Are you ready for Super Bowl football?

Super Bowl frenzy has its grips on America. The San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs have “survived and advanced.” They clash on Sunday, Feb. 2. To the victor goes the esteemed Vince Lombardi Trophy as the NFL champion of Super Bowl LIV.

What was the most dramatic Super Bowl of all time? Probably the first one in 1967, because it chartered new territory.

As background: Once, there were two pro football leagues. The National Football League (NFL) came first. Its roots date back to 1920. A rival American Football League (AFL) was founded in 1960. In 1966, the NFL and AFL agreed to merge.

Owners from each league voted to conduct a championship game, beginning in 1967, but still maintain separate regular-season schedules through 1969. They would effectively come together, forming one league in 1970 under the NFL umbrella, with two conferences, the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC).

Jay Serafino of the Mental Floss online magazine, drilled a little deeper. He said there was a lot of debate about what to call the new title game in 1967. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle selected “AFL-NFL World Championship Game.”

Serafino reported that Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, suggested “something punchier,” like the “Super Bowl.” Fans and the news media liked the term, but Rozelle bristled, saying it was “too gimmicky.” Hunt eventually convinced other team owners to go along with his idea. The “Super Bowl” was adopted as the name of the game forevermore in 1970.

Contestants in that 1967 title game were the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and Kansas City of the AFL. The game pitted the Packers’ coach-quarterback combination of Vince Lombardi-Bart Starr versus Hank Stram-Len Dawson of the Chiefs.

Serafino reported: “There was a bit of an issue televising the game. NBC had the rights to air AFL games, while CBS was the longtime rights holder for the NFL product. The first Super Bowl was the only one to be simulcast on two different networks.”

In the NBC booth were announcers Curt Gowdy and Paul Christman. CBS countered with Ray Scott, Jack Whitaker and Frank Gifford.

The 1967 game was the one and only Super Bowl that did not sell out. Serafino said about one-third of the seats in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum were empty. “Some fans balked at the steep $12 ticket prices,” he said.

The highlight of the halftime show was the release of 4,000 pigeons as a gesture of “peace.” One “dropped a present on the typewriter of a young reporter, Brent Musburger,” Serafino wrote.

“When the second half of Super Bowl I began…NBC missed the kickoff because the network was airing an interview with Bob Hope,” Serafino said. “The kickoff had to be redone for the sake of nearly half the TV audience.”

The game itself was tight in the first half, but Green Bay wore down Kansas City after intermission, pulling away to win, 35-10.

Coach Lombardi brought the Packers back to appear in Super Bowl II, played in Miami, Fla., where the Packers disposed of the Oakland Raiders, 33-14.

This year’s Super Bowl returns to Miami, an AFC city. Of the 43 Super Bowls played, the NFC has won 27 times, while the AFC has recorded 26 wins.

The very, very best Super Bowl, dagnabbit, is yet to be played. In my mind, it will feature two of the most anemic franchises of all-time, the only two “pre-merger” NFL teams that have never appeared in the Super Bowl – the Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns.

In the 1950s, the Lions and the Browns ruled. The Lions crushed the Browns, 59-14, in the 1957 title game. That is Detroit’s most recent championship. The Browns last won the title in 1964, slamming the Baltimore Colts, 27-0.

Both Detroit and Cleveland fans attribute their pitiful and prolonged slumps to dreaded curses that have been placed on their franchises. In Detroit’s case, the abrupt trade of its popular quarterback Bobby Layne in 1958 brought on the curse. Cleveland is yet to recover from a curse inflicted by owner Art Modell, who moved the team to Baltimore in 1996.

Coach Lombardi influenced Wolfpack’s Jimmy V

We’re in countdown mode for the kickoff of Super Bowl LIV on Sunday, Feb. 2. The winning team takes home the NFL’s Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi.

He guided the Packers to victory in the first Super Bowl in 1967, and came back the following year to win another championship.

Vincent Thomas Lombardi was born in 1913 in Brooklyn, N.Y. As a football coach, Lombardi influenced millions of men and women in the sports world and beyond.

Lombardi was a “rock star” in the eyes of an impressionable James Thomas Anthony Valvano, who was born in 1946 in Queens, N.Y. Valvano played basketball at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J.

He came to North Carolina State University in 1980 to coach the Wolfpack men’s basketball squad. Valvano led the team to the NCAA championship in 1983.

Ten years later, Valvano delivered one of the greatest televised speeches of all time at the “ESPY Awards” show in 1993, sponsored by the ESPN network. Visibly suffering from cancer, Valvano received the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage Award, named for the late African-American tennis star Arthur Ashe.

Valvano gave a dagnabbit warning to ESPN: “I’m going to speak longer than anybody else has spoken tonight. Time is very precious to me. I don’t know how much I have left, and I have some things that I would like to say.”

Valvano was quick to inject his special brand of humor, sharing his first coaching experience at the helm of Rutgers’ freshman basketball team. He was 21.

Valvano had been studying the book “Commitment to Excellence: Lombardi Style” and planning his first pre-game pep talk. “I’m getting this picture of Lombardi before his first game, and he said, ‘Gentlemen, we will be successful this year, if you can focus on three things, and three things only. Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers.’”

Valvano said: “That’s beautiful. I’m going to do that. Your family, your religion and Rutgers Basketball. That’s it. I had it…and I’m going to be the greatest coach in the world, the next Lombardi. I’m practicing outside of the locker room…family, religion, Rutgers Basketball. I got it, I got it.”

“I go to knock the doors open just like Lombardi. Boom! They don’t open. I almost broke my arm. Finally, I said, ‘Gentlemen, we’ll be successful this year if you can focus on three things, and three things only. Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers.’ I did that.”

One of Valvano’s key messages that continues to resonate is: “There are three things we all should do every day of our lives.” One – laugh. Laugh every day. Two – think. Spend time in thought. Three – have your emotions moved to tears.

“If you laugh, you think and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special,” he said.

When sportscasters Dick Vitale and Bob Valvano, younger brother of Jim, get together nowadays, they laugh about their favorite part of the ESPY show speech. Bob recites it perfectly:

“That screen is flashing up there ‘30 seconds,’ like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body. I’m worried about some guy in the back going, ‘30 seconds?’ Hey, va’ fa Napoli, buddy.”

That Italian phrase translates to “get lost, take a hike” or words to that effect.

Valvano and ESPN partnered to create the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research, which adopted the motto of “Don’t give up…don’t ever give up.”

His parting words were: “Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.”

Coach Valvano died April 28, 1993, about seven weeks after his famous TV speech. His gravestone in Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh bears the inscription: “Take time every day to laugh, to think, to cry.”

N.C.’s greatest asset is ‘her people’

Just when it looked like blogger Caleb Pressley of Asheville was glowing white hot with his amusing countdown series detailing the “five best things about North Carolina,” he laid an egg with the “great reveal” of his top choice – “the future.”

Ranked fifth through second respectively were the North Carolina mountains, Texas Pete Original Hot Sauce, the Carolina Panthers’ panther statues outside Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, and Cherie Berry, who is North Carolina’s Commissioner of Labor. His rationale for these rankings provided entertaining reading.

Pressley fans were less than thrilled, however, with his final essay that announced the very “best thing” about North Carolina was its future. He wrote: “To accurately declare the best thing about it is a formidable, if not impossible task.”

“As good as things have been in North Carolina for the last 2,000 or so years, the only thing that’s better is our future,” Pressley asserted.

Dagnabbit. That conclusion seemed a tad flat and a bit of a let-down…noncontroversial and out-of-character for this usually brash and edgy 27-year-old commentator with Barstool Sports.

Now, there are plenty of people – past and present – who as great North Carolinians have left and are leaving their mark on the Old North State. In their jumbo-sized book, “Making A Difference In North Carolina,” published in 1988, authors Hugh Morton and Ed Rankin (both are now deceased) made a good run at compiling a list.

Dr. Billy Graham and two Army Generals – George C. Marshall and William C. Westmoreland – are headliners, along with legends such as David Brinkley, William Friday, Andy Griffith, Michael Jordan, Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice, Charles Kurault, Meadowlark Lemon, Richard Petty, Arthur Smith, Dean Smith, Bob Timberlake and Doc Watson.

Other heroes and celebrities mentioned in more recent articles include stellar North Carolinians Maya Angelou, Harriet Morehead Berry, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Virginia Dare, Dale Earnhardt Sr., Roberta Flack, Ava Gardner, Sugar Ray Leonard, Dolley Madison, James Motley Morehead, Edward R. Murrow, Kelli Pickler, William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), James Taylor and Thomas Wolfe.

Surely, there are scores of other people across North Carolina who are equally deserving, so Pressley can’t be faulted for not wanting to trump the indefatigable Cherie Berry.

If Pressley were to ask “us’ns” in Carteret County, he would learn the “best thing about North Carolina” is clear as a bell – it’s the Crystal Coast. Who wouldn’t swear and tear his/her hair to live, work and play here?

The Crystal Coast is the water sports capital of North Carolina. Our tourism-based businesses are busy year-round extending the hand of hospitality to guests. Visit in winter and watch the sun both rise and set over the Atlantic Ocean. How cool is that?

But in the interest of “fairness to all concerned,” the great County of Carteret yields to a 2015 article that appeared in Our State magazine written by Katie Quine. She said:

“When I think about my love for North Carolina, my mind always trails to Charles Kuralt’s speech in 1993,” given at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to celebrate the institution’s 200th commencement ceremony.

Quine commented: “His opening 13 words resound deep within my heart, ‘What is it that binds us to this place as to no other?’”

Kuralt said it’s not “the memory of dogwoods blooming…our love for this place is based on the fact that it is…the University of the people.”

Quine interjected that she believed Kurault’s words applied to North Carolina as a whole. She asked: “Truly, what binds us to this place of the pine? What makes us want to call North Carolina home?

Kurault topped off his speech with these words: “Care about one another…be sensitive enough to feel supreme tenderness toward others, and be strong enough to show it. That is a commandment, by the way, and not from me.”

The best thing about North Carolina – past, present and future – is “her people.”

N.C.’s ‘Elevator Queen’ prepares for final ride

Caleb Pressley of Asheville, N.C., at age 27, is a contemporary humorist, aspiring to hone his craft to ascend to the level of the old masters like Will Rogers, Bennett Cerf and Lewis Grizzard. Pressley has built quite a case why Commissioner of Labor Cherie Berry is the “second best thing about North Carolina.”

“When you first see Cherie”…there’s the “perfectly manicured hair, trendy glasses, contagious smile – it’s safe to say she’s a supermodel,” Pressley stated. “She has been with us when we needed her most. Riding in an elevator can be a very stressful and terrifying experience.”

“In a magnanimous and selfless gesture, Cherie Berry placed a picture of herself in every single elevator in our entire state just to let us know everything was going to be OK.” It’s as if she is riding along to provide comfort and assurance. She also warns people that she’s watching them to make sure they don’t do anything in an elevator that their mothers would not approve of.

Cherie Berry, a Republican from Catawba County, was first elected Commissioner of Labor in 2000, and then re-elected four times. She will retire when her term expires in 2020.

North Carolinians began electing a labor commissioner in 1900. Cherie Berry is the only female to ever hold the office. Cherie’s first name is officially pronounced as “sha REE,” taken from the French phrase “mon chéri,” meaning “darling, dearest.”

Her late husband, Norman H. Berry Jr., died in 2006. Today, her pet cats keep her company. At home, she will pick up a book, sit on the couch “and my kitties will come sit on the couch behind my head. That’s how I unwind,” Berry told Lauren Levine Corriher, a freelance writer from Charlotte.

One of most compelling tributes to appear during Berry’s “victory tour” around the state was penned by Raven McCorkle, a senior at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. Writing for the student newspaper, McCorkle said:

“When you see Cherie Berry’s face in the elevator, and you think about how much you’d hate to take the stairs, of course, you start to feel indebted to her. I mean, the woman practically invented the elevator (well, not really, but she invented putting her picture in all of them; that’s practically the same thing).”

“Commissioner Berry has a cult following as well, and she is loved all across North Carolina. There are songs about her, T-shirts and even a spoof twitter account dedicated to her, @ElevatorQueen. The phrase ‘She Lifts Me Up’ is used to represent the iconic commissioner.”

The 1971 song by hard rock group Led Zeppelin was wrong, McCorkle said. “There isn’t a ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ There is an elevator, and Cherie Berry’s face is right on the wall.”

One of the duties of the North Carolina Department of Labor (DOL) is to inspect elevators on an annual basis and issue a “certificate of operation.” An aide approached Berry in her first term, suggesting there was space on the poster to include a small photograph along with the commissioner’s signature. He told her: “People need to know there’s a real person” who is concerned for their health and safety. “We’ll put a face on government, your face.”

A black-and-white portrait debuted on the certificate document in 2005. After Berry’s fourth re-election in 2016, the DOL upgraded the equipment at its in-house print shop, reported Kate Elizabeth Queram of the Greensboro News & Record.

“As a result, the newest elevator photo (its third iteration) shows Berry in full color, sporting a platinum bob and a red blazer.”

It’s not just the face. Berry’s signature is not only readable, her dagnabbit penmanship is beautiful, noted Corriher. She asked Berry: “How long did it take you to perfect the signature we see in the elevators?”

Berry replied: “About two seconds. Somebody said, ‘We need your signature here,’ and I said, ‘OK, here it is!’”

Gary D. Robertson of the Associated Press asked Berry about her decision not to run for a sixth term. She cited Rita Coolidge’s song from 1979: “I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love.” “Yes, I believe it’s best to leave while I’m in love.”

What can possibly top ‘Texas Pete’ as N.C.’s best asset?

Not too long ago, we learned that blogger Caleb Pressley of Asheville, N.C., thinks “the fourth best thing about North Carolina” is “Texas Pete Original Hot Sauce,” a product that dates back to 1929, created by Thad Garner and family in Winston-Salem.

In Pressley’s mind, Texas Pete even eclipses the “North Carolina mountains,” which he ranked fifth as a state asset. Readers asked two questions. Who is this guy Pressley? What could possibly rank ahead of Texas Pete?

Caleb Pressley is “a character.” My mother would use that term politely to describe someone who is “slightly tetched in the head.” Pressley would be honored, not offended. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015, majoring in communications.

He was a member of the Tar Heels varsity football team from 2011-13, serving as a backup quarterback. He became a student manager for the team in 2014 and appointed himself as the “supervisor of morale,” working on the sidelines to augment the coaching staff.

Pressley, who now writes for Barstool Sports, a pop culture blog based in New York City, ranks the “third best thing about North Carolina” as the Carolina panthers – the statues outside Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, not the professional football team that plays inside the stadium.

Indeed, they are impressive monuments. Sculptor Todd Andrews of Grass Valley, Calif., said he was commissioned to create six 22-foot bronze panthers to represent the “indomitable spirit” of the Carolina Panthers. “As you gaze into the eyes of each panther, you will momentarily be lost in the hypnotic trance.” Each sculpture “exudes a feeling of power and passion,” Andrews commented.

Pressley’s choice for the “second best thing about North Carolina” is someone he describes as a “juggernaut” of a celebrity – Cherie Berry, North Carolina’s Commissioner of Labor, who is fondly known as the “Elevator Lady.”

Cherie Berry’s smiling face appears on the “certificate of operation,” a required poster in every elevator in the entire state attesting that it has passed an annual inspection. On a daily basis, thousands and thousands of elevator cars go up and down, up and down…over and over again. Her mug shot is seen daily by zillions of elevator passengers.

“Her first and last name rhyme like she’s straight from Dr. Seuss,” Pressley added. That’s not quite the case, as the correct pronunciation of Cherie is “sha-REE.”

Cherie Killian was born in Newton, a town in Catawba County, N.C., on Dec. 21, 1946, the daughter of Earl Clifford and Lena Carrigan Killian.

As background: Fighting with U.S. troops during World War II, Earl Killian was an aircraft tail gunner who was shot down twice. He was captured the second time and spent 13 months in a German prisoner of war camp before being liberated by British soldiers.

Coming home through France, he heard “mon chéri,” meaning “darling, dearest” in English. Earl loved the sound of it, so he promised himself: “If I ever get home alive and have a daughter, I’ll name her Cherie.”

Cherie Killian graduated from Maiden (N.C.) High School in 1965. She attended Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory. Her first real job was working for Guy Hunt at Hunt’s Department Store in Boone. (The building now houses Mast General Store.) She also learned how to make pottery and sold her wares to travelers along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Life got interesting when Cherie married her third husband, Norman H. Berry Jr. and became Cherie Berry. In 1985, the Berrys started a company to manufacture spark-plug wires for the automobile industry. The venture became very profitable.

Berry, a Republican, was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1992, representing Catawba County. She served eight years in the General Assembly and was first elected as the Commissioner of Labor in 2000. She has decided to vacate her position and retire in 2020 at the end of her fifth four-year term.

She once told reporters that “almost everybody” mispronounces her name: “They say Sherry or Cherry to make it rhyme with Berry, and that’s OK. I don’t mind. You can call me anything but late for dinner.”

Caleb Pressley calls Cherie Berry a “supermodel” in her 70s. The superlatives are about a mile long and growing. Dagnabbit, she’s even had a song written about her, and at least two craft beers are named in her honor.

N.C. is Texas Pete’s home state: True or false?

Food and travel writer Jenn Rice of Durham says: “Texas Pete Original Hot Sauce is to North Carolina as bourbon is to Kentucky.”

Barstool Sports’ blogger Caleb Pressley of Asheville says he considers “Texas Pete to be the fourth best thing about his native state,” ranking it a notch above “North Carolina’s mountains.”

Are Rice and Pressley off their rockers? Not at all. Texas Pete is pure North Carolina, invented by the Garner family of Winston-Salem during the Great Depression years.

The saga began more than 90 years ago – in 1929 – when Thad W. Garner, son of Sam and Ila Jane Garner, invested all of his savings…accumulated while working jobs as a bus driver and newspaper delivery boy…to purchase a local Winston-Salem business known as the Dixie Pig barbecue stand.

The most valuable asset proved to be the vinegar-based barbecue sauce recipe, dubbed a “Louisiana-style hot sauce.”

Thad Garner’s barbecue joint didn’t survive, but people loved the dagnabbit Dixie Pig sauce. Ila Jane and daughters Virginia, Elizabeth and Margaret made it in the family kitchen. Sam and sons Thad, Ralph and Harold took to the road and peddled it throughout the Piedmont of North Carolina.

Customers suggested that the sauce would be “even better if it were a tad spicier.” The Garner family tinkered and dickered with the recipe to come up with a hot sauce that was infused with a special “snap, crackle and pop.” They added cayenne peppers.

Sam Garner saw the opportunity to create a new brand, and he sought the advice of a hot-shot marketing consultant. The man suggested the name “Mexican Joe” – to “connote the piquant flavor reminiscent of the favorite foods of our neighbors to the south.”

Sam Garner was half-way impressed, but he insisted the made-in-the-U.S.A. product had to “have a dad-gum American name.” He reckoned that Texas also had a reputation for spicy cuisine. Then he glanced at son Harold, whose nickname was “Pete,” and it was settled. The “Texas Pete” brand was born.

“The tangy, spicy Texas Pete condiment contains a blend of three peppers, but the recipe is a closely guarded top secret,” Jenn Rice reported.

The linkage of Texas Pete to cowboys was another stroke of genius. Movie cowboys were very popular in the 1930s, and Tom Mix was the hottest star in Hollywood.

A likeness of Mix’s face on Texas Pete products preceded the iconic red cowboy logo that has been associated with Texas Pete since 1962. (Tom Mix was regarded as “king of the cowboys,” having starred in 291 early western movies. He is credited with helping “define the genre as it emerged in the early days of the cinema.”)

When the Texas Pete production demands grew beyond the capacity of the Garner family kitchen, the Garners built a factory on Indiana Avenue in Winston-Salem in 1942, and the T.W. Garner Food Company was formed in 1946.

Over the years, Garner Foods expanded its product lines to include sauces for pork, chicken, seafood and Mexican-style dishes.

In 2004, Garner Foods acquired Hume Specialties Inc. of Chester, Vt., and its Green Mountain Gringo brand of salsa and tortilla strips. This gave the company an entry into the growing natural-foods market.

Presently, Ann Garner Riddle serves as Garner Foods’ CEO. She is a niece of Thad Garner and joined the company in 1972. Members of the fourth generation of Garners are now serving in executive level positions in the areas of operations, finance and marketing.

The “Texas Pete Tribe” is the name of the product’s fan club. Member Michael Eickemeier of High Point, N.C., said: “I put Texas Pete on Texas Pete.” David LaBlanc of Breaux Bridge, La., wrote: “It’s not brunch unless my plate is swimming in Texas Pete.”

Around Winston-Salem, Jenn Rice told readers of the Tasting Table website: “You’ll be hard-pressed to find a restaurant that doesn’t have a bottle of Texas Pete on every table. It’s practically a legend in the South – a liquid condiment home cooks and big-name chefs alike swear by.”

She cited Winston-Salem chefs who use Texas Pete on or in everything from brownies to hashbrowns…and from fried chicken to bourbon cocktails.

The burning, remaining question to Caleb Pressley is: “What three things, pray tell, could be hotter than Texas Pete in North Carolina?” Watch this space.

A time to remember: Basketball’s ‘Mr. Bones’

Horace Albert “Bones” McKinney, who was born on New Year’s Day in 1919, was destined to become basketball’s original “clown prince”…and was so designated while still just a high school player.

A native of Lowland, N.C., a small town on Goose Creek Island in Pamlico County, McKinney grew up in Durham in a neighborhood “in the shadow” of Duke University.

He was 6-foot-6 and skinny. He was never sure when people started calling him “Bones,” but always said “with a name like Horace Albert, the sooner the better, right?”

A writer for Life magazine once commented about McKinney’s volcanic personality: “Mr. Bones erupts dramatically…looking like a dead ringer for Ichabod Crane.”

McKinney was not a stellar student, but he learned basketball from some of the great teachers of the game, beginning with Olive Brown, a physical education teacher at George Watts Grammar School in Durham. He said: “Miss Brown taught me how to fake with the ball, and the first time I tried it in a game, it worked. I thought, ‘How wonderful can she be?’”

His junior high school coach Paul Sykes molded McKinney from a “backyard player to a fierce competitor on the court.” While a freshman at Durham High in 1936, McKinney’s interest in school soured. He turned in his jersey and dropped out of school.

“I knew I couldn’t flunk playing pinball at the Owl Pharmacy,” he recalled. To earn money, McKinney worked as the drug store’s delivery boy, labored in a textile mill and caddied at a public golf course. He also found time to play some hoops at the YMCA.

The next year, Sykes moved up to become the high school coach; he invited McKinney back to school and offered him a spot on the basketball team. McKinney jumped at the opportunity and vowed to make it as a “student-athlete.”

McKinney bragged that Sykes was the coach who “invented the fast break offense.”

One night, Durham High traveled to Rocky Mount to help christen the opponent’s brand-new gymnasium with its new-fangled score clock that was capable of counting up to 60.

The Durham squad poured it on, romping to a 69-25 triumph. McKinney said: “We ruined their gym dedication, broke their new score clock and broke their hearts. During the game, I went up into the stands and taught some of the Rocky Mount students how to yo-yo.”

McKinney’s basketball antics seemed to escalate from there. As a high schooler, he would beg and plead to officials on bent knees, comically gesture behind their backs, pat them on the head, hide the ball between his legs to fake a shot, sell programs in the stands, sit on the opposing coach’s lap, play barefoot and escort opposing players to the foul line, encouraging them “not to choke.”

Durham High won the 1939 Interscholastic Basketball Tournament, an invitational for high state championship teams, played in Glens Falls, N.Y. McKinney’s teammate Bob Gantt was selected as tournament MVP, but the hosts offered a second trophy. It was inscribed: “To Horace Bones McKinney – the Clown Prince of Basketball.”

(Do you suppose they had gotten wind of the trip into New York City that the Durham boys made to “get some culture,” not at a museum or art gallery, but at a burlesque show?)

Those Durham Bulldog teams were special. They won 69 straight games, including three straight North Carolina Class A high school basketball championships and three straight contests against the Duke University freshman team.

At one such meeting, McKinney hollered out to the Duke players: “We’ll spot you 10 and beat you by 10.” The high school lads covered, coasting to a 72-45 victory.

The biggest game for Durham High came in 1940. The Duke varsity had won the Southern Conference title. Coach Sykes and coach Eddie Cameron of Duke agreed to play a “closed-door” scrimmage. The game didn’t really count, but Bones McKinney was keeping score in his head. He reported the Bulldogs won by 15 points…or so.

Cameron only smiled, because the talented Durham High seniors were all expected to enroll as Blue Devil freshmen – Gantt, McKinney and the Loftis twins (Cedric and Garland).

Bones McKinney would ultimately throw a monkey wrench into those plans, as reported by author Bethany Bradsher in her book, Bones McKinney: Basketball’s Unforgettable Showman. Dagnabbit it all, McKinney went and enrolled at North Carolina State University.