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CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FLUFF FROM THE JC PRESS?
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PittsburghBucs Offline
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Post: #1
CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FLUFF FROM THE JC PRESS?
On the VERY DAY the Bristol Herald-Courier calls out the direction of the athletic department, Johnson City Press Sports Editor Kelly Hodge does a feature on David Mullins stating he's something special because he used to live in Hawaii.

http://johnsoncitypress.com/Detail.php?C...S&ID=60959

And how did Kelly Hodge get his job again?

Oh, yeah. His dad was the former editor?

Okay. That explains a lot.

By the way, do I know this program or what when I called how this trip was Mullins' doing?
(This post was last modified: 12-21-2007 02:03 PM by PittsburghBucs.)
12-21-2007 02:00 PM
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PittsburghBucs Offline
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Post: #2
RE: CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FLUFF FROM THE JC PRESS?
Really- if I'm the publisher of the Press I'm calling Lap Dog Hodge in for some answers.

HONOLULU — Scheduling a week in Hawaii was a holiday treat for East Tennessee State’s basketball players, many of whom will likely never pass this way again.
For athletic director Dave Mullins, it was also a chance to reconnect with his youth.

Mullins spent his formative years in the islands in the 1950s and ’60s, first on Maui and then here, on Oahu. His first taste of mainstream sports — baseball, basketball and tennis, which would become his vocation — came with a Hawaiian flavor, and he also learned a lot of things a kid doesn’t learn on the mainland.

“Hawaii was a great place to grow up,” said Mullins, who is part of the ETSU entourage of 25 or so here to support the Bucs this week in the Rainbow Classic. “At the time, being just a kid, living on the beach in paradise didn’t seem very uncommon.”

The years, of course, put things in better perspective.

Mullins has come back a few times, most recently when the Bucs played in the Classic in 2003. He and wife Jackie honeymooned here in 1998. There are always old haunts, old acquaintances to be revisited.

The last time Mullins was on Oahu, he went out to a favorite Chinese restaurant and saw a painting hanging on the wall that his father had given the owners more than 20 years ago.

“It’s kind of like everything is different, but everything is just the same,” he said. “There are more hotels and restaurants around the cities, but you get out to the north shore, or the northwest shore where I grew up, and very little has changed. It hasn’t developed.”

Mullins made the strange cultural move from Alabama as a nine-year-old in 1955. His father was a Baptist minister in Birmingham, and both his parents were getting into missionary work. The family landed in Hawaii.

They lived for two years on Maui, then moved to the Waianae area of Oahu. (Kaena Apana, the ETSU volleyball standout, is from the town.) Mullins graduated from Waianae High School in 1964 and went back to Birmingham to attend college at Samford.

In some ways, it seems like he never left.

“When I’m here, it feels a lot like home,” he said. “You keep looking for people you know, which is kind of funny after all this time.”

Mullins’ local knowledge can be dangerous. Just ask Wayne Andrews, the former ETSU vice president who is now the president of Morehead State.

After hearing about all the great bodysurfing spots around the island, Andrews decided he wanted a piece of the action on that 2003 visit. He wished he hadn’t.

“I had asked Wayne several times if he knew how to body surf. He’d say, ‘sure,’” said Mullins. “I told him, ‘These are not those little Florida ripples. These are big breakers.’ We got to the beach that day and he was all excited. I said, ‘You do know how to body surf?’ and he said, ‘sure.’

“We swam out 15 or 20 yards and the waves were breaking pretty strong. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen them much stronger, to be honest. Then the famous last words: Here comes a good one.”

Needless to say, Andrews was not prepared for a good one.

“I flipped out of the wave like you do to avoid injury,” said Mullins, “and just looked back over my shoulder. I saw Wayne with his arms outstretched, going headfirst into the sand. He probably washed 35 or 40 yards onto the beach and I jumped up to go help him. Right about them the backwash broke on top of him and about drowned him.”

With the help of another onlooker, Andrews was fished out of the surf and taken to see the medical staff at the University of Hawaii.

“He spent the next week taking painkillers and walking very gingerly,” said Mullins. “Every time we talk now, he brings it up. He says he’s still feeling the effects and I’ll be hearing from his attorney any day now.”

Andrews wasn’t the only ETSU partisan to have a rather painful experience here in ’03. The Bucs lost two of their three games in the Rainbow Classic and left coach Murry Bartow scowling in his Hawaiian shirt.

The team was able to look back on the trip as a turning point, however. It ripped off 16 wins in a row after returning home and ended up making the NCAA tournament.

Maybe the Bucs can recapture that karma this year.

“It would be nice to get on another roll,” said Mullins. “When the team came out here last time, we didn’t play particularly well and Murry said he wouldn’t be back. But we were looking to reward the team for last year and get in an exempt event where three games count as one. We had a couple of options — Anaheim and Puerto Rico — and then this became available. We’ll get three good teams on a neutral court and hopefully a great experience for everybody.”
12-21-2007 02:02 PM
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Post: #3
RE: CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FLUFF FROM THE JC PRESS?
yippee
12-22-2007 02:01 AM
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PittsburghBucs Offline
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Post: #4
RE: CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FLUFF FROM THE JC PRESS?
This deserves more conversation.

There is no doubt now about the editorial policy of the two newspapers regarding ETSU athletics.

The thing that has frustrated me so much about the Press is that they often appear to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for ETSU.

Good example- a couple of months ago there was a story about the new facilities ETSU wants to build. Total puff piece essentially laying out the baseball park proposal and all.

Yet it was presented totally from the ETSU point of view. According to the Press, the people whose homes would be destroyed wanted to have their homes destroyed.

Furthermore, it was never stated who was going to fund these projects.

The baseball field at ETSU is as much wishful thinking as my buying my boyhood home in Pittsburgh is. Simply put, neither of us have the money and ETSU continuing to talk about it shows just what fools they are.

Yet the Press gives them a free pass, and the Herald-Courier calls them out on it.

Heads need to roll at the Press. Paduch had it right.
12-23-2007 10:17 AM
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Buccaneerlover Offline
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Post: #5
RE: CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FLUFF FROM THE JC PRESS?
After that bunch of nothing I wonder if we'll see a seven day report on panda birth at the San Diego Zoo....
12-23-2007 11:18 AM
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PittsburghBucs Offline
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Post: #6
RE: CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FLUFF FROM THE JC PRESS?
What are you saying, Lover?

That the BHC stories were a bunch of nothing?

They may be. The sad thing is that ETSU has turned its back on their fans and community for a long time. So a bunch of newspaper articles might be ignored, like they always have.
12-23-2007 12:17 PM
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Post: #7
RE: CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FLUFF FROM THE JC PRESS?
I think Lover was commenting on the lack of decent sports articles from JC Press so they might as well wright about the zoo
12-23-2007 12:46 PM
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