Nashville is a great city.

It has numerous excellent restaurants, events and entertainment.

It has become a sports city, and one bold enough to bid on the Southeastern Conference Tournament on a semi-regular basis.

Yesterday, after Mike Anderson’s press conference, I ran into an old friend, Larry White, who is now retired as the sports information director at Alabama.

I first met Larry when he had that job at SMU. The first time we met he said his mom was a regular reader of my column. She lived in North Little Rock.

Larry was a great SID and always went out of his way to make the press feel at home.

It was him I ran into at the 2006 SEC Tournament in Nashville. I was in a hallway outside the press hotel, coughing deeply.

He came up and asked what I was taking for that, and I told him I had bought a bottle of cough syrup at the press hotel.

He took me by the elbow, walked me into their closed locker room and asked their team doctor to check me out. The doctor gave me some cough medication and wrote a prescription for more.

I survived and advanced as the Hogs won three games in three days before losing the championship to Florida. Stan Heath coached one more game for the Razorbacks, a 77-60 loss to Southern Cal in Spokane, Wash.

By that game, I was well, thanks to my friend Larry White.

 

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