Brian Out Loud Archive

It was some point in early August of 2019 when I first took notice of Austin Reed on the football field.

He was slinging the ball around in a scrimmage on one of those hot and humid evenings we are all too familiar with here late in the summer here in Northwest Florida, looking like a quarterback capable of doing big things for a UWF football program with high hopes.

I owe Mike Krzyzewski a thank you in writing.

And seeing that his final season as the head coach of the Duke Blue Devils is winding down, it’s fitting that I publicly issue that thank you now rather than later.

You know when a kicker lines up for a field goal that seems destined to go in only to end up sailing wide left or wide right?

It almost happened this week.

Five years ago, the Sweet 16 was the furthest thing from the collective mind of Navarre’s girls basketball team.

The Raiders were just praying to avoid 16 losses in Abby Fogg’s first season as the head coach.
For the record, they didn’t. They lost 19 games.

National signing day has come and gone and once again there is no shortage of talent. Navarre, Pace, Milton, Crestview. All have athletes who are headed to the next level.

That chance to play a ciollege sport is a dream for every athlete. Heck, I used to have that dream. I just didn’t have the talent to match it.

If there is one thing Michael Carter has never done, it’s that he has never forgotten where he came from.

He didn’t do it when he went off to the University of North Carolina and he hasn’t done it since going to the NFL.

Florida’s rules for high school athletics seem so relaxed when it comes to athletes transferring that you have to try hard to do something that constitutes a violation.

Yet, rules still seem to be broken in one form or another and you wonder if any lessons are ever learned from it.

You typically don’t see teams win games by such a wide margin that people who see the score question if it’s real or not.

That happened to be the case for Navarre’s girls basketball team, however, in its game against Escambia earlier this month.

We sometimes forget that it’s 2022, not 1992, and that the world of college athletics, especially the football landscape, has changed in ways we could have never imagined a few decades ago.

If only Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard understood that.

As the crowd at MetLife Stadium cheered from the stands on the Sunday after Christmas, Michael Carter was in the middle of a touchdown celebration with Zach Wilson, who had just scored on a 52-yard run.

The two rookie teammates were in the end zone. Wilson was set to head back to the sideline, but Carter stopped him, encouraging him to celebrate a little longer. He pointed at the camera aimed at them and the two posed in front of it.