It may be 80 degrees and sunny right now.
But soon enough, the crisp air of fall will be sneaking into the mountains of Western North Carolina.
The fall brings leaf season, an influx of selfie-seeking day trippers, and perhaps most importantly – football.
While Highlands School doesn’t field a football team, there is no shortage of pigskin enthusiasts on the plateau. Whether it’s making the trip to Franklin, Rabun County, or Walhalla on a Friday night, picking up tickets at Clemson, Georgia or Western Carolina on a Saturday, or taking a Sunday jaunt to Atlanta or Charlotte for NFL action, football brings people together.
Baseball may be “America’s National Pastime,” but football is the South’s obsession.
And for those who don’t want to wait six more weeks for the season to start, the Center for Life Enrichment has you covered.
CLE’s annual College Football Preview will take place Friday, July 28, from 10 a.m. to noon. The program will be held at the Peggy Crosby Center and will be in two parts.
In the first Tony Barnhart will preview the upcoming football season for both the SEC and ACC schools with will some coverage of other conferences with teams that might be in the hunt to make the national playoffs.
Joining Tony in this discussion will be Bill Curry, former head coach at Georgia Tech, Alabama, Kentucky, and Georgia State, and Don Munson, play-by-play announcer for Clemson football.
In the second part, Tony and Bill Curry will talk about Tony’s upcoming book The 19 of Greene, the story of the integration of the Greene County High School football team in the fall of 1970 and how a group of black and white kids united to have a sparkling and memorable run to a divisional championship.
To register contact the CLE office at 828-526-8811 or go online office@clehighlands.com for details.
It seems like summer just got started in Highlands, but fall is fast approaching and the sights and sounds of football will be here before we know it.