[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 53 (Thursday, April 15, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E557-E558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HONORING BEN BYRD

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 15, 2010

  Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, I have always said that the colors orange 
and white are almost as patriotic as red, white, and blue in my 
District. East Tennesseans live and breathe Big Orange Sports.
  Ben Byrd is a journalism legend in my District and has covered the 
most notable sports moments in Tennessee history since 1947.
  Tom Mattingly, a writer for the Knoxville News Sentinel, pays tribute 
to Ben Byrd in the piece reprinted below. I draw his service and talent 
to the attention of my colleagues and other readers of the Record.

              Mattingly: Nothing Got Past Byrd's Coverage

                           (By Tom Mattingly)

       When Emmett Byrd, director of marketing and operations for 
     Kyle Busch Motorsports, spoke at the Knoxville Downtown 
     Sertoma Club last Wednesday, there was a special journalist 
     in the audience.
       Ben Byrd, accompanied by wife, Jo, was there for the 
     festivities, not as a journalist, with notebook, pen, and on 
     deadline, but as a proud father.
       Byrd's career with the Knoxville Journal stamped him as a 
     legend in Knoxville journalism. He covered the basketball 
     Vols in his first assignment in 1947 and didn't miss very 
     many games thereafter. His history of the Tennessee 
     basketball program, titled ``The Basketball Vols,'' came out 
     in 1974.
       In 1986, he coauthored ``You Can Go Home Again'' with 
     Johnny Majors, a story tracing Majors' earliest days in Moore 
     County through the excitement of the 1986 Sugar Bowl.
       Byrd covered many of the greatest moments in Tennessee 
     sports history from the primitive press boxes and arenas of 
     the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, through the newer structures of 
     later years.
       His coverage of the 1956 Georgia Tech game was honored as 
     one of the best sports stories that year. It covered 25 
     paragraphs without a coach or player quote to be found.
       Here's how he set the stage.
       ``GRANT FIELD, Atlanta, November 10--The greatest football 
     game I have ever seen, Tennessee 6, Georgia Tech 0, has been 
     over 15 minutes now. The slate gray horseshoe stadium is 
     almost cleared of fans now, except for a bright orange patch 
     across the field in the east stands, where the Tennessee band 
     continues to blare out, piping hot in concert with the hand-
     clapping and foot-stomping jubilance of Volunteer fans.''
       You want a snappy line that fully explained what was 
     happening on the field?
       Consider that the situation was fourth-and-2 for the Yellow 
     Jackets at the Vols 34.
       ``They went for it this time and made it, Ken Owen ripping 
     to the 29. Stan Flowers

[[Page E558]]

     followed that up with an eight-yard charge, and the Tennessee 
     situation was not exactly peachy. But then Owen, exploding 
     off tackle, fumbled, and Jim Smelcher was on it like a third-
     rate vaudeville dancer grabbing coins tossed up on the 
     stage.''
       Then came the conclusion, his tribute to an epic contest, a 
     nearly poetic ending you're not likely to see in a game story 
     today.
       ``Twice the Vols came up with clutch interceptions, one by 
     Bubba Howe at midfield, and the last by (Tommy) Bronson, 
     retreating with his man deep into Tennessee territory. He 
     planted Tennessee's flag there on the nine-yard line, and a 
     vast silence fell on the Tech side of the stands. While down 
     the line, the Tennessee crowd chanted . . . four . . . three 
     . . . two . . . one. Hallelujah, praise the Lord.''
       Byrd's daily columns, titled ``Byrd's Eye View,'' were 
     incisive, even if they might have led to an unintended 
     consequence on one occasion.
       Byrd had a Saturday game day feature titled ``Free Thought 
     Association,'' purporting to pick the winners of that day's 
     games by what litany of seemingly random comments.
       When Tennessee played Rutgers on Nov. 3, 1979, on 
     Homecoming Day, the Vols were a prohibitive favorite.
       ``What are rutgers?'' he wrote.
       ``One housewife told me she bought a pound of them at the 
     supermarket last week for 59 cents, but they must have been 
     on sale because she normally pays 89 cents a pound.
       ``This one man who's been up East told me he doesn't 
     exactly know what rutgers are, but he's pretty sure they are 
     a lot like yonkers. Now if I just knew what yonkers were.''
       Rutgers got the last laugh, winning 13-7, with the column 
     supposedly on display prominently in the Scarlet Knights 
     dressing room.
       ``Incidentally,'' colleague Marvin West wrote, ``that 
     column was more fun on Saturday morning than Saturday 
     night.''
       When Tennessee squared off against Belmont in basketball in 
     December 2008, son Rick led the Belmont squad into battle.
       At one critical juncture in the contest, the CSS camera 
     focused on Ben, watching intently from press row at the east 
     end of Thompson-Boling Arena near the Belmont bench.
       He had to have had mixed emotions, given that he had seen a 
     number of these down-to-the-last-minute games during his time 
     covering the Vols. That was old hat for him.
       You couldn't blame him for harboring the hope that Rick and 
     Belmont could pull off an upset. You could only imagine what 
     was going through his head as the final seconds ticked down.
       I might have been the same feeling he had on March 6, 1967, 
     as he watched an improbable victory at Mississippi State that 
     gave the Vols the SEC title.
       The next day, Byrd's game story dubbed the 1966-67 Ray 
     Mears-coached SEC title team the ``Fearless Five.''
       When someone writes the authoritative history of Tennessee 
     sports, particularly for football and basketball, Byrd's 
     craftsmanship in reporting and commenting on the games of his 
     era will have to be one of the primary sources.

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