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Tennessean bias dates way back

RandallThomason

Blue Raider Legend
Jan 1, 2005
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My mother in law found an old Tennessean sports page from October 26, 1958 when she was cleaning out some of her dad’s old things. Top billing for Vandy for a 39-6 win over Virginia. Tennessee laid an egg at home against Florida State. Some guy named Bear Bryant won his first SEC game for Alabama. According to the MT football media guide, the Blue Raiders played and beat Morehead State 34-6 on October 25, 1958, to improve to 5-1 on the season under head coach Bubber Murphy. Tennessean totally ignored our game. Not mentioned in the “Local Colleges” or “Area Colleges” scores.

The snub of the Raiders aside, it was a really interesting and look back in time. Thought some of you may be interested.
 
Sorry, failed on first attempt to add the photo. Here it is.

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Reminds me of a line from the lyrics of a song, "Same as it ever was"

That was a home game and I would think Floyd didn't have lights at that time and played during daylight, so there's really no excuse for not even having the score. The previous two years, MT had claimed conference championships, and was arguably the best period of football play at a conference championship level in the history of the program.
 
And Rice dominated Texas by 27! That is the one game listed that has changed dramatically.
 
And Rice dominated Texas by 27! That is the one game listed that has changed dramatically.

An inside page of the paper listed the AP top 10 scores from that week. I texted it to a friend of mine. Here was the top 10 scoreboard that week:

#1 Army tied Pitt 14-14
#2 Ohio State tied Wisconsin 7-7
#3 LSU beat Florida 10-7
#4 Texas lost to Rice 34-7
#5 Auburn beat Maryland 20-7
#6 Ole Miss beat Arkansas 14-12
#7 Iowa beat #8 Northwestern 26-20
#9 Oklahoma beat Kansas State 40-6
#10 Clemson lost to South Carolina 26-6

LSU was the ultimate national champion for 1958.
 
Randall: Just wondered if that particular paper had scores from TPI, Sewanee, or APSC.

The reason I asked was that a decade later (when I started paying attention) The Tennessean printed several editions. The Nashville edition (final) would be much different than the earlier editions which were sent out to the mid-state.

I specifically remember not understanding why an acquaintance who lived in northern Williamson Co. had not seen the report on a MT win during BkB season (a weeknight game) which was the front sports page of my paper. Once I was shown their copy that story had been replaced with something else in the later edition and no mention of the MT game was in that sports page. I remember thinking at the time that this policy contributed to MT not getting as much support from neighboring Davidson county as should have been expected considering the number of students and alumni from Nashville.
 
Randall: Just wondered if that particular paper had scores from TPI, Sewanee, or APSC.

The reason I asked was that a decade later (when I started paying attention) The Tennessean printed several editions. The Nashville edition (final) would be much different than the earlier editions which were sent out to the mid-state.

I specifically remember not understanding why an acquaintance who lived in northern Williamson Co. had not seen the report on a MT win during BkB season (a weeknight game) which was the front sports page of my paper. Once I was shown their copy that story had been replaced with something else in the later edition and no mention of the MT game was in that sports page. I remember thinking at the time that this policy contributed to MT not getting as much support from neighboring Davidson county as should have been expected considering the number of students and alumni from Nashville.

The page includes a "Local Colleges" and "Area Colleges" capsule of scores. It's in the picture but if you can't make out the text, the scores listed are:

Local Colleges:

Howard 28, Fisk 8
Tennessee State 20, Centra State 6

Area Colleges:

UTMB 14, Howard 14
Sewanee 46, Maryville 0
Arkansas State 16, Austin Peay State 0
Youngstown 14, Eastern Kentucky (score is smudged, can't make that one out)
East Tennessee 24, Wofford 20

So this particular edition of the paper had several regional scores in it.
 
Randall: Just wondered if that particular paper had scores from TPI, Sewanee, or APSC.

The reason I asked was that a decade later (when I started paying attention) The Tennessean printed several editions. The Nashville edition (final) would be much different than the earlier editions which were sent out to the mid-state.

I specifically remember not understanding why an acquaintance who lived in northern Williamson Co. had not seen the report on a MT win during BkB season (a weeknight game) which was the front sports page of my paper. Once I was shown their copy that story had been replaced with something else in the later edition and no mention of the MT game was in that sports page. I remember thinking at the time that this policy contributed to MT not getting as much support from neighboring Davidson county as should have been expected considering the number of students and alumni from Nashville.

Also, FYI, my mother-in-law's father lived in Shelbyville, so based on your description above, I doubt he would have received the final Nashville edition you mentioned.
 
Did they screw up and put Howard twice and one of them was supposed to be MTSU?
 
Did they screw up and put Howard twice and one of them was supposed to be MTSU?

I thought about that, but I know right about the time I started college some of the sports had freshman teams when freshman were not eligible at the varsity level, and there were some junior varsity teams also IIRC, hence the Howard, UTMartin B team contest if my assumption is correct.
 
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Far be it for me to defend the coverage of MT athletics by the Nashville Media, print or electronic. The amount of coverage has waxed and waned over time and the only instance when I thought the largest school in the Nashville media's coverage area got deserved attention was immediately after going D-1 in FB. IIRC for a short period of time our games got coverage comparable to the two in-state $EC schools both prior to and especially after games in the Sunday edition of The Tennessean. I was hopeful that we were gaining media respectability but, alas, during BkB season we were back among the other area %$&-majors and the expanded FB coverage did not last.

In 1958 college sports was the last thing on my mind but I would like to think the omission of the MT score in that edition of The Tennessean's sport page was an inexplicable anomaly. The competition between The Tennessean and the Nashville Banner was fierce and each would hold the presses in order to cover a story the other would miss. When I started reading newspapers a few years later both papers had OVC "beat" writers and MT stories were frequent although game coverage was often lacking in the eyes of this MT fan.
 
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