Thompson: What Cecil Hurt Meant To College Football
If you've ever seen a commercial or flyer talking about the University of Alabama, they pride themselves on the term "Where Legends Are Made." Man, was Cecil Hurt just that.
Fans of college football in the southeastern region didn't have to live in the Tuscaloosa city limits to know about Cecil. I grew up in east Texas and even before I arrived at The Capstone, I knew who he was.
Hard-working? Yup. Loyal? Without question. Larger than life? You could say that.
You didn't have to be from the 205-area code to have your heart sink Tuesday evening when the news came. You didn't want to believe it was true. Heck, writing the word "was" hurts knowing it's past-tense where he was so much in the present.
But, it's true. Cecil Hurt is gone. He was 62, but treated his work like a bright-eyed young reporter, eager to find the next angle.
The next assignment.
The next story.
And us left behind? We miss him. Man, do we miss that man today.
To see the lasting impact a person like Cecil had in sports writing, check Twitter. Names from the biggest stage in the industry to those local and on the rise all have tributes. They all have memories they hope to share to illustrate their time spent with a man who closer Alabama Football than anyone in the country.
He was closer to college football in general, but the Tide was his first love. Covering them through the good, the bad, and yes young readers, the ugly.
Alabama for a minute was ugly and hard to watch. Nowadays, its the opponents sidelines that mimics the same tune fans of the pre-Nick Saban era use to mention on the daily.
He loved writing. He enjoyed the aspects of the story-telling. He loved the reporting side of the job, with the nit-gritty questions.
And he did it for you, the reader.
There's been plenty of anecdotes already submitted on the lasting impact Cecil has made on reporter's careers. I never interned at The Tuscaloosa News like most students do. I wanted to do radio with a side dish of writing on my own leisure time.
So many names have multiple memories of Cecil over the decades. I have one that I won't soon forget.
It was December of 2015. I was a senior and prepping for Iron Bowl weekend while students were busy piling up cars and headed back to their respective states. Another writing colleague was in town and asked me if I wanted to meet him for a beer.
"Come to Black Warrior Brewing Company." he texted me. "Cecil is on his way, we'll meet you inside."
What? Cecil Hurt? Ok, take a breather, Thompson. He's just like any other reporter.
He wasn't. My goodness, was I wrong to assume something such as that.
Cecil and I had caught eyes at a press conferences and I had said hello in the past. That was about it. I never had properly introduced myself to him when I started going to games in the press box for 90.7 FM back in 2014.
It didn't matter. He knew who I was when I sat down. He called me by name and asked what I was drinking.
I sat there, listening to two men I'd admire chalk over SEC sports and rumblings from the Big 10. I listened to his words as if it were gospel. I felt what so many other people had said in the past.
He just had a way with his dialogue. We he spoke, you were under his spell, wanting to hear more and more.
When Adam got up to go to the bathroom. Cecil asked me why I had been so quiet. I just wanted to listen to him and soak in every inch of what he had to say.
"Well, I'm done talking," Cecil said. "Tell me about you." as he called over the bartender and ordered another drink.
I told him about my life and why I chose to go to Alabama, what made me what to pursue writing as a career, what was the end goal. He saw my phone screensaver with a picture of my now-7-year-old golden retriever, Cooper. That was the next thing he wanted to know about, so we went from talking ball to talking dogs in an instant.
He was engaged in the conversation. This was the first time he'd spoken to me, yet here he was shooting the breeze as if we had been pals for years. That was his personality. That's how he treated people.
No, not reporters. People. Even if you were wrong, he'd never let you know.
I asked him about covering the bad years of Alabama football and he laughed. I had truly only known the Tide since Saban took over and transformed the once-lost program into an NFL factory of fine-tuned talent.
He said something that has resonated with me for years. It still sits with me to this day.
"I love what I do," he said. "Don't you?"
You have to love the craft to work in this industry. Every day, one must wake up and not shovel their way through the grunt work, but they must enjoy the process.
Cecil did, all the way until the end.
I remember this spring welling up with tears where Cecil wrote his goodbye to Luke Ratliff, better known as "Fluff", the super fan of Alabama basketball. He had built a connection with the 23-year-old over the past year, and pouring his heart into one last story on their bond showed the type of person Cecil was.
Fluff is smiling, now. He has his buddy back. We back here are still mourning the loss of one college football's top voices.
They don't make them like they used to is overused as a term. It isn't here. Cecil was one of a kind. There were few and far between like him.
And there will never be another. Not today, at least.
It didn't matter who was your team. You could call the Tide your own, root for Vols or cheer on Ole Miss from The Grove. You loved the writing of Cecil Hurt. He changed the way we looked at college football through the words he'd spin on the daily.
Tuscaloosa is home to the term, "Where Legends are Made." Yeah, it is.
And Cecil Hurt was one of them.
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