Hard as it is to believe, some people think I have a swelled head because of the title of my blog: Stodghill Says So. Well, it just so happens that I came by that name legitimately and I had nothing to do with coining the phrase. It dates back to the football season of 1970, my first year as a reporter for the Muncie Evening Press. I convinced the reluctant sports editor, Jerry Fennell, that we should run predictions on high school football and basketball games. Jerry was concerned that people might not notice my by-line and would blame him for all the predictions that missed the mark. To make certain that didn't happen, Jerry added a kicker above the story and that was it: Stodghill Says So. No doubt about who to blame when the results were not what they should be.
Well, Jerry underestimated my ability. That first night I covered the Yorktown-Centerville game, one I had predicted Yorktown would win 20-19. Yorktown won 20-19. I was right on about 80 per cent of the games. No small feat when you're dealing with high school kids and you don't possess such important information as the fact that the quarterback for Kokomo broke up with his girl friend and was playing in a blue funk. I kept at it during the next 20 years and always hit between 75 and 85 per cent for each full season in both football and basketball. OK, there was one football season when I hit on only 72 per cent of the winners, but that was the exception that proved the rule - or something like that.
During much of the 1980s the readers got to compete with me each week. That's what the gold plate above indicates. But being right most of the time doesn't mean you are usually right for one specific team. One football season I was 1-9 on games involving Delta High School. They invited me to the team banquet and presented me with a trophy - the south end of a northbound horse. I showed 'em by finishing 9-1 on their games the next year. They invited me back and gave me the other half of the horse.
But those Delta folks were real hardnoses. On another occasion I predicted that they would lose a big basketball game with an arch rival. Delta won, of course. The next morning I walked into the newsroom and found the ceiling blanketed with helium-filled blue and gold balloons, the school's colors. Not only was the entire newsroom staff there gleefully awaiting my arrival, the sports editor from the rival paper in town was waiting to gloat. I got even with him by frequently mentioning the time he wrote that the losing team in a basketball game was "scrappy." The linotype operator dropped the letter "s" and I never let that sports editor forget the ensuing uproar.
