Jeff Whitten

Local Columnist

Welcome to a special Christmas week edition of the Pembroke Mafia Football League.

Actually, the PMFL is taking the week off. Not me, though. I’m always up for a column. And yes, it’s a sickness. I do wish I could learn to shut up.

Maybe I will in 2026. That said there’s still some 2025 left to get through, so here goes nothing - and thank you for your attention to this matter. Random stuff.

A buddy of mine says Richmond Hill High School is now the 14th largest in the state, based on enrollment. That’s nuts. Some of us can remember not all that long ago when it was a Class A school and Jimmy Hires was coaching up a boys’ basketball state title winning storm.

Oh, and RHHS and Bryan County High School played regularly, and it was great. Hires, who won a couple of state championships, used to holler so loud during games you could hear him down on I-95 - which back then was only two lanes and usually a lot less scary.

Bigger is apparently better, though it seems to me it costs all of us a lot more for the privilege of being part of such a desirable place to live. More people means more of everything, including more problems and more taxes. And more of our precious time, too.

There was a time all that long ago you could regularly get to, say, downtown Savannah from where I live in South Effingham in half an hour or less. Now it can take that long to get to the interstate. And that 20-30 minute commute to Richmond Hill is now 45 minutes on a good day which anymore means you got where you meant to go without getting run into, or over, or on the same day you set out. Our taxes over here in Effingham went up again this year, a lot more than usual this time thanks to the school board jacking up its millage rate to help pay for all the new kids flooding into the system.

So, my wife and I are giving less than we usually do for Christmas, since essentially it’s costing us about $500 a month upfront to cover taxes and insurance for a house that’s already paid for. Everything else costs more, too power bills, vehicle insurance, groceries, health insurance, etc - so it’s not just taxes. But why retirees in some counties are still asked to fund schools while other counties exempt their seniors from part or all school property taxes is the question we should be asking our state legislators and the folks running for government.

It’s one thing to help pay for schools. It’s another to be asked to continue helping subsidize ever increasing numbers of students, teachers, administrators and superintendents with six figure salaries times two or three, and pay for all the bells and whistles that go with an education these days. I think we as a society knew more when we had less.

Instead, put the burden of paying for new schools and new teachers and buses and coaching supplements and all the rest on the folks who benefit most, whether that’s builders or those in the education industry. Retirees have already paid school taxes for decades. Quite frankly we’ve done our fair share.

What else? Erk Russell should be in the College Football Hall of Fame. And Georgia Southern should finally drop this experiment in trying to be like other programs and bring back the triple option. It was the horse the program rode to six 1-AA national championships and it enabled the team to recruit great players who didn’t necessarily fit in other systems. I’m too lazy to go look it up but I’ll be willing to bet the Eagles won a lot more games as an option program than they have using other systems.

Besides, the option is fun to watch.

Finally, I hope this season brings you peace and joy and love, in whatever language or form it takes.

And remember, the U.S. at its best needs no official religion or deity or language or skin color or political party. America doesn’t need nationalists, Christian or otherwise, it needs patriots. And lest we forget, patriots come, and have always come, in all races, creeds and colors Should you doubt that, go take a stroll through a military cemetery and look at the names and religious symbols on the tombstones there. That’s where the truth really lies.

Whitten is an occasional columnist for the News.