Sports

As early as 1871 Nashville had African American baseball clubs, but it was not until 1886 that the nation's first professional league of black teams was organized. The Southern League of Colored Base Ballists (SLCBB) fielded teams from Jacksonville, Savannah,…

Robert R. Neyland, renowned football coach at the University of Tennessee, was born February 17, 1892, in Greeneville, Texas, the son of attorney Robert R. Neyland and Pauline Lewis Neyland. After high school graduation, he entered Burleson Junior College in…

Claude Wilson Osteen, a successful major league pitcher with the Los Angeles Dodgers and other teams, was born August 9 in Caney Spring, Marshall County, Tennessee. His parents, Claude and Pauline Osteen, had one other child, Peggy. Young Claude, known…

Ted Rhodes, recognized as the first African American professional golfer, grew up in Nashville. Immediately after becoming the first person of color to win the prestigious Masters Tournament in 1997, Tiger Woods told a national television audience: "I am the…

Grantland Rice, the most widely read and respected American sports writer of the first half of the twentieth century, was born in Murfreesboro and named for his maternal grandfather, Henry Grantland. He was later called "Grant" and "Granny" by personal…

The area along the Kentucky-Tennessee border including Clay County, Tennessee, and Monroe County, Kentucky, maintains a remarkable marble-playing tradition focused on a game known locally as "rolley hole," "three holes," or simply "marbles." In this region, rolley hole is played…

Rowing, sometimes called crew, was America's first professional sport. Even today, the single largest sporting event in America is a rowing race. It is no wonder, with Tennessee's network of rivers and lakes, that crew is a popular pastime. Tennessee…

The Tigerbelles Women's Track club at Tennessee State University became the state's most internationally accomplished athletic team in the mid-twentieth century. The sprinters won some twenty-three Olympic medals, more than any other sports team in Tennessee history. Mae Faggs and…

Born August 27, 1906, and raised in Wartrace, Tennessee, Fred McFerrin Russell was known to thousands of readers for his “Sidelines” column in the Nashville Banner. Russell first entered Tennessee sports pages, however, as an athlete. He came to Nashville…

The only Tennessee high school athlete to go on to win the Heisman Trophy as the nation's outstanding college football player, Steve Spurrier is best known today as the head football coach of the University of Florida, a fierce rival…

Tracy Caulkins Stockwell ranks among Tennessee's most successful Olympians. She began swimming at age eight and, under the aegis of the Nashville Aquatic club, qualified for the Olympic Trials five years later. At fourteen, Caulkins won her first national title,…

This historic professional baseball park in Nashville once stood between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, North and Jackson and Summer Streets. Union troops introduced baseball to the city in 1862, when they played in a low-lying area north of the statehouse…

Pat Summitt, women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has produced an enviable record of success both on and off the court. Born in Henrietta on June 14, 1952, she attended and graduated from Cheatham County High School…

TSU Tigerbelles track coach Ed Temple is Tennessee's most honored and accomplished track and field coach. His famous Tigerbelles Women's Track Club of Tennessee State University (TSU) won twenty-three gold, silver, and bronze Olympic medals, thirty-four national team titles, and…

In 1925 a group of high school administrators attending a meeting of the Tennessee State Teachers' Association in Nashville organized the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA). Commonly known as TSSAA, the Association exists "to stimulate and regulate the athletic…

Previously established in Houston, Texas, as the Houston Oilers, the Tennessee Titans, the first National Football League (NFL) team to be based in Tennessee, secured a move to Nashville in 1996 after reaching an agreement with the city that included,…

Created in 1974 through a reorganization of the Tennessee Game and Fish Commission, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and Commission (TWRA) is the latest of several attempts by the State of Tennessee to protect adequately native and game animals. Initial…

As early as 1790, a number of thoroughbred stallions were brought into the Watauga and Holston settlements, and between 1790 and 1795, the Knoxville Register and Star Gazette advertised at least nine stallions as standing in what is now East…

Olympic medal-winning swimmer from the University of Tennessee, Matt Vogel was born June 3, 1957, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. As a high school senior swimming for the Huntingdon YMCA in Indiana, Vogel won the 1975 YMCA National Championship in the…

Perry Wallace, Southeastern Conference (SEC) basketball trailblazer, was born in February 1948 in Nashville to Perry E. and Hattie Haynes Wallace. The youngest of six children, he received his primary and middle school education at Nashville's segregated public schools. Wallace,…