Sports

Former Tennessee State University track star and medalist in the 1960, 1964, and 1968 Olympic games, Ralph Boston was born in Laurel, Mississippi, on May 9, 1939. Boston attended Tennessee State University, where in 1960 he won the national collegiate…

A favorite track of NASCAR fans across the nation is the Bristol Motor Speedway. Its two annual Winston Cup events (currently the Food City 500 in April and the Goody's 500 in August) attract the largest crowds of any sporting…

Ray Bussard, nationally recognized swim coach at the University of Tennessee, was born on August 12, 1928, in Hot Springs, Virginia. After attending Ohio University on a football scholarship, Bussard transferred to Bridgewater College in Virginia, where he received a…

When Vanderbilt University organized a varsity football team in 1886, it was probably the first Tennessee college to do so. Maryville College began playing intramural games in 1889 under coach, captain, and quarterback Kin Takahashi. In 1890, Vanderbilt and the…

Nathan W. Dougherty, engineer, educator, and athlete, was born on March 23, 1886, at Hales Mill, Virginia, the son of Samuel and Mary Ellen Vernon Dougherty. When he was twelve years old, young Dougherty and his family moved to Knox…

Long before Tennessee became famous for the Tennessee Walking Horse in the mid-1900s, the state was known throughout the country as the center for thoroughbred horses. For most of the nineteenth century, Tennessee, not Kentucky, was acknowledged as the center…

Tennessee boasts 649,000 acres of productive fishing waters--the finest anywhere. Twenty-nine major reservoirs, nineteen thousand miles of warm and cold water streams, and thousands of smaller lakes and ponds provide unlimited fishing opportunity and variety year-round. Fish stories told in…

From the Stone Castle (Bristol Municipal Stadium) and its Medieval Gothic architecture to the symmetry and sleek lines of the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, from personalities like General Robert R. Neyland of the University of Tennessee to E. H. Crump,…

Tennessee's early white settlers found bountiful supplies of wildlife, including deer, bear, elk, bison, and wild turkey; however, continued westward expansion rapidly depleted these populations. The last two reports of bison were recorded near Nashville in 1795; the last known…

Europeans brought hunting dogs when they began their exploration of the North American continent. Mountain Curs and American coonhounds were the most prominent imported breeds. With the exception of the Plott, all breeds of coonhounds have a common ancestry deeply…

The Iroquois Steeplechase, a rite of spring for horse enthusiasts, has been held every second Saturday in May since 1941. The amateur horse races take place at a three-mile course of wood, water, and brush jumps at Nashville's Percy and…

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Cal Johnson was born to Cupid and Harriet Johnson in Knoxville on October 14, 1844. The Johnson family, slaves of Colonel Pless McClung, lived on the site of the old Farragut Hotel Building at the corner of…

University of Tennessee All-American football player and coach John T. Majors was born May 21, 1935, in Lynchburg, the son of Shirley and Elizabeth Majors. Shirley Majors coached football, first as a high school coach and then at the University…

The game of marbles is an ancient and universal pastime, with Roman, French, and British roots. In Tennessee, Indian burials of the Mississippian culture have yielded clay and stone spheres speculatively interpreted as game pieces. Archaeologists also discovered marbles at…

The most successful coach in Vanderbilt University football history, Daniel E. McGugin was born on July 29, 1879, in Tingley, Iowa, the son of Benjamin Franklin and Melissa A. Crutchfield McGugin. McGugin graduated from Drake University in Des Moines in…

The only major league professional basketball team ever based in Tennessee during the twentieth century was the Memphis franchise of the American Basketball Association (ABA). Known by different names from 1970 to 1975 and playing primarily at the Mid-South Coliseum…

John A. Merritt, one of Tennessee's most successful football coaches, was born on January 26, 1926, in Falmouth, Kentucky, the son of a stonemason, Bradley Merritt and his wife, Grace. After completing grade school, he moved to Louisville to live…

Although Memphis fielded a professional baseball team in 1877, organized minor league baseball in Tennessee dates to 1885 and the founding of the Southern League of Professional Clubs (SL), a circuit that lasted through 1899. From 1885 to the present,…

The first professional hockey team in Tennessee to be a member of the National Hockey League (NHL) was the Nashville Predators. Professional ice hockey has been played in Nashville since the early 1960s, when the Nashville Dixie Flyers were members…

For more than 100 years, owners have brought together the top pointing dogs in the country to compete in a premier stake known as the National Field Trial Championship. Most championship competitions have been held at Ames Plantation, located near…