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COPYRIGHT 2004 South Florida Sun-Sentinal
Byline: Dave Joseph
MIAMI _ The voice is hoarse and there's a buzz and crackle on the phone line. It's the same sound a cheap radio makes in a small town just before you lose reception.
``You know, the odds were always against Jim. Always against what he was trying to do.''
The voice belongs to Bud Laidlaw, who is sitting in Oxford, Mich., a small town that prides itself as the ``Gravel Pit Capital of the World'' because small towns will pride themselves on just about anything. He's 71, one of eight children, and he's talking about his nephew, Dolphins' interim coach Jim Bates.
``You know people told Jim he was crazy,'' Laidlaw said. ``His teachers, his coaches, his counselors.''
Crazy ol' Jim from tiny Oxford dreaming a crazy dream to play football at the University of Tennessee without a scholarship. Going there without knowing a soul. Imagine that? Or taking his first head coaching job in Sevierville, Tenn., and living in that tiny log cabin on Red Bank Road?
``He paid his dues, you know, and no one gave him anything, you know?'' says Gary Roberts, his neighbor on Red Bank Road who punctuates his sentences with ``you know'' in a Southern drawl as heavy as molasses.
He hunted near the Smoky Mountains and fished in Little Pigeon River.
``And you know what ol' Jimmy did once?'' asks former Sevierville assistant coach James Huskey. ``He took his grade book down to trout fish and couldn't find it. Some guys found it a few days later just sitting on some rocks.''
Crazy ol' Jim. Crazy enough to coach in the defunct USFL for some crazy oil man in San Antonio. Crazy enough to tell the owner to take the job and shove it when his players stopped getting paid
``Because he respected...
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