Sports fans love traditions.
Football rivalry games happen on the same weekend every year.
Friends get together to watch the Super Bowl every year, even if their team isn’t in the game.
Baseball fans who don’t stand and sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the seventh-inning stretch get more dirty looks than a person wearing a Tennessee Vol t-shirt at a tailgating event at a football game between Alabama and Florida.
It’s what we do.
Jackson sports fans get to take part in one of the newer local traditions this year – watching the Jackson Underdawgs represent the Hub City in The Basketball Tournament.
This was a cool idea that happened eight years ago when a bunch of former basketball players from Liberty and South Side got together to enter the tournament that promises a $1 million prize to the winning team.
Then the Liberty players got their former coaches – Dexter Williams and Terrell Green – to go with them and do their jobs from the sidelines.
And there aren’t many coaches in Jackson who could rival the team of Williams and Green in terms of success to prove they’re the correct coaches for the job after they led Liberty to two state championships and Green was an assistant coach for a third state title team.
As the name of the Underdawgs has grown, so has the legend of their team.
Williams shared a photo on social media early this week after the team landed in Louisville for the regional tournament at Freedom Hall on the campus of University of Louisville.
It was a shot of Williams at Freedom Hall standing with legendary sports broadcaster Seth Greenberg, who was watching the Underdawgs practice ahead of broadcasting their game on Tuesday night.
Williams had told me he and Greenberg had a few conversations over the years, and even though I’ve never had a reason to doubt anything Williams said, I still wondered what kind of conversations the two had in past years.
According to Williams’ post, Greenberg remembers the Underdawgs enough to say they’re his favorite TBT team. While I don’t doubt he said that, I do wonder how serious he was.
But even if he wasn’t that serious, he does remember the Underdawgs, which means he remembers the name of Jackson.
So he remembers names like Antwan Long, Anthony Sampson, Jaylen Barford and Juwan Long.
He remembers the hustle and competitive nature of the team and how they truly play with a team-first mindset simply because they want to win six games and bring home the championship and the money.
So it’s become tradition for Greenberg to look forward to watching the Underdawgs play just like it is for a bunch of people in Jackson and West Tennessee to do the same.
Here’s hoping we see them win six times in the next couple weeks.
Brandon Shields is the managing editor of The Jackson Post. Contact him at brandon@jacksonpost.news. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or Instagram @Editorbrandon.
