The Off Season...

Ahhh the off season, time to relax, sit back and reminisce about the past year... Not! The "off season" whatever that means, actually means, it's time to focus on business. Time to strengthen the infrastructure, make adjustments, form new alliances, strengthen existing ones. Time to examine where you've been and refocus on where you are going. And just where is that? Well, we have a long way to go to become all that we can be to Northeast Tennessee. This area needs more quality family sports entertainment. More to do on a Fall weekend evening. What better than watching our own talented athletes, from our area high schools and colleges, proudly represent, on the gridiron, live. Ok yes, occasionally an exceptional athlete from our area catches a break and goes on to play NCAA or even NFL football. That said, many more choose to stay in this area, start careers and build families. This provides our region with a rich pool of very talented football players, many of which, we watched on Friday nights at the local high school. Sure we have Tennessee Pride and we should. There's the Titans and of course UT, but how about our area? Absolutely! We have great pride for our region! So then, when a team of athletes from other proud cities like Knoxville, Bluefield or Asheville invades the Tri-cites, are we going to pull for our team? You bet. The Raptors have several players that should be playing on Sundays, including Sanchez Releford (volunteer), Jeremy Graves (Dobyns-Bennett) and Octavious Latimore (Carson-Newman) to name a few. They just didn't catch a break. Yet. Having the opportunity to watch them do their thing, live, on the field, is fabulous. Having that opportunity for a ticket price of 10 bucks, and without having to drive for hours, is simply amazing. Simply put, a lot of area sports fans are missing out, and we aim to change that. Posted by Randy Ferrell on 12/4/05 at 8:51 AM