Every week, Cliff Furr is Talking Ball, Y’all with a new weekly column that’s presented by our partners at Toyota of Brookhaven.

December 6, 2003

I’m watching the Army-Navy game on the couch at my college apartment in Hattiesburg. Not even a month into my 22nd year.

There’s a call from Pappaw. Come home, something happened to your Mama.

For some reason I chose the route up 583 as my path back to Lincoln County. At some point around Magee’s Creek, I realize my Mama is gone. That I’m not coming home to some health issue, as I’d first imagined.

Deborah Kate Garvin Furr.

How can I sum her up without making this a 2,000 word therapy session.

The best, just simply the best. Strong. Fearless. Hilarious. Warmth. Love.

A boss in the kitchen. Nurse. Mama to many.

What I would give, what I would pay for one more of those hugs. Her arms wrapped around my back as she squeezed me in.

Mama wasn’t ever called waifish. She could pop a rib if she wanted to with her hug.

You always knew where you stood with her.

Gone at the age of 51 in a hunting accident.

I’ve written a lot about her in these 22 years I’ve now experienced without her. And I’m not even close to being done. I’m really writing for an audience of my kids. I try to keep her stirred up in my heart for them. She would have been a hall of fame Dee Dee had life gone differently.

Later that night, long after Navy beat Army 34-6, my sister and I sat in the living room while waiting for my brother to arrive from his home in Texas. We had aunts and uncles gathered around us with grandparents.

Daddy was like a puddle on the bedroom floor.

I remember it all.

And I remember looking at the television and seeing the highlights of Kansas State upsetting Oklahoma 35-7 in a shocking Big 12 Championship Game and having a moment of mental vacation from my grief.

How’s this going to change the BCS rankings, I thought for a moment.

For whatever weird reason, sports are almost always on my mind, even in the bad times.

Friday, November 29, 2024

Driving my wife’s SUV. Looking for somewhere to stop and eat. Somewhere I can set up my laptop and write a story.

A game story, for the one I’ve just watched.

Gautier High 37, Brookhaven High 35. MHSAA 5A South State Championship.

I found a Waffle House and pull in. The vehicle is loaded with teenagers. My two and some of their best buds. They are the members of the BHS Red Nation (student cheering section) that have made the trip.

My crew is silent, with all but Graham having the reflection of phone screens in their teary eyes. The Panthers had a chance at a game winning kick. The kick goes wide with no time left. The kicker is tight with all of them. You can see real hurt on their faces.

It feels like we’ve all been punched in the stomach.

Happy Gautier fans file in while I write a gamer for the newspaper and eat the only Texas Cheesesteak Melt that I didn’t enjoy.

Friday, December 5, 2025

Down Highway 25 barrels the same SUV and behind it, a minivan.

In their combined confines are most of the teens from a year prior.

We once again ate waffles, but this time from Starkville Café. Shoutout to that Duck Butter.

Those waffles were skinny and flat and tasted faintly of dish water, those Gautier waffles.

These waffles looked to have been flown in from Belgium. Fill every square with Duck Butter if want to dine like a king. These are state championship waffles.

Our bellies are now full and we all wear a little smirk. The smile isn’t coming off anytime soon.

On Thursday night, as cold and wet and nasty as you’ll see, we attended a church meeting at Davis Wade Stadium.

From halftime on, the Brookhaven High Panthers absolutely rag-dolled the previously undefeated West Point Green Wave in the MHSAA 5A Championship Game.

West Point was trying to win its third straight title, was playing in a 10th straight championship, and has been state champs 13 times.

BHS trailed 19-10  after playing a sloppy first half. After halftime, lightning struck three times in near succession.

Jaden Allen ran for a 51-yard touchdown. Caiden Quarles followed a Coderro McDaniel block that we need a painting of into the endzone, and Jeremy Bibbs returned an interception for a touchdown.

31-19 sat the score from midway through the third until the final horn.

The Ole Brooke defense was a math equation that West Point could not solve. Look at the pictures. Watch the replay.

We bullied the team known for winning with bully-ball.

A championship fueled tent meeting broke out on the home side of Davis Wade. Everyone who had rode the fan bus that met up at Walmart or those that rode a church bus or those who rode in Wonder’s van – they all came together to dance and celebrate.

They played Swag Surfin and we swagged and we surfed.

The light show accompanied by Crazy Train on the PA to start the fourth quarter had students ripping their shirts off.

We did on-field interviews and pictures and then went back to an Airbnb in Starkville and posted content, trolled the arrogant Green Wave fans that had been flooding this page, and laughed with our kids until almost 2 a.m.

We were still talking about every detail, every moment, every play, as we dodged potholes on 25 the next day.

We’d felt so cold leaving Gautier. Inside and out.

Full from breakfast, the cab of the vehicle was toasty as we grinned our way home from Starkville.

Sports man…sports.

It takes hold of you for good reason. It makes you feel something. I try to not let anything get me too cranked up.

I had a moment where I jumped around like a fool on Thursday alongside the crowd with BHS.

These Panthers, they’re more than just a team that I cover. They’re some of my favorite people.

I taught some All Quite on the Western Front as their 8th grade English teacher. And some of them, I taught their mom or dad Beowulf as their senior English teacher almost 20 years ago.

Still, I try my best to be objective in everything I do in this space.

I knew they weren’t perfect, but I had seen their growth with my own eyes. West Point only beat Gautier by seven a year prior. Gautier only beat Brookhaven by two points.

Why not Brookhaven? Why not be the giant killers?

When I saw defensive coordinator Corey McLaurin in Monticello at a junior high basketball game, I stated my case of why I thought we would win a few nights later.

With his defensive unit being a big part of that reasoning.

“We’re bringing three stones with us,” he said while patting his pocket.

August 2, 2025

I’m fixing a mailbox in the neighborhood. One that a young driver in my family had destroyed with her car.

My cousin Ryan let’s me know that the Y’all Sports website is live. I hit publish on my introductory column and post it to our socials.

Between then and now, it’s taken off like a rocket.

Using Facebook engagement numbers, Y’all Sports has had 19 million views between August 2 and today.

My sister and her photography are a big part of that. She took an insane amount of shots this season for so many different schools.

She fell deeply in love with the 2025 State Champs when she got run over on their sideline against Natchez High.

She thought she went flying, but the tape shows her just getting bumped over. She sports a killer bruise later.

When she goes down, the sky gets completely blocked out. As 14 Panthers reach down to pick her and her equipment up. They dust her off and she’s screaming “I’m ok, I’m ok, I’m ok” and it makes me laugh so hard that I think I’m going to pass out.

She’s still buzzing from Thursday. She loved this team.

I feel extremely lucky. I’ll try to stop repeating that, but you’ve poured positive words into me and that makes me grateful.

I take this stuff seriously. I saw 27 different high school football teams in 2025. That’s the part I love, getting to see how kids develop over a high school career with my own eyes.

The seniors at BHS were freshmen on a 1-9 team. They then made the quarterfinals as sophomores and the semifinals as juniors.

I knew this was coming for a long time, but I’m not the only one. These dudes didn’t lose at anything in junior high. The juniors and sophomores had a two year stint at Alexander Junior High where they barely allowed a point in football and won the state wide middle school track meet over folks like Pearl, Northwest Rankin, and Madison Central along with being unbeaten in hoops.

It felt like their time was coming soon, which was a big reason for me launching Y’all Sports.

I knew there would be great stories to tell and I wanted to be the one telling them.

And for the record, I think BHS is going to do all this again next year, and you read it here first.

November 16, 1981 – December 6, 2003

It gets a little easier each year. You just develop a callus on your heart. You don’t let it get you down, but the weather has a hand in how you feel on most anniversaries of losing her.

A gray day on that day can put you in a dark room, blaring The Scientist by Coldplay.

You find comfort in knowing that so much loved was packed into 22 years. It drives you to want to give that kind of love. It teaches you about the fragility of life.

You know others who had a similar love that didn’t last as long as yours.

I thought I had troubles said the man with no shoes, until I met the man with no feet.

You know others have had it rougher than you.

You also know that a love like this, it would have still been maximum pain if you were 52 and she 81. It would never have been easy.

You find comfort in her love of Christ. Her love sprang from the fount of Living Water.

You also have a strength in the last words you ever spoke to each other.

“I love you.”

I love you, too.

And here you are 22 years later in a place you’d never dreamt of.

You’re giddy, from the ride you’ve been on following this team. You have a head full of things you want to say about the game when you get home.

Stupidly happy on a day that used to be hung with a black sky.

Sports, man….sports.