By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
As a high school football referee, it is Randy Tannehill’s job to try to not be noticed. As a side judge on the field, he often has coaches trying to suck up to him one minute and be all over him the next.
Fans have no problem expressing their displeasure with his work. Players can sometimes be hard to deal with. Yet in the middle of it all, Tannehill’s job requires him to maintain his composure and keep things in perspective.
You’ll excuse him if his perspective is more than just a little bit different than everyone else’s at one of the high school football games he officiates.
It could be a game with thousands in attendance or only a few, but almost no one there knows what he is dealing with.
Randy Tannehill is dying.
* * *
For the last 16 months, Tannehill has been facing a situation that few want to even think about, much less talk about. He also never thought he’d get back into being a football official again after a decades-long break from wearing a striped shirt.
But here he is — a 66-year-old with five children and seven grandchildren who had retired from a career as a pharmacist and a lawyer when his wife Wendy saw a notice this summer about a need for more football referees.
At the time, he was still dealing with his devastating personal news when the social media post appeared that was looking for those who might be interested.
“Well,” he told Wendy, “I’m interested.”
It didn’t matter that he could no longer drive.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t officiated in more than 25 years.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t all that familiar with local high school football.
What did matter is that a path had appeared, even though it was one he hadn’t been looking for.
And now, Randy Tannehill is living.
* * *
Cancer patients may forget an occasional birthday or anniversary, but there’s one date they don’t forget.
“May 12, 2025,” Tannehill says.
At the time, he was living a quiet life in a South Shreveport residential community. He and Wendy had been on a Disney cruise – “we are big Disney people,” he says” – and Tannehill started having balances issues and falling down. More than a few times.
Then came the headaches on the right side of his head “but never in my life did I think it was a brain tumor. Not in a million years.”
The term “brain tumor” can be a catch-all for a variety of issues. Could be benign. Could be treated without surgery. Could be a lot of things.
But there is one type of brain tumor that leaves no doubt.
Glioblastoma.
“It’s the worst kind you could have,” he says. “It is 100 percent fatal. You never recover from it. You just try to extend your life.”
It’s classified as Grade 4 (the highest and most aggressive form) and tends to grow rapidly in destroying surrounding tissues.
“It is an aggressive brain tumor where the tumor cells start growing in the brain itself, as opposed to growing from somewhere else in the body and spreading to the brain,” says Dr. Bharat Guthikonda, who serves as the Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at LSU Health Shreveport. “It’s definitely a malignant, very invasive brain tumor that we never really have a cure for.”
Tannehill is not a patient of Dr. Guthikonda.
“The roots of the tumor are beyond what we see on an MRI scan,” he says. “So even if we’re able to remove the tumor that we see on an MRI, there’s always cells that are more premature than what we see on the scan, and there’s always cells there that we don’t physically remove. Those cells are equally aggressive. The standard of care is to remove it, and then just follow that with radiation treatment and chemotherapy treatment. But it always comes back. That’s what makes it so invasive.”
Among those who have been diagnosed with glioblastoma are Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter and U.S. Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy.
Carter lived nine months after his diagnosis, McCain lived for 13 months and Kennedy for 15 months.
“If they can’t cure them, they sure ain’t going to cure little Randy Tannehill in Shreveport,” he says. “I understand those folks are a whole lot more important than me.”
The average median survival range is between 12 to 18 months and that’s even with undergoing intensive treatment.
Remember the date that Tannehill quoted? That was 16 months ago. And, he says, “I feel good.”
No headaches. No fatigue. No issues with balance.
“If somebody would have told me that I would have brain cancer and go through what I’ve gone through and that I would feel the way I do, I would tell them they were crazy,” he says. “I walked two miles in the neighborhood last night. I go to physical therapy every week or two and they work me out really well. No, I don’t feel bad at all.”
The average age for peak incidence of glioblastoma is 64. On May 12, 2025, Tannehill was 65.
According to the AMBOSS medical library “resection is not curative due to the high invasiveness of the tumor and the vulnerability of brain tissue. Infiltrating tumor cells remain in the surrounding brain tissue and lead to recurrence/progression of the disease.
Seventy percent of patients experience disease progression within one year of diagnosis.”
None of this information takes Tannehill by surprise. “I wanted to know everything,” he says. “I did a lot of research where I could understand a lot of it where the average layperson probably couldn’t. Tell me everything. There was a whole lot of news and most of it was bad. But I wanted to know it.
“It makes you live your life to the fullest right now,” he adds. “It’s one of the things that drew me into officiating high school football again. Because I can do it. This doesn’t affect that in any way.”
“It’s not unheard of either where people continue to work or stay active or live their life normally,” Dr. Guthikonda says. “Not all glioblastomas are the same, even molecularly. Some are more responsive to treatment than others. If the patient is healthy at baseline, and the tumor is molecularly favorable, the location of the tumor is not in an area that is neurologically more crippling, then I think you have a patient who can remain active. They can work and they can lead a relatively, albeit different, more normal life.”
* * *
Tannehill, who grew up in Pineville, has an interesting, if not diverse professional background. “I’m kind of an unusual human being,” he says. “I have two doctorate degrees. I practiced pharmacy for a long time, and I also practiced law. Graduated pharmacy school in ‘82 and graduated from law school in ‘92. I worked at night as a pharmacist and went to law school during the day.”
He also dabbled in politics and was elected to the Rapides Parish School Board.
After 18 years as an attorney, he got out and went back to pharmacy work. But that’s not the only job that he returned to.
When he was in his 20s, he worked as a football official for a few years and when his wife mentioned this summer that the local official’s association was shorthanded, he figured it was just what he needed.
He joined the group, passed all the exams and before he knew it, he was working scrimmage games on the crew of head referee Rick Gates.
“When we first called a game together, his mechanics weren’t very good and he was a little worried about it,” says Gates, who has been an official for 25 years. “I’ve worked with him over the past six weeks and I’ve got to tell you, we called the Calvary at Homer game last week and it was his best game of the year. His mechanics were spot on. He has learned so much in just a couple of months. I’m so impressed. He’s worked hard, and he’s done a wonderful job of getting caught up after not having called football for over 25 years.”
The crew on which Tannehill works is aware of his medical situation. “That’s not a problem for them,” Tannehill says.
It’s certainly not a problem for Rick Gates. He’s a survivor of bone marrow cancer. But if you think he has a soft spot for Randy Tannehill, the side judge, think again.
“I don’t treat him any differently,” Gates says.
Though he has to be driven to the games because of his condition, Tannehill has no on-field limitations. If he did, he wouldn’t do it.
Though it’s only been a half of a season, it has given him a sense of belonging.
“This association is full of an awful lot of good men and women,” he says. “It’s my way to get back to the community and stay involved with the game firsthand and I enjoy it a lot. I like the activity. I love seeing the kids. I played in high school many years ago, so I know how much work these kids go through. I get an awful lot of enjoyment to watch these kids play and watch their emotions during the game and the coaches. And I just enjoy being that close to it and trying to help these young people through their journey playing football.”
But the players and coaches in the games he officiates have no idea of the journey Tannehill is on. He has never wanted to say “You’re worried about pass interference? I’m dealing with brain cancer!”
“Those coaches have a lot invested in these games,” he says. “It’s their careers. I understand if they get upset and so I don’t bring my personal issues into the game because I know how much it means to them. I really do. There’s a lot of things going on in people’s private lives that none of us know about. And so you just accept it, you move on, and you get ready for the next play.”
And when the game is over, Randy Tannehill gets ready for the next day.
Because that’s how he has learned to live life.
* * *
If it weren’t for a scar on the right side of his head from his two surgeries, you’d never notice anything different about Tannehill.
There are a lot of things that have changed Tannehill’s life and his faith is one of them. He joined the Catholic church (he and Wendy are members of St. John Berchmans) three years ago “and it has changed my life,” he says.
“Believe it or not, my faith has grown even stronger with this,” Tannehill says. “I think the first thing anybody would ask would be why me? But it’s not something that God chose Randy and said ‘it’s time for you to get brain cancer.’ He has given me the strength to get through this and the strength to go officiate high school football. I wouldn’t have been able to handle this without a strong faith in God.”
There are certainly plenty of doctor visits (he sees three on a regular basis). He’s done the radiation. He’s done the chemotherapy. Every two weeks, he gets an infusion of Avastin, a drug designed to stave tumor blood vessels.
He recently had an MRI that showed a little bit of growth in the brain tumor. It did not come as a shock.
“It’s 100 percent of the time this tumor grows back,” he says “It’s just a question of can you keep it in check? And can you extend your number of years? Your brain has a ton of little crooks and crevices, and it gets in those crooks and crevices. I’ve had two brain surgeries and if they took out (the tumor) of where it could possibly be, you’d just be in the corner drooling. That’s not an option. So they get what they can safely, but they never get it all. And it will grow back.”
Faced with this adversity, leave it to Randy Tannehill to find the positives. “There are positives from this cancer,” he says. “You have to look for those positives and be accepting of those too.”
Start with his family.
“We get to watch two of our grandkids every Wednesday afternoon, and they stay with us every Friday night,” he says. “And it’s such a pleasure and a blessing. You would lay your life down for your children. But your grandchildren steal your heart. There’s no other way to put it. I’ve got children and grandchildren. that look to me. And it’s important to me to keep going and keep fighting.
“Everybody doesn’t have that kind of support around them. I’ve thought about how fortunate I am, because there are people out there who have this diagnosis that don’t have that support group with them. And I feel sorry for those people. I really do. But I know they exist. I’m very, very blessed that I’ve got a great wife that helps me and family support group.”
There was never really any other path for Tannehill to take once he received the diagnosis. Whether it was faith, family or a personal choice, he knew how he was going to take this on.
“Don’t give up,” he says. “It’s easy to sit around and feel sorry for yourself. But you keep going. Not only for yourself, but for other people in your family and other people who look at you. You send that message to not give up. It’s why I officiate high school football. It keeps me going, it keeps me active. And it keeps me involved with a game that I’ve loved my entire life since I was 3 years old.”
Nobody truly knows how they would handle a situation such as this until they have to. Mainly because no one wants to think about it.
But Tannehill thinks about it every day. Because he wants to.
“The main goal for me with this is to keep a positive attitude,” he says. “Because knowing that it’s going to get you, you could get down. I want to push this thing. I know it’s not going to go away completely. I’m intelligent enough to realize that. I’ve been involved in the medical field my entire life. I know what the numbers say. And it’s going to be unlikely that I’m going to be the first one ever to survive this. Is it possible? Sure, but it’s highly unlikely. So I know what’s coming, but I want to put it off as long as I can. And I feel good. I think me being so active, walking here, doing physical therapy, doing the officiating helps me.”
Survival rates are measured over five-year time periods. Glioblastoma has a five-year rate of five percent, one of the lowest of any form of cancer.
“I’m at 16 months, so I’ve got a long way to go,” he says. “But I’m going to beat that. I’m going to be in that 5 percent that goes past it.”
Which is why Randy Tannehill isn’t worried about dying.
He’s too busy living.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com