It is cold in on the shore of southern North Carolina.  I mean cold.  There is no snow.  There could be.  It is 32 degrees at nearly 5 o’clock this evening.  The wind is strong.  It is howling down from the North.  It is cold.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I have never been here in December before.  We have visited here many for many years now, but never in December.  What is good about that?  The place is desolate.  There are not many folks here.  It is peaceful, but then again it is always peaceful.  The air is clean and clean.  You can see for miles up and down the coast North and South.  There is still fresh seafood to partake in.  We bought some shrimp and some flounder for preparation later tonight.  There are bargains to be found if you are shopping.  We have not done much of that.  What is not so good about being here this time of year?  It is cold.  But it is still good.

Last night looking to the South.

It only looks like summer.  It is cold.

The fish market.

I hope all of you had a great Christmas.

It is almost New Year’s and we will continue to speak the rights!

Danny Johnson

Wow.  I still say it…wow.  That was my reaction when I heard that the North Harrison Cougars Boys Basketball team had taken care of business against Brownstown Central at Braveville last night.  52-51 in OT.  Wow. Fantastic. Great job!

As many of you know, on Wednesday it was announced that The Moody Blues will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 14th.  Better late than never, I say.  I appreciate the emails and text messages I have received from folks I don’t hear from often telling me they heard the news.  Now, go listen to The Moody Blues.

Tis the season.  Time for the speaktherights.com College Football Bowl Prediction Extravaganza!  It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

The overall record for the season is a respectable 120 winners and 47 losers.  The bowl picks are what I usually really screw up.  We’ll see what happens.

New Orleans Bowl: North Texas beats Troy…The Mean Green have had a tough plight in Texas and they will shine.

Cure Bowl: Western Kentucky beats Georgia State and it is ugly.

Las Vegas: Oregon beats Boise State…New coach for Oregon might help team rise up.

New Mexico: Marshall beats Colorado State…The Herd farted at the end of the year.  7-5…they win if they show up.

Camellia: Arkansas State beats Middle Tenn. State U.  Camellia, Pansy, whatever bowl.

Boca: FAU beats Akron…and to think I will actually watch this.

Frisco: La. Tech beats SMU and I am saved by a Christmas Party!

St. Petersburg: Temple beats FIU

Bahamas: Ohio beats UAB and they all get a tan.

Idaho Potato:  Wyoming beats Central Mich.  and I hope it snows.

Birmingham: South Florida beats Texas Tech…Charlie Strong has done a good job with the Bulls.

Armed Forces:  San Diego State beats Army as SDS finds the Army runners and tackles them early.

Dollar General:  Bargain Bowl Baby…Toledo beats App. State.  Bet the Pop is more than a dollar at the concession stand.

Hawaii:  Houston beats Fresno State and will be glad to be there to eat Pineapples.

Heart of Dallas Bowl:  Opposed to Kidney of Dallas Bowl but give them time…WVU beats Utah and Rodeway Inn couches better beware of becoming flammable.

Quick Lane:  Duke beats Northern Illinois. I called the ticket office to ask about kickoff time and the lady asked what time we could be there.

Cactus Bowl:  Kansas State beats UCLA and it hurts me.

Independence Bowl:  Southern Miss beats Florida State like Brett Favre was there again.

Pinstripe Bowl:  Iowa beats Boston College and it will be one of the best bowl games to watch.

Foster Farms:  Purdue beats Arizona.  Boilers act like Minnie Pearl before the game then turn on the heat with a passing game that will wrinkle and dazzle.

Texas:  Texas beats Mizzou.  Texas Bowl, Texas, I see a pattern here.

Military Bowl:  Navy beats Virginia. I originally had UVA. We’ll see.

Camping World:  VA Tech beats Oklahoma State and I have been called nuts for calling this one.

Alamo:  Stanford beats TCU in a very entertaining game as the Alamo Bowl usually is.

Holiday:  Washington State beats Michigan State…great match-up and WSU passing will confuse Sparty a bit.  Traditional favorite to watch.

Belk:  Reminds me of Burp…Texas A&M beats Wake and has more fans in Charlotte than the Demons do.

Sun:  A bowl I would like to attend one day with the right match-up and this ain’t it…NC State beats Arizona State…Go Pack!

Music City:  Kentucky beats Northwestern…don’t ask me how…they just will.

Arizona:  Mew Mexico State in their first bowl game since 1960 and only their 4th bowl ever beats Utah State…Aggie Bowl.

Cotton:  Now we are getting somewhere…USC beats Ohio State and Sam Darnold looks great.

Gator:  Louisville beats Mississippi State…No cowbell can stop Lamar Jackson.

Liberty:  Memphis beats Iowa State in another home game.

Fiesta:  Washington beats Penn State in a close one…just changed my pick.

Orange:  Miami beats Swissconsin…Shred that cheese!

Outback:  Michigan beats South Carolina…and Harbaugh will find something else yet to complain about. When he decides to coach more and complain less, look out for the Wolverines.  Until then, he won’t be acting like a Michigan man we expect.

Peach:  UCF beats Auburn in a Scott Frost farewell party.

Citrus:  LSU beats Notre Dame…talk about a good one on New Year’s Day.  Classic.

Rose Bowl Playoff Semifinal: Georgia beats Oklahoma…not a Big Ten or Pac 12 team in sight.  Tragedy.

Sugar Bowl Playoff Semifinal:  Alabama beats Clemson…Tide Rolls.

CFP Champs:  Alabama beats UGA.  The Master outlasts the pupil.

Have a Merry Christmas Everyone.

I have been working on some other writing and I hope to get back to speakingtherights.com a little more often in the New Year!

Love one another.

Speaking the rights…
Danny Johnson

THE MOODY BLUES
Class of 2018 ROCK and ROLL HALL OF FAME

It is December 1st and I will be taking most of the month off from speakingtherights….here anyway.  I will dig up some of my favorite archived speaks and put them back on here.  I look back once in a great while and find something I like to reflect on.

I have some other writing to work on this month…that is all I can say.

speaktherights.com has over 380 entries and I still enjoy it.  I don’t plan on giving it up anytime soon.  Now…I will chime in on the College Football Bowl Picks for sure.

Happy December everyone…make it a great Holiday Season. God Bless all of you.

College Football Predictions Week #14

USC beats Stanford…PAC 12 Championship

UCF beats Memphis…in a good one for AAC kingship.

FAU beats North Texas….Lane Kiffin does it.

Toledo beats Akron…I think they will in MAC day.

Oklahoma beats TCU…Big 12 snoozer.

UGA beats Auburn…Tigers can’t keep this up.

South Alabama beats New Mexico State…if they can quit sightseeing long enough.  Long way from Mobile.

Boise State beats Fresno State…One I could get bad wrong.

Miami beats Clem(p)son…With a spelling nod to Lewis Grizzard.

Ohio State beats Wisconsin…Would lover to be in Indy for this game again…but not if Swissconsin is anywhere close to Lucas Oil.

Southern Utah beats Weber State…No idea why?

Troy beats Arkansas State…Should be a good game.

For the season the record is 111 winners and 44 losers.

Last week was good with bonus games….11-4.

The real question is what loser goes to coach Tennessee?  Wow.  What an Orange heap of whooey.  A job once considered a plum can’t get a date.  Mike Leach?  That would be awesome…but it won’t happen.  I don’t think so.

Eli Manning gets sent to the bench and I hope the Giants get their butts handed to them.

The Colts could use another Manning at QB.

Now that is speaking the rights!

Danny Johnson

How many times have you come across someone who has said that phrase…”You can’t make this up!” If you have been there, chances are you were having a good time at the moment.  Or maybe the circumstance was so dire that you thought the situation was so bad you could not believe it.

I have been there…on all counts.

I got beat beat up one night by three thirty-somethings when I was eight years old.  You can’t make that up.

What happened was that after my dear friend Jim Brown hit the shot heard round Jackson County in December 1975 and Brownstown Central beat Seymour 61-60…if memory serves…a great deal of Brownstown showed up behind Zabel’s Furniture where there was an empty lot of asphalt.  We had a bon-fire there to celebrate that night’s victory over the county rival.  A piece of wayward fire met my “eskimo-fur lined coat” that was fashionable in the day.  The fur was around the hood.  You remember those things.  Well, some of you do.  This piece of wayward fire landed around my face and took off.  My Dad, Bill Sweeney, and Dick Burrell all took to beating the fire out and beating on me at the same time.  I lived to tell the story.  No one went to jail and all was good.  It was a simpler time.

You can’t make that up.

I once asked Karl Malone if he played basketball.  True story.  To make things even more dumbfounding, I was in the football locker room in 1986 and Karl was sitting next to me.  He struck up a conversation with me because he heard I was from Indiana.  Karl Malone coming to sit next to me…not the other way around.  You can’t make that up.  I sized him up and told him he looked like to me like he could play basketball.  He laughed. He only was playing for the Utah Jazz after a stellar college career at Louisiana Tech.  He is only the second leading scorer in NBA history behind Kareem….and I asked if he played basketball.

You can’t make that up.

I was in a recording studio in 2004 and my friend, the late great Tim Krekel, was pinching at his scruffy beard telling how he had heard from Billy Swan the night before.  Billy was living in Los Angeles and according to Tim he was ready to move back to Nashville.  The backstory….Billy Swan’s 1974 hit “I Can Help” was the first song outside of church that got my attention when I was six years old.  He I am in a studio with Tim Krekel.  He toured as Billy Swan’s guitar player in 1974.  They opened for Willie Nelson during a European Tour…and Tim was there talking about Billy Swan while we were in the middle of recording songs I had written.

You can’t make that up.

You know what I am talking about.  You have been there.  I got more, believe me.

I had a baby-sitter kill over on me when I was five.

Don’t want to get into that.

You can’t make that up.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

The photo above was taken 40 years ago, if memory serves.  That is me in the huddle on the far right.  I was wearing that same shirt in my 4th grade class picture that was taken in 1977.  We were in the yard at my Uncle Bob and Aunt Nell’s house.  This is where the Thanksgiving Hines Family Reunion was held. My mother, Tressie Hines Johnson, is the youngest of ten sisters.  She had seven brothers.  These reunions are cherished times.  We would get together, try to remember everyone (I have more cousins than I know), and eat and laugh and tell stories.  Many of us, during halftime of the Lions-Bears game, would go out to the yard and split two teams and play touch football.  It was so much fun.

We drove to Mississippi from Indiana to these reunions.  My parents moved to Indiana in late summer of 1967.  I was born the following March.  We were the only “Yankees” there then.  They loved us anyway.

This many years on the one regret I have always had about living so far away from these folks is that I never got to spend any quality time and get to know any of my cousins very well.  I knew a few better than most and could hold forth when the opportunity presented itself.  We had football in common.  We had music in common.  We a large family to discuss and enjoy.  Still, there was never a connection past a few fleeting moments that were so precious.

Whilst I have never spent a great deal of time engaging in social media over the years past posting here the last three-plus years, I am glad that one particular cousin, Darrell, and I have emailed and texted with one another now and again and that has been pleasant.  It is good to hear from a cousin.  I am as guilty as any I suppose.  I have not reached out to them myself.  We are all so busy and at times too busy for our own good.  Henry David Thoreau would attest to that.  Still, I look at this photo above and think about my cousin Darrell playing quarterback and rolling out to his right and hitting me with a dart between the flower bed in front of the house and large pine tree in the yard.  That was my Thanksgiving in 1977 and I am still very very Thankful!

This is Thanksgiving today.  I am not in a huddle this morning.  I am at the kitchen table behind a three pronged crockpot and a cup of coffee. In a few hours our house will be filled with more familiar laughter and the Lions and the Vikings are going to be playing football.

On to the College Football picks Week #13.

The picks record after 12 stands at 100 winners and 44 losers.  Iowa has not been kind to me this year.  Neither has Minnesota.  Nor have the Ole Miss Rebels.   And me, well, I have made some bone-head picks out of spite for sure.  This week will be no different.

TONIGHT:

Ole Miss will beat State…And with any luck Dan Mullen will call the moving van.

FRIDAY:

Miami beats Pitt…The Hurricanes are blowing strong…for now.

Iowa beats Nebraska…The worse thing about college football this year is that Nebraska doesn’t make any team nervous.

Virginia Tech beats Virginia…The Hokies should win by 17.

SATURDAY:

Georgia beats Ga. Tech…Lewis Grizzard will smile down old Silver Britches.

Indiana beats Purdue…I know.  The game is at Purdue.  But…last week in Memorial Stadium, the safest place in America, the Indiana Football Hoosiers were like “The Ship That Found Itself”….if you know that story.  They put all of their pieces together in a windy Memorial Stadium.

A few pictures from last week…

THE WINDIEST GAME I HAVE EVER BEEN TO.

If the Hoosiers wore these uniforms every week…they will get to the Rose Bowl quicker and I want to be there!

The Marching Hundred…

The opening kickoff in the safest place in America!

This is not a bad team and they are getting better.  Look out next year.  I keep telling folks to remember that Coach Bill Mallory was 4-18 in his first two years.  The Hoosiers could be 6-6 Saturday with a win over the Boilermakers.  That is progress.

Louisville beats Kentucky…Last year’s loss is motivation for Cards.  Look for Lamar Jackson to set a record or two in his Bluegrass farewell.

Ohio State beats Michigan…J.T. Barrett may look like he just got up from a nap…but it is some good sleep.

Duke beats Wake Forest….as I type fast cos I am running out of battery Duke need this for 6 wins.

Alabama beats Auburn…Jalen Hurts will finally get the Heisman attention and it won’t be too late…Tide rolls like no one will expect.

NC State beats UNC…Wolkfpack looks forward to more football while UNC is shooting hoops.

Penn State beats Maryland….Nuff said.

Michigan State beats Rutgers….

Tennessee beats Vandy

LSU beats Texas A&M

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson

Hardwood and Popcorn.  I think I like that title.  For what, I don’t know.  I mean, I won’t write a song about it.  I have never written a song about playing football so I probably won’t write a song about hardwood and popcorn.

Each November and into December, a great phenomena happens in schools all over the State of Indiana.  When the smell of popcorn and the hardwood of a basketball court find each other again, this is a time honored tradition, something magical happens.  Just walk into a high gym in Indiana and take a whiff.  There is a smell that is unmistakable.  I enjoy it very much.

As a child the high school gym I watched basketball games in also had ancient wooden bleachers, they were replaced only this year, I am speaking “The Pit” at Brownstown Central High School.  The gym smell there was thick as sweet spring rain.  We also bought soft drinks in paper cups for a 25 cents.  I got 50 cents a game to spend.  That meant two Sprites or a popcorn and a Sprite.  The fountain drink in a paper cup, after the game, was a weapon of mass sound.  When stepped on quickly and properly on a silk smooth concrete floor, a paper cup can make quite a “pop”…as in “poppin’ cups”….as in my Dad yelling at me to “stop poppin’ cups”.

The Indiana High School gym is an institution and is at its best when the popcorn is flying around the popper for us all…whether we eat it or not.

On to the College Football Picks.

So far the picks stand at 92 winners and 40 losers.  I have done better this year.  Speaking of a year.  Last year this weekend, my Dad and I were at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena watching the crosstown rival UCLA Bruins host the USC Trojans.  It was a dream come true.  Those things are few.  It was everything I had hoped for and more.  It is the greatest football venue on the planet.  I believe that.  I have seen a few.

I was nervous walking up to the place the Friday before the game.

On to the picks…

Auburn beats La. Monroe….it is cupcake week in the SEC and I am going to pad my record for them.

Alabama beats Mercer…if Mercer shows up.  Jalen Hurts should win the Heisman Trophy.

Michigan beats Wisconsin…My pick cos I can’t stand the Badgers or their frozen brain fans….at least most of them….don’t ya know.

Minnesota beats Northwestern….Might be a Wildcat W at Ryan Field.

Arkansas beats Mississippi State…No, not just cos I don’t like State.  They outplayed Bama last week and lost.  The Hogs need a W if they want to keep their coach.

Indiana beats Rutgers….I am in Bloomington as I type.  The weather is supposed to be atrocious tomorrow here.  Wet, windy, and getting colder.  Should be great.  Rutgers is the only Big Ten team I have never seen play…and we are up to 14 Big Ten teams.  Money can do strange things to college football leagues…see Mizzou in the SEC.  I have been to Piscataway, NJ…looks like Big Ten country like I belong on a cricket team.

Ohio State beats Illinois…The Buckeyes get letter everyone in this one.

Georgia beats Kentucky….Silver Britches ruined what we hoped to be the defacto National Championship in the SEC Championship with what we should have had with undefeated Bama and Georgia teams going at it.  Auburn indeed.

Michigan State beats Maryland….Sparty is up and down and needs this one.

LSU beats Tennessee…The Tigers will have a good day of it against the Vols.  How can a team with many seats in its stadium be so bad so long.  The Great Pumpkin aka Coach Fulmer looks smarter by the season.

USC beats UCLA….Classic match-up any season.

Marshall beats UTSA…The Herd has not fared well travelling to Texas over the years.  This might be tricky for the boys from Huntington.

That is that.  I hope all of you have a great weekend and that you get a chance to…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson