on but they let me take all my meals on campus and I live free in faculty housing. It’s a tiny little flat, but it’s all I need.
My plan is to tell you about my team and that, and to tell a little about what’s going on in the world while I’m at it. For instance some damn Yankee communists are rioting in Chicago for an 8 hour workday. Hope the cops shoot all of the damn fools.
6/5: The other day that dirty damn Yankee President Grover Cleveland married a girl he and his widow raised. Sounds pretty dang sick to me, but he’s a Yankee, ain;t he.
6/26: 5 scholarships. We’ll stay close to home with our recruiting. We don’t have hardly any money. We’ll try to go 2-3, big-small or small-big.
7/15: The offices here at Wofford ain’t much, but we get the job done. They just installed a phone but we all gotta share it. Still, it helps, and our facilities ain’t the worst.
8/21: I offer to 3 PGs, 2 bigs. Not a lot of interest though. We’ll see if it develops.
9/18: No recruits committed yet but 3 are close. Soft schedule this year. Wins draw recruits.
9/25: Got a PG, #513; we like this guy a lot, happy to have him. Lost 2 guys. I may save some money and wait for spring. Talking it over with my assistants.
10/2: Got a PF, #317. Lost 1.
1st day of practice. We have a good starting lineup but no depth at all. Hopefully we can help some of these guys to develop. LONG coaches meeting after practice.
10/9: Got a C, #209. 2 to go. Sure like to at least get another guard.
A little more about me. We really were that poor. If we didn’t hunt, and fish, and trap, and keep a big garden, we wouldn’t eat. My paw couldn’t get a real job. He’d do day work at farms, help out with whatever, get a quarter here, a quarter there for doing a hard, dirty job nobody else wanted to do. But he only ever got a real job a few years ago. Things got better then, but ‘til that time it was a struggle. We lived, they still do, in a little shack with a dirt floor. We slept on the floor. Paw found a way to divide the shack up into a room for my three sisters, one for me, one for him and maw. But it was just some kind of cheap old wood that he found somewhere that had been thrown away. He worked it so it could be pushed against the wall during the day to make more room in the shack. Maw never stopped. She tended the garden, hauled water when the kids were at school and couldn’t do it, skinned whatever paw had brought for supper and then cooked it up. The kids helped when we got home from school. But we were close, and we loved each other, and we got by. Again, now that paw has a real job things are better, but they’re still in that dang shack. The kids are all grown and gone, but they all live nearby, and they all do a little better than the folks. Not a lot, but some. If I ever make enough money the first thing I’ll do is get my folks into a better place to live. Can’t do that now, I’m just getting by, but someday, I hope.
11/6: Her3e’s the lineup. It looks set, with a 7 man rotation:
Senior Jon Jenk starts at PG and plays a little SG. He may be our best player.
Frosh Job Hutt is at SG, and backs up at PG. He looks good, too.
Junior Ark Dill backs up at SG, and maybe at PG. We have two other guards hoping for PT.
Senior Ben Love starts at SF and backs up at PF.
Senior Dal Genn and junior Gar Snow start inside. They’ll share the two spots equally, moving back and forth between them.
I don’t know what the other teams in the Southern Conf. look like, but I like my guys. We’re picked middle of the pack, 5th. I’m hoping for top three.
Let’s do this! It will be interesting to coach for the very first time as a head coach at any level.