By Jeff Whitten, Local columnist

Welcome to another installment of the Pembroke Mafia Football League and yep, or nope, we didn’t make it into print last issue. Predictably, our myriad legion of diehard supporters were upset all six of you - but fear not. The PMFL is back for another go-around this week, backed by the world’s most sophisticated sports prognostication hardware in the business standing by to make us all rich and good looking so we can have a PMFL podcast on TV.

I’m thinking we should get Charissa Thompson, Samantha Ponder and whoever just won Miss Universe. They can introduce us and bring us cold beverages and wear bikinis and it’ll be a smash hit. We’ll probably have to get Mike Clark to host it, though. He’s extra good with the ladies. He wears body spray.

But first, it’s important to note that Mike Brown, the world’s oldest living sportswriter (his stories are on this page above this column) apparently plans to deck himself out in Ohio State gear for the upcoming Ohio State-Oregon game despite years of PMFL warning that the Buckeyes are a yankee school chock full of mostly yankees whose sole purpose in life is to fill up Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head, and anywhere else in the South they can find near a beach or outlet mall or Lowe’s.

Great googly moogly. Mike, who is from West Virginia back when it was still a territory and might as well be Ohio, was defiant when presented with a stern warning. “What do I care,” he said, and tried to give me a purple nurple. “I had drill sergeants for 17 weeks, you aren’t going to scare me. These were gifts and I’m going to wear them, Army boy.”

I didn’t bother to tell him my basic and AIT in Fort Sill ran for 19 weeks, or something like that, since Marines can’t count that high, and my drill sergeants could probably have beaten up his drill sergeants because Field Artillery rules. Plus, Mike’s like 218-1/2 in dog years. I didn’t want him to sprain anything he might need to get home.

That said, we found common ground in that we both liked the legendary OSU coach Woody Hayes.

Mike liked Woody in part because he refused to take a higher salary than the lowest paid professor, or something like that, Woody apparently having the weird idea college is supposed to be about academics.

I liked Woody because he beat up a Clemson player on the sideline and got fired for it. Well, he tried. Woody, who halfway resembled Truman Capote in a baseball cap, went after the player way back in the day and on TV it looked like a funny looking fat kid with a whistle was trying to get his hands around Dwayne Johnson’s neck.

The upshot is I’m here to tell you us older South Carolina Gamecocks will forever hold Woody in that corner of our heart reserved for those people from up north who don’t give us hives.

Oh, and Mike wasn’t stopping at simply wearing offensive clothing, he also chided the Clemson- Carolina rivalry as not being a rivalry like Ohio State and Michigan.

Judging by the number of Michigan flags flying in my mother’s neighborhood down in McIntosh County, it looks like the Wolverines were riding pretty high for a while.

But then, judging by the number of folks wearing Buckeye stuff in Bryan County it might be closer than one thinks.

Still, as our fearless leader B.J. Clark says, Big 10 football is like two mules fighting over the same turnip. Nobody cares. I think he got that from Lewis Grizzard, but I’m not sure.

B.J. is an Auburn and Georgia Southern fan, so times are tough right now. He’s also retired Navy and is an important person in American Legion Post 164. And, he founded the PMFL back in 2015 or something, and here we are.

Anyhow, it’s 2025 and here’s hoping you haven’t already broken any of your resolutions, unless of course you resolved not to give us money to further our research into the puzzling reason behind the problem of too much traffic everywhere you go. In that case, I’m looking forward to the money.

It’s definitely needed.

I counted 37 dump trucks during a 15-minute, 2.9 mile drive the other day, amidst about 3.9 million cars, trucks, pickups, minivans, Land Rovers, motorcycles and personal mobility scooters. Gracious.

Not to worry, however. We got TSPLOST.

Once they build enough roads to catch up with all the traffic here now, another 87 million people will have moved in to the subdivisions they’re throwing up left and right because that’s what’s called progress and somebody’s making bank.

Now to football.

Standings:

B.J. is in first with only six misses so far in the second half of the season, also known as Bowl Season. B.J., of course, keeps score, but he’s sneaky about it. He let County Administrator Ben Taylor win the first half of the season just to keep it real.

Former District 1 County Commissioner Noah Covington, aka The King of the North, and the aforementioned Mike Brown are tied for second with seven misses so far.

Mike Clark, the only one of us with groupies, is in third with eight misses; former BCN assistant editor and now Michigan State bureau chief Ted O’Neil is in fourth with nine misses; District 5 Commissioner Dr. Gene “Butterbeans” Wallace is in fifth with 10 misses and retired Fire Chief Freddy “The Walking Vowel” Howell is in sixth with 11 misses. In seventh is Taylor, with 12 misses; the Rev.

Lawrence Butler, our spirit guide, is in eighth with 13 misses; me and District 1 Commissioner to be Alex Floyd are tied for ninth with 14 misses and Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Carter Infinger is in last with 1,609 misses.

But he’ll still lower your millage rate.

This week’s picks: UGA vs. Notre Dame: Me, Mike Brown and Ted take the Fighting Irish. Everybody else thinks the Dogs are going to win.

Arizona State vs. Texas: Mike Brown and B.J. take the Sun Devils over the Longhorns.

Oregon vs. Ohio State: Everybody takes Ohio State, even Mike Brown and we know how much he loves the Buckeyes.

Duke vs. Ole Miss; Ted takes Duke, everybody else takes the Rebels. Fun fact: B.J. writes: “I love me a Carolina Pride Beef bologna sandwich with at least half an inch high dollop of Duke’s mayonnaise.”

Just don’t let him talk you into pulling his finger.

Important history: Dukes was invented in South Carolina, as was Carolina Pride and me. Just three more reasons South Carolina is the greatest state in the history of the United States even though it’s gotten so crowded.

Here’s hoping your 2025 is a joy to live through.

Whitten is a retired former BCN editor. He makes a lot of this stuff up.