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PMFL: For old times’ sake
football

Jeff Whitten, Columnist

Welcome to the Pembroke Mafia Football League season finale and congratulations to wizened sportswriting legend Mike Brown for winning the second half of the 2024-25 PMFL campaign, euphemistically known as the playoffs.

Brown, who was born in a log cabin on the Nile River in the second year of King Tutankhamen Rah’s first reign and swaddled up in diapers made out of waterproof papyrus reeds, claimed the title with a week to spare. That means Monday night’s matchup between big-spending arch-villain Ohio State and that fine institution of Catholic learning that is Notre Dame was, in essence, an anticlimax and as such the less said about that Buckeyes win the better.

Instead, as PMFL members begin to contemplate life down the road, it’s time to pull a page from National Lampoon’s “Animal House,” and let you know what happens to our cast of characters when they grow up.

We’ll start with Mike Brown. He’ll be around for eons to come, covering sports in the same truthful, kind, compelling and literate way he’s been doing since he was just out of college and assigned to follow George Washington’s exploits in ax-throwing, denture carving, truth telling and fathering a country. That means Mike B. will be here to cover South Bryan County High School and its opening day enrollment of 6,000 when the Buckeyes start Region 1-12A play in 2088. By then, everything will be a GHSA recognized sport and the GHSA will consist of 9,843 member schools, and it will take the Buckeyes two hours to get to Pembroke by chartered bus.

And then there’s our founding father, B.J. Clark, retired Navy, Vietnam veteran, grampus whale and a big shot in Pembroke American Legion Post 164. B.J., who also is commodore of the North Bryan Republican Party Navy, is planning on becoming a liberal socialist Democrat after years of secretly admiring the way Hilary Clinton walks. In fact, B.J. is famous in some circles for once saying of her walk, “that must be jam because jelly don’t shake like that.” Some folks say that about B.J. when he goes out to get the mail wearing nothing but his skivvies, but never mind that.

Mike Clark, the only member of the PMFL ever to have groupies, will have more groupies. In fact, he’ll have so many admirers of the opposite sex he’ll launch the Groupie Tackle Pillow Fight League, which will have teams of 40-plus year old groupies in bikinis vying for the GTPL title. Look for that to come to fruition around 2028. It’ll probably be shown on Fox.

As for longtime member Noah Covington, former District 1 county commissioner and for years our erstwhile minister of fiber optic stuff, word is he’ll be appointed as President Trump’s ambassador to Richmond Hill, since he’s had decades of experience dealing with an assortment of city officials in charge of what many in Trump’s glittering orbit consider to be a sort of Mar-A-Lago Jr., only slightly more affordable.

Noah will also get his gold and platinum embossed membership card recognizing him as a member of Trump’s Supporter’s Inner Circle soon.

His replacement on the county commission, pine tree scion Alex Floyd, will give up his day job in 2030 to become the father-manager of a boy band made up entirely of his 18 sons. Called the Funky Floyds of America, which is what FFA always stood for even when it didn’t know it, the band will have a string of bubblegum pop hits similar to those charted in the 1970s by the Osmond Brothers and Jackson 5. Alex will stop grooming his eyebrows around that time as well and start living mostly naked in a giant birdhouse called Unicorn Dragonfly Ponyland and live off twig bark tea, so be warned.

Bryan County Administrator Ben Taylor will leave his post and return to Ashburn, Georgia, the Fire Ant Capital of the world, in order to save it from hard working Georgians. Long an icon in the fire ant world due to his diminutive size and snazzy socks – and genuine eel skin lip boots – Ben will form a public private partnership with the ant population and help them bring in the sort of high-paying industry reliant not on people or robots, but instead on an endless supply of millions of tiny skilled workers.

Bryan County Commission Chairman Carter Infinger will finish a 15th and final term as chairman before deciding to devote all his time to becoming the next mayor of Richmond Hill, where he’ll do great things and also hack off the two-thirds of the city’s residents involved in the property development or real estate game. Naturally, after much fuming and fulminating and Monday morning quarterbacking amongst the yankees on social media, they’ll come out of the woodwork to run against him. And lose.

Retired Bryan County Fire Chief Freddy Howell will return to the Okefenokee Swamp from which he was spawned and spend out his days sitting in a rocking chair and telling day trippers about his ancestor, Obeyabadabadoo Howell, the first Howell to spend the night alone in the swamp without getting eaten. Unfortunately, since Howell sounds like Mr. Haney from Green Acres arguing with Granny Clampett from Beverly Hillbillies, nobody will know what the heck he’s talking about.

District 5 County Commissioner Dr. Gene Wallace, DMD, will finally develop his comedy stand-up routine and go on tour and become a star of stage and screen. The longtime dentist, one of Richmond Hill’s favorite sons – except he’s from Pooler or Garden City – will also endorse his own line of tater logs. You can use them for possum bait or eat them or, if push comes to shove, as a hat or, in an emergency, as personal flotation devices.

The Rev. Lawrence Butler, the PMFL’s spiritual advisor and the only one of us with his own church, will continue to minister to the needs of his flock through hurricanes and tornadoes and wintry weather precipitation and Hyundai water withdrawals and giant Japanese monsters.

Former Bryan County Assistant Editor Ted O’Neil, a Michigan State alumnus and among the best journalists I’ve ever come across, will give up his role as our Michigan Bureau Chief to become governor of Michigan, and in his second term he will make the University of Michigan illegal and order anyone and everyone ever associated with the school to leave the state or be deported to that trailer park of the Midwest, aka Ohio.

As for me, I’ll be around, messing stuff up and getting confused with Brad Pitt.

One more look at the 2025 standings, courtesy of B.J. Clark.

• Mike Brown, 11 misses.

• B.J., 14 misses.

• Noah, 15 misses.

• Mike Clark and Dr. Gene, 16 misses.

• Rev. Lawrence, 19 misses.

• Ted, 20 misses.

• Ben, our first half champion, 21 misses.

• Freddy, 22 misses.

• Jeff and Carter, 24 misses.

• Alex, 25 misses. That’s a wrap, folks. PS. I want to thank the above gentlemen and those who in the past made doing this so much fun for me, among them former members Ernie Mitchell, Bob Floyd, Anna Chafin, Melanie James, Trey Robertson and the Rev. Brad Butler and our honorary PMFL team moms and grandmoms. Those ladies, also known as Marsha Clark, Rose Mock, Jeanne Carpenter and Judy Cook, always made sure there were nutritious snacks and juice boxes and so on. Well, in our imagination they did.

Now retired, Jeff Whitten is a former editor of the Bryan County News.

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