In preparing to make some introductions at the Thomasville/Thomas County Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony this past week, I was tasked with introducing Scott Nesmith, who was an all-region offensive lineman at Central under Coach Will Roy Cooley back in the 1970s. It can be difficult to find a lot of information regarding offensive lineman, as they normally don’t get a lot of press or attention.

I reached out to Coach Cooley to give me some fodder for the introduction, and he proceeded to share with me a story that I shared with those in attendance Thursday night. It is a south Georgia football story that is just too good to not share with you here today.

Heading into their 1976 season, the Central senior class knew they had a very good season looming in front of them. Coach Cooley said they were very confident as a group and had no problems flaunting that confidence. One day as fall practices began, he walked into his office to find all 20 or so seniors waiting for him, and he knew something was up. Turns out the players had gathered to ask him if they could have permission to chew tobacco during practice.

Now, you have to remember the 1970s were a different time. It was nothing to see people like Johnny Carson on television smoking cigarettes, or athletes at the collegiate and professional level on television with a mouth full of tobacco. Heck, sometimes you’d see NFL players smoking cigarettes on the sidelines between plays. So I guess you could say the players probably felt this was something that would make them even cooler than they already were.

But Coach Cooley told them that just would not work, and dropped the subject. However, the players were insistent, and regularly were bothering him about the issue. After two or three weeks of asking about it had passed by, the head coach got an idea. Sometimes as a coach, you have to play chess while your players are playing checkers – and this turned out to be one of those times.

He gathered the seniors together and told them that if they would bring a signed permission note from their parents he would in fact allow them to chew tobacco at practice. Miraculously, the very next day, every single one of them had a signed note. Coach Cooley did find it odd that at least one of those notes were signed with handwriting that closely resembled that of his daughter, who just happened to be a senior cheerleader at Central. Needless to say, he had a pretty good idea of where the notes had come from.

So to practice the triumphant group of seniors went. Coach Cooley told them to go ahead and get their “chaw,” whereupon those seniors proudly stuffed their cheek with their chosen brand of chew. Now, most football practices end with conditioning, which means a lot of running. This particular practice, the head coach ‘decided’ to do conditioning first.

After three or four good wind sprints, he noticed several players lifting up their facemasks to spit. In his big, booming voice he hollered “gentlemen, you will not be spitting on this field! That was not part of the agreement.“

That left one option regarding what to do with the by-product of the chewing – and the coach knew exactly where it would lead.

Immediately after running them, Coach Cooley ordered the team to do their goal line practice – normally again done late in the practices – which meant the defense and offense lined up against each other, the offense trying to score from a yard out while the defense tried to keep them from scoring. Coach Cooley said he noticed some of the players moving much slower than they normally did, and a lot of them cutting their eyes looking at each other through their helmets.

When the center bent down to put his hands on the ball, he proceeded to deposit everything in his stomach on top of his hands and all over the ball. “Do not take your hands off that ball,” Coach Cooley roared. You see, if the center puts his hands on the ball and then removes them, that is a penalty, and that would not do. “Run the play!,“ the coach’s voice boomed through the stadium.

The quarterback, running back, and every other offensive player on the team looked at him like he had worms crawling out of his ears. “Run the play!,“ he emphasized again, whereupon the center snapped the ball, the quarterback purposely dropped it, the running back ran the wrong direction on purpose, and everybody else kind of stood there all green and squeamish.

“Does anybody wanna spit out their tobacco?,“ was the next thing heard from the head coach.

All of those seniors, at least the ones who weren’t already completely sick to their stomach and throwing up, ran to the sidelines to spit out their masticated mess. But, as Coach Cooley duly noted, the lone player, the one single guy who did his job as he was supposed to do was that center, Scott Nesmith.

Curiously, Coach Cooley said the topic of chewing tobacco at practice never came up again.