In a rented lake house on the banks of Lake Hartwell, Larry “Mad Dawg” Towell and I were finishing off the remnants of a celebratory bottle of homemade muscadine wine, after our final evening of working the 2008 Bassmaster Classic. Neither of us had spoken a word for several minutes. We were fixated on the object sitting on a small glass table separating the two of us…couldn’t take our eyes off of it, much less touch it.
Though an inanimate object, we knew it possessed the power to change lives, to make dreams come true…compel people to rise to their feet, scream and cry. Coveted by so many, bestowed upon only a chosen few. To earn it and own it is the symbol of a culmination of a lifetime’s work…and secures a man’s permanent place in history. On that small glass table sat the “holy grail” of bass fishing, the Bassmaster Classic trophy. Specifically, the Classic trophy that three hours earlier had been held high by Alton Jones after becoming the 2008 Bassmaster Classic champion.
Three hours later Alton’s trophy was in possession of two unsupervised Arkansas rednecks, one known by everybody as “Mad Dawg,” the other being me…a man not necessarily the poster child of self-discipline. Finally breaking the reverent silence, the “Dawg” quietly asked me, “What are you going to do with it?” I ponder it for just a moment, snatch that trophy up and say, “I’m gonna ‘Stanley Cup’ this sucker, grab a camera!”
See Overstreet’s adventures with the ’08 Classic trophy here.
At this point you’re probably curious how I left Greenville with the trophy. After the obligatory interviews and post-Classic hoopla, Alton was immediately whisked away to a plane bound for Bristol, Conn., the headquarters of ESPN. In those days ESPN still owned B.A.S.S., and it was customary for the Classic champ to spend the next morning making the rounds at the “mother ship” as a guest on ESPN Sports Center and several of their morning talk shows. A round of interviews known as “The Car Wash.”
Meanwhile, while Alton was at ESPN, the trophy had to somehow be making its way to the JM Associates studio in Little Rock, Ark., to be used on the set during the final production of the Bassmaster Classic television show. After finishing his duties with ESPN, Alton would then fly to Little Rock to shoot studio segments and be reunited with his trophy.
I can’t remember who the call came from, and I was actually driving back to the lake house when my cell phone rang with a voice on the other end saying, “Would you come back to the convention center and retrieve the Bassmaster Classic trophy?” I had driven to Greenville from my home in Arkansas and was being asked to hand deliver the trophy to the studio. Seriously?
I return to the bowels of the arena, grab the trophy…it’s not even in a case, and tote it out of there like a boss. Or maybe more like a thief. Nobody even stopped me to question what I was doing with it. I get to my rig, pop the back deck open…I don’t even know what to do with this thing. So I just gather up a pile of rain gear and a hoodie and lay it back there.
And so it began…my road trip with the Classic trophy.
I can’t tell you how many times during that trip I recall thinking, “Man I’m gonna get fired over this deal.” Or, “Why didn’t they just call Fed-Ex?” But the farther I drove with it, the crazier it seemed to make me. Every time I would pull it out to take another photo with it, it would cross with my mind, “What are you doing? What if you drop it?” And it could have happened!
That trophy is much heavier than it looks…and it’s slick. You see all those dudes holding that thing up over their heads after winning the Classic? Every year since my hours of madness with that trophy, I’ve feared eventually somebody is going to drop it.
I’ll let the photo gallery that accompanies this column tell the rest of this story. And no, I didn’t include all the photos that were taken…because there’s no statute of limitations on stupidity. And I know there’s not one on getting run off.
At this upcoming Classic I’ll do what I always do during the anglers meeting and at the launch dock when they bring out the 2015 Classic trophy. I’ll pick it up, move it around and take photos of it from all different angles. That’s my job. But I fully expect to look up and have somebody giving me the “stank eye” while I’m handling it. And I don’t figure on getting that same phone call again. But if I do…the answer is no!