I still don’t know who let the dogs out, but now everybody with a computer or TV knows who tried to let the cat out – Coastal Carolina football coach and storyteller David Bennett.
Bennett shared another one of his home-spun yarns in Wednesday’s press conference about the differences between cats and dogs. At first it sounded like any other bizarre tangent the coach often goes into … then the video went viral.
ESPN, Deadspin, “Pardon The Interruption” and “Around The Horn” – every website and channel you clicked to featured Bennett telling a tall tale the way only he can tell it.
Bennett shared a story about a stray cat sneaking in his screen door and copping an attitude when it was unable to escape. Bennett is obviously a dog person.
“I turn around and there’s a little kitty cat in our kitchen,” Bennett recalled in his classic Cheraw drawl. “I said, `What are you doing in here little kitty cat?’ About that time the cat’s going crazy. I tried to let it out the front door and the cat’s (hissing).”
OK, so it’s what he said so much as how he said it. Bennett comes across as a Southern Garrison Keillor, or a crazy cross between Mark Twain and John Wayne.
And while he was a hit with the national media and talk-show circuit, it was just another Wednesday presser with Bennett being Bennett to those who know him.
Bennett is famous for his meandering metaphors about dogs, cats, mommas, daddys and whoopins, all of them somehow relating back to something his team needs to do.
My favorite came a few days before the first game in school history in 2003. It was a real brainteaser about two frogs sitting on a log and one decides to jump off. So how many are left? Still two, because one decided to jump but didn’t actually do it yet. And surprisingly, that’s exactly what his players were like. They had decided they wanted to play college football but they hadn’t done it yet, so … I forget all the logic, and I use the term loosely, but his team was like two frogs.
Say what you want, but it seems to work on his players and the media eats it up like grits and gravy. Pass the cornbread and tell us the one about cow tipping.
Usually the lesser the opponent the taller the tale.
If CCU is facing Penn State, it’s praise Joe Pa and the program he has built in his 246 years with the Nittany Lions. If CCU is playing a Division II creampuff, crank up the popcorn machine and gather ’round the fire because grandpa is about to take us on a sentimental journey.
So what was the lesson to be learned from Bennett’s canine-feline rant? Other than the fact that it doesn’t take much to become famous these days, this was his point: “I told our players, ‘You need to be dogs. We don’t need no cats. Be a dog.”
The irony is Coastal’s upcoming foes – CAT-awba and the Jawja Dawgs (that’s Georgia Bulldogs for those who need a translator) – and the two critters couldn’t be more different. There’s a big difference between having a cat in your kitchen and landing in the dog house.
Either way, the cat is finally out of the bag about the country’s most country coach.
