After 30 tackles in two games, Joe Blue wasn’t practicing on this day. His white Adidas cleats were tied tight — double-knotted — but it was coach’s orders to have Newberry College’s banged-up star linebacker sit this one out.
Except it’s hard to get Blue to sit. Sitting brings back bad memories of a time when Blue, as he tells it, “got fat” and lost his love of football. Sitting brings Blue back to a couch in Dillon and wondering if he had already missed his opportunity to leave his hometown.
So, yeah, tell Blue to take a practice off, but he’s still going to stand at the back of one end zone and toss a football to himself.