Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

Toad Suck, Arkansas is one helluva postmark. One of my faves is Cut n' Shoot, Texas.

 

Are we out of Arkansas yet? Because I can throw in Big Bone Lick State Park in the town of Big Bone, Kentucky, just any ol’ time now.

 

Frozen Head State Park is in Wartburg, Tennessee. (No, I have no idea how it got its name.)

 

Yep, every now and then when I worked in Lake Havasu City, we'd get a reporter who wanted to go over to Colorado City to try and get some stories on the polygamous Mormon group that was based there. Always had to explain 1) even though both cities were in Mohave County, you had to go through Vegas and Utah to get there and 2) since they didn't take well to strangers, you'd need to take along the sports editor, since he was an avid hunter, for protection.

 

I received "Blue Highways: A Journey Into America" by William Least Heat-Moon as a Secret Clause gift here many years ago. The author's road trip is full of "little towns that get on the map - if they get on at all - only because some cartographer had a blank space to fill." Many of 'em have interesting names. </crossthread>

 

Then there are places like Nigton, Texas, which is exactly what you think it is, only worse.

 

Oh my. I stand corrected. Possum Grape is outstanding.

 

Major League Lacrosse is on live. They are used to playing without a crowd. Lacrosse is just for the sport of it.

 

Mississippi isn't as bad as the rural Western states, but a lot of the districts are similar to what you mentioned:
• Starkville, South Panola (located about 30 minutes west of Oxford) and Greenville are all decidedly in North Mississippi, but play in the same Class 6A football region as the I-20 corridor schools that are 100 to 150 miles south.
• Natchez, on the Mississippi River, is usually in the same region as Meridian (200 miles away on the far eastern side of the state) when it is in Class 6A. Right now Natchez is in 5A, and is in a region with a couple of schools that are 140 miles away, and its shortest road trip is about 70 miles.
• And then there are the Class 1A schools. There aren't a ton of them in South Mississippi -- only seven out of about 40 -- so when they split the state on a North-South axis for the playoffs you wind up with schools like Nanih Waiya (located 30 minutes south of Starkville) or Simmons (in the middle of the Delta in the northwest quadrant of the state) winning the South half of the bracket.
There are several logical reasons for why all of that came to be, but it still makes you shake your head when you first look at it.

 

Can I nominate Bivalve, NJ? Not much there generally, and about as far south as you can go in the state and not see a human.

 

Midway High School in Waco, Texas, has a football game scheduled for Sept. 4 at Odessa Permian, which is 335 miles away. Google Maps says it's a five-hour drive. A five-hour drive for a non-district football game is ridiculous. (I'm sure it won't actually take place now, but the fact that it was actually scheduled is crazy.)