Major Hoople - World's Greatest Pigskin Prognosticator

 

Major Hoople

R.I.P! Egad!

 

It’s been a decade since Major Amos B. Hoople last prognosticated the football fortunes for East Tennessee’s high school teams.

Egad! A decade?

The retirement of the Major in 2012 just happened to coincide with the retirement of Bill Lane as long-time sports editor of the Kingsport Times-News.

Could it actually have been a coincidence?

Although I knew Bill for forty of his fifty years writing for the newspaper, I never got around to asking him if he might perchance be the mysterious local who channeled for the world-famous Hoople.

Bill told me many stories including the one about new D-B football assistant coach Chuck Lane driving to Johnson City during a summer night in 1962 and tossing pebbles up at Steve Spurrier’s bedroom window (he had been Spurrier’s coach when he was a Science Hill assistant the previous season) and bellowing, “Steve, this is God. Transfer to Dobyns-Bennett.” But he never told me if he acted on Hoople’s behalf.

Don’t remember Major Hoople? He was, according to his own account a “world-famous soldier, scientist, inventor, explorer, big game hunter, archaeologist, lecturer, politician, head Who of the Owl’s Club and, of course World Famous Pigskin Prognosticator.

In Kingsport he began forecasting high school football results in 1944. Zounds!

For his first high school predictions on Oct. 13, 1944 Hoople went 3-0. (Bill Lane was only two in 1944 so he can’t be accused of being the Major back then.)

Here are Hoople’s first predictions with actual scores following:

Kingsport 19, Erwin 12 (Kingsport won 20-0)

Tennessee High 35, Morristown 7 (Tennessee High won 15-6)

Johnson City 20, Bristol, Va. 13 (Johnson City won 39-7)

Even before his long run as a Pigskin Prognosticator, Hoople was well-known in Kingsport, and parts elsewhere as the featured resident of the long-running comic strip “Our Boarding House.” The comic ended in 1984 but Hoople continued his boastful ways in a weekly national pigskin prognostication newspaper column that was imploded in 1992. But just because Newspaper Enterprise Association had ended the run of the syndicated feature didn’t mean the end for the intrepid Hoople. He continued to pick football game winners in a handful of local newspapers, including the Kingsport Times News.

But when Times News sports editor Bill Lane retired, Kingsport’s Hoople went out the door with him.

Whether Bill and Amos were collaborators or one and the same, I can’t say, but in my humble opinion, as well as that of Hoop-Baby, Bill Lane was the best of the many Hoople helpers spread out across the vast newspaper universe.

Hoople was more inventive and colorful in his Kingsport prognostication columns, better than any I have read in other papers, and thanks to newspapers.com, I have read many, many others.

Most minor league Major Hooples began each week’s column with “Egad, Peasants…” and continued from there.

In Kingsport Hoople almost never began a Prognostication with “Egad!” He used the entire Hoople dictionary in his writings: Zounds! Kaff-Kaff! Harumph!

I must report that Bill Lane, the King of Kingsport’s many Hoople helpers, passed away in March at age 79, taking with him Major Hoople’s voice.

Bill began at the Times-News shortly after graduating from the old Ketron High School in 1961.

His first sports byline appeared on Jan. 8, 1963 – when I was still in short pants, the kind you wear on the basketball team. (Yes, Bill Lane covered Dobyns-Bennett basketball while I was still playing. He never interviewed me because there was no public outcry for quotes from a player who averaged 2.2 points.)

He took over helping with the Hoople column that fall and turned it into a must-read feature in Friday’s sports pages during each fall.

Almost half a century of predicting local high school contests – from the big boys at Dobyns-Bennett to small schools like the St. Charles Midgets (that was their nickname). And over those several thousand predictions, Major Hoople’s win percentage was .933. At least that’s how the Major himself calculated it. He almost never missed.

Someone with endless time and unflagging patience could tally up all Major Hoople’s Kingsport Times-News predictions and calculate his actual winning percentage. I have neither. But a spot check of his choices is impressive, hovering above 80 percent.  

This was the first Hoople byline that appeared in the Times-News during the Bill Lane years.

From Aug. 29, 1963:

By MAJOR AMOS B. HOOPLE

Father of the Forward Pass

Egad! Gentle readers, football's foremost forecaster is back again with zillions of astounding predictions of the gridiron classics to be played in the East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia area plus insight on the national college scene.

The Hoople System should be even more effective this year as my assistants and I have developed two new calculators that are flawless in every minute detail. This is just an example of the endless Hoople research aimed to give my faithful readers the best forecasts in the world.

One doubting reader said to me the other day, “Hoople, if you are so smart, tell me the exact score of the Church Hill-Rogersville game before it is played.”

That is very easy. The score before any game is played is nothing to nothing. The trick is telling what the score will be after the game is played.

And, the Hoople System has that figured out also. Coach Jay Salley's Panthers will take the Rotherwood contest, 21-7….

(Hoople hit it on the nose: Church Hill beat Rogersville 21-7.)

 

A week later he published his first D-B prediction:

The Tribesmen of Dobyns-Bennett will get on the victory road with a 42-7 rout of Jellico.

Church Hill-behind big Connie Bailey-will continue its winning ways as the Panthers down Sevierville, 21-6.

The Lynn View-Sullivan tilt will be a close one, but after a second trip through the IBM machine it looks like the Lynxes will emerge the victor, 14-12.

Ketron will tally its second conference victory as Coach Clyde Groseclose's Wildcats trim Blountville, 20-14.

Newport will hand luckless Rogersville its third straight loss,

This week will also find a juicy upset as Morristown surprises Johnson City, 7-6.

The Gate City Blue Devils open defense of their Lonesome Pine title, and will have their hands full with the Powell Valley Vikings, Gate City 14, Powell Valley 13.

 

(Incidentally Hoople/Lane was close on the Science Hill-Morristown surprise: it ended in a 7-7 tie.)

 

I miss Hoople’s bombastic predictions. And I miss Bill Lane’s stories about high school sports in upper East Tennessee.

Bill cleared up the Hoople/Lane mystery in his obituary: “Bill wrote the Famous Major Hoople column for 47 years as a combination of football predictions and entertainment.”

 

Dobyns-Bennett opens its football season tonight at home against Bristol, Tennessee High.

D-B’s all-time record against Tennessee High is 69 wins, 19 losses and 1 tie, according to Tom Price, who has compiled the records of every Kingsport Central High/Dobyns-Bennett High game.

In 1925 Kingsport Central defeated Tennessee High 100-0. Lawson Reams, who was a Kingsport cheerleader, told me years later that the cheerleaders were rooting for Kingsport to miss the last extra point so they wouldn’t hit the hundred mark in scoring.

 

 

R.I.P. Bill Lane

1942-2022