Whenever you go to a basketball arena, do you ever notice if or who the court is named for? Better yet, do you ever care? Didn’t think so.

Which makes this whole Dale Brown/Sue Gunter thing at LSU equal parts typical, laughable, and, of course, political. (After all, this is Louisiana.)

A year ago, the LSU Board of Supervisors voted to name the court at the Maravich Assembly Center in honor of Dale Brown, longtime LSU men’s coach. They trotted out Dale and his supporters for the ceremony and the whole nine yards.

But then, the wind started blowing and a movement began to add Sue Gunter, the longtime women’s basketball coach (who passed away 15 years ago) to the floor naming. Last week, a new vote was taken and was approved.

Insert uproar here.

If it is your inclination to say “who cares,” you certainly have my permission. To me, there is only one person in the history of LSU athletics who has reached the level of greatness that should merit a naming opportunity. Take a bow, Skip Bertman. You take a program that few even knew existed and then win five College World Series titles? Now that’s where the standard ought to be.

That’s it. That’s the list.

What has been truly amazing is to see how polarizing the basketball court has become. And don’t let anybody try to tell you differently; there were plenty of folks who would tell you that it shouldn’t have been named for Brown in the first place.

But we all know that we live in a world where the standards have been lowered. Harold Baines, who was a .289 career hitter, never led the league in anything and was never higher than ninth in MVP voting, is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

For some reason, people feel compelled to put up statues at sports arenas for coaches and athletes who are no one’s idea of legendary.

Now, if you ask who has had the greatest impact on LSU basketball? Then Dale Brown is your guy. He didn’t build LSU basketball out of nowhere – that Maravich kid was pretty good and Bob Pettit would like a word – but yes, he was the dominant force behind LSU’s rise to a new level for an extended period of time.

Plus, Dale was a dominant personality. You always kept your eyes (and TV screens) on him.

But let’s be honest as well: there are plenty of answers from the other side as to why naming the court after him wasn’t standard worthy. Most will point out that he won as many Final Fours as you did. And there are many other reasons that get thrown around.

Let’s see if we can agree on this – if you say that LSU has to name the court after somebody, then Dale Brown is the best choice. (The better question is, do you have to?)

If Sue Gunter were so worthy, then why wasn’t her name brought up originally? You know the answer.

But the furor over this is really something to behold. Just like to point this out: no one is saying Brown’s name was ever going to be taken off the court.

Naming the court at Duke for Mike Krzyzewski? Of course. Tennessee named its after women’s coach Pat Summitt, who won eight more titles than Gunter (8-0). That’s the kind of standard that should be met.

Instead, Lou Henson, who never won any national titles, has not one, but two courts named for him (Illinois and New Mexico State).

We have accepted the Lou Henson standard instead of the Krzyzewski-Summitt standard when it comes to all of this.

So what should LSU do? At first, this idea seemed laughable, but now it seems perfectly in keeping with what this has all come to. Have two decals ready to apply to the court — one for Dale Brown when it’s a men’s game and one for Sue Gunter when it’s a women’s game.

Everybody wins! And we all get orange slices afterward!

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

Whenever some seismic shift happens in sports at a level above, it always seems to filter down. The 3-point line. The designated hitter. (Sadly) the wave.

Once it starts with the professionals, it will make its way to colleges. And the next stop? High school athletics.

In these times when contracts don’t mean anything in professional sports — Russell Westbrook signed a five-year contract five years ago and is now on his fifth NBA team — neither do scholarships. Don’t like where you are? Then just take off and go somewhere else and play immediately.

Ah, but there is that last bastion of restricted athletic movement – high school sports. If you want to transfer, there’s a price to pay: You have to sit out a year.

To be sure, there are some ways around it – a few of them are actually legal according to the LHSAA handbook – but as a general rule, you’re relegated to not much more than getting to practice with your team and then watching from the sideline while your teammates actually get to play the games.

But with literally thousands of college athletes venturing into the transfer portal and then becoming immediately eligible at another school, you have to wonder if some form of that might be headed to Louisiana.

The argument that was heard for many years in collegiate sports was that the trombone player could leave one school and still be instantly eligible to play in the band at State U. With a backbone deteriorating before everyone’s very eyes, the NCAA threw up its collective hands and gave the “olly olly oxen free” to athletes who wanted to transfer.

But if you think Louisiana’s policy is right in line with other states, think again. More than 30 states have passed open enrollment legislation as, one after another, transfer rules are being relaxed all over the country. State associations exist to try to create a level playing field. That seems to be a never-ending battle, but there’s another battle that’s going to be hard to fight.

Consider this quote from Traci Statler, a professor of sports psychology at California State University-Santa Barbara, who discusses the issue of high school transfer eligibility in her sports philosophy and ethics class: “One of the primary reasons for transferring high schools is that kids are trying to make themselves more marketable to colleges. Student-athletes are less likely to be loyal to the school their older brothers and sisters went to and more likely to be loyal to the school that can get them what they want — a college scholarship.”

And there it is! You just knew if we tried hard enough, we could get there.

In Louisiana, there are a variety of school attendance zones. Some are divided (theoretically) by geography. Some are parish-wide. Some parishes allow Majority-to-Minority transfers, some don’t. And if you really want to get the eligibility party started, throw in the magnet component and watch all the heads start spinning.

Feel free to wonder, if only for a moment, what an open enrollment might look like?

“I think there would be a lot of distrust,” Captain Shreve head football coach Adam Kirby says. “You’d have to wonder if high school coaches would turn into recruiters. It would put pressure on high school coaches from outside sources to go and find those players. And if you are going to do that, you might as well be a college coach. Part of the reason I enjoy being a high school coach is the purity of the sport. I think it would push high school coaches out the door.”

Kirby has been a head coach for one year, but Glenn Maynor, who has been Haughton’s baseball coach for 29 years, feels the same way. Maynor will be the first to tell you that he’s benefitted from having transfers in his program – “we’ve had some dang good players transfer in,” he says — but he has also lost a few as well.

“I’d definitely prefer it stay the way it is,” Maynor says. “I like the idea of having your own community. I stopped worrying about losing kids a long time ago. If we are running a good program and winning some games, we might lose a few players and we might get some.”

Who would benefit? Some say private schools. Others say it’s more of who it would hurt because of the Darwinian Theory that only the strong would survive. Some schools are challenged enough already to get kids to play in many sports.

“And it would change how you coach,” Maynor says. “If you get on a kid and need to discipline him, he might just take off and go somewhere else.”

“I think this would be a Pandora’s Box,” Kirby says, “that you could never close.” 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

I love East Texas. I love all of that small town, Big Texas feel it has to it. The piney woods, the football stadium lights, the billboards just outside of town to let you know there was a girls golf championship won at the high school 43 years ago. I’d move there, but there’s no way they’d let me in for one simple reason.

I don’t drive a truck.

But last week on a trip with the fiancé through area code 903, I suggested a stop for lunch at a non-franchise location somewhat off the beaten path. You know, to get that true East Texas feel. Swiped through a few suggestions on the phone and found what I was looking for, five miles off the interstate in a town that had never been anything other than an exit sign.

The establishment had a down-home sounding name and, more importantly, got four stars! (I still think that whole rating system is rigged.)

Exit ramp, here we come!

And there it was, complete with a pole-position parking place as if they were waiting for us city folk to drop in and stay a spell. We chuckled at the “No Shirts, No Shoes, No Service” sign on the door as a kind of folksy quasi-Welcome sign.

Little did we know.

“Come on in and seat yourself” said the nice lady as we walked in, as if I had sent her the script in advance.

Did notice a strange smell as we scoured for a place to sit, but I was more focused on how every single person in the place was straight out of central casting. Lots of hats and flannel shirts.

Cream gravy as far as the eye could see. The tables were a little cramped and it was one of those two-part restaurants with overflow seating in the back section.

So we made our way to the back section and there it was. And when I tell you couldn’t believe it, I mean exactly that. That smell I had a hint of when we walked in had now come into clear, olfactory focus.

The guy at the center table was burning one. Marlboro Man. Nicotine City. He hadn’t yet put his cigarette out in the mashed potatoes, but I can promise you that was next on the agenda.

But we didn’t stick around to find out. Actually, we did return to the front section, sat down for maybe 14 seconds, realized that we had somehow been transported back to 1989, when humans did this sort of thing, and got out of there.

We sat in the car for about five minutes, just trying to fully comprehend what we had just seen. Were there authorities we were supposed to call? Was there some kind of Yelp review we were morally obligated to post?

To be honest, the two Louisianans had just received far more attention than the guy literally smoking in the restaurant. And then I found out why.

Texas has no law against smoking in restaurants. Some cities have enacted a policy, but not the state. Actually, you can’t smoke at a Texas school, in a museum, a library, a theater or a hospital. But in a crowded, poorly-ventilated restaurant along the side of a country road? Come on and gitcha sum!

We got our lungs out of there and hopped back on the interstate in search of a lunch free of carcinogens. Probably would have even settled for a place that allowed shirtless or shoeless people.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been on the shelf and unable to function as a normal, semi-productive member of society.

This has forced allowed me to watch a lot of sporting events during that time, of which there is no shortage of inventory. (I am also fortunate to have DVRed 169 episodes of Mannix, so I’ve got you covered on that front also.)

Lots of basketball, pro and college. Plenty of high interest football as well.

And what has really struck me is the difference in the way these two sports are analyzed during a game.

Look, I’m no expert on sports television broadcasting. I’m just like you – the only qualification is that I watch a lot of it. Just because I listen to music doesn’t mean I know how to play the guitar.

Also just like you, certain announcers drive me crazy for reasons that really don’t have to be logical (see “Raftery, Bill” at the beginning of any college basketball game he calls.)

But I’ve been thinking about this for a while and it has really started to become obvious during my infirmed state: It’s really amazing what football analysts are able to do. And especially when compared to basketball analysts.

I get it … part of it is the nature of the sport. In basketball, you better be quick because the next play has already started. Football has a built-in 30 seconds or so for an explanation.

But I also know you are talking about a sport that has 22 players to account for instead of 10 and a playing surface 12 times as big. And yet these color analysts do it relatively easily and on time fast enough to get ready for the next play.

Yes, they have immediate access to a replay before the previous play is almost over. Still, this is more than just “that looks like pass interference.” They see the game through the quarterback’s eyes, the linebacker’s eyes and the deep snapper’s eyes.

Why did the receiver run that route, making an adjustment after the play had already begun?

How did the linebacker know what the pre-snap read needed to be?

What was the intention to use that kind of motion and did it serve its purpose?

But the one that gets me the most is with blocking schemes. It’s as if they are able to look at all the run or pass-protection techniques of every offensive lineman and instantly know why it made the play work (or didn’t).

San Francisco’s Christian McCaffrey had barely even dropped the ball in the end zone when Fox analyst Greg Olsen was telling me to watch how 49er offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey was able to use an effective blocking move on two defenders to free up the touchdown run.

You and I are such simpletons that we just watch the ball and figure that’s all we need to know. 

NBC’s Cris Collinsworth may have a rather annoying voice, but his attention to detail is spot on. Say what you want about ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, but he always seems to nail it on important plays.

I watched a great college basketball game last weekend – two Top 15 teams – and all I got was jargon from the analysts. “That’s a yo-yo!” was one of my favorites, offered without explanation. Or it’s an endless supply of over-talking – “dribble drive” or “screen the screener” or “they ran a high-low to run a scissor off a back cut to get a big open for a shot in the short corner.”

In other words, someone tall made a 3-pointer.

But this is really all about the praise for these football guys who know what to look for, explain what they see and have a bow on it all within 30 seconds.

I’d still be trying to figure out the number of the guy who caught the ball.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

At one point this season, the LSU men’s basketball team was 12-1. There were warning signs going off all over the place at the time, but it was hard to recognize when you are blinded by the 12 and the 1.

Since then, the Tigers are 0-5 and those trouble signs have become too obvious to ignore. So let’s get on-the-court issues out of the way and then try to figure out how we got here.

And you don’t have far to look to find the biggest of all – the Tigers can’t shoot. Ever since James Naismith tacked up the peach basket at the Springfield YMCA, that’s kinda been what basketball has been all about. Put the ball in the basket more times than the other guys and you win.

LSU’s guards don’t shoot well from the outside, which might be OK if they could finish at the rim. But they can’t do that either. As a team, the Tigers are 11^th in both scoring and field goal percentage.

Not that blocks are the greatest indicator of defensive efficiency, but they are second-to-last in the conference. They are also 12^th in rebounding.

But remember – these stats are for ALL games, not just the conference ones. Those would tell a much more definitive tale of the misery that LSU is now experiencing.

Which is also what the fan base is experiencing. They can claim otherwise all they want, but when every sport is good, men’s basketball is the No. 2 sport in LSU athletics. Not gymnastics. Not women’s basketball. Not … hold on here … baseball.

The reason some might laugh at that is because LSU baseball has had an extended period of success at a high level. That’s a sure-fire way to raise and keep the interest level.

But on the occasional times men’s basketball has risen to those heights – if only for a season or two – it’s been obvious how it can hold its place. It’s much easier to puff your chest out when your school’s teams are successful in a sport that is recognized nationally for four months instead of four weeks.

Everyone loves a winner – that’s not indigenous to Baton Rouge – but the hot start was fool’s gold. The non-conference wins were against one of the worst schedules in the country. When you post big numbers on the left side of the hyphen, fans buy in.

And maybe that’s why the schedule was made that way. Basketball schedules aren’t made like football. In football, you already know some of the opponents you’ll play 10 years from now. Basketball is basically year-to-year, but even that can change as late as mid-summer.

So the Tigers, under new coach Matt McMahon, had two choices: Play Cupcake City and build up fan excitement AND player confidence or take on some of the Big Boys. In the old days, almost every big school played a creampuff schedule and then got ready for conference.

Perhaps these days, it’s driven by TV inventory, but it’s not that way anymore. Some of the biggest names in college basketball play each other in November and December. There are lots of reasons for it, but it does give a coach a chance to see what he’s got and what it will take.

McMahon didn’t know what he had because literally everyone left before he got there (three returned from the portal). The Top 5 recruiting class that was coming to LSU completely disappeared to other schools. So it made sense to play North Carolina Central instead of North Carolina, Texas-Arlington instead of Texas and Kansas City instead of Kansas.

LSU should have beaten a Top 25 Kansas State team in a November tournament but a questionable official’s call took that chance away. The Tigers did beat Wake Forest, who has turned out to be pretty good (currently tied for second in the ACC).

But the SEC did LSU no favors in its schedule-making. Of the bottom five teams in the conference, LSU hasn’t played any of them yet except Arkansas, a team everyone thought was good but has seen its season go south.

The Tigers were always going to be a lower-third SEC team. It’s just taken a while to find that out.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

There aren’t many things that are a bigger waste of time than predicting anything in college football, but much less when it comes to the future of a team’s quarterback position.

Five seconds after Walker Howard announced he was leaving LSU and heading to the transfer portal, seemingly credible and well-minded journalists had the next four years lined up as to who would be the Tigers’ starter — and what the rest of the quarterback “room” was going to look like — in each of the next few years.

(And before we go any further, can we discuss how stupid this whole “room” thing is in college football? Are we trying to sound a bit too football savvy for our own good? Is there a long snapper’s room?)

Tell you what, I’ll take any and all action you want on how the LSU quarterback progression is going to unfold through 2025. You predict it; I’ll starting drawing up plans for an addition to my house.

The No. 1 quarterback recruit for next year has already changed his mind. Florida has a quarterback signee who reportedly wants to back out because he doesn’t like his NIL deal.

So you’re going to tell me you have it all figured out on how it’s going to go down in Baton Rouge for next year and the year after that and a year after that?

Good luck … we’re all counting on you.

One of the biggest pearls of wisdom I’ve heard lately is that only a fool tries to predict a starting college quarterback for more than one season in advance. And even that’s a little iffy.

LSU coach Brian Kelly tried to put the kibosh on 2023 speculation by announcing after the Cheez-It Bowl — by the way, I think the Tigers just scored again — that there was no quarterback controversy for next year. It’s Jayden Daniels. Next question.

That left many to start fitting puzzle pieces together, which seem to suggest that the “room” wasn’t big enough for No. 2 QB Garrett Nussmeier or Howard, a redshirt freshman who was heralded when he signed as the next great thing.

And now Howard is gone. Well, at least we still have that cringe-worthy video tweet with Kelly awkwardly dancing while Howard holds up the “L” sign with his fingers, which apparently now stands for “Leaving.”

It’s really simple here, people. You don’t know. Coaches don’t know. Nobody knows.

So you can throw names like Rickie Collins and Colin Hurley around if you like, but they might as well be Joan Collins or Colin Powell when it comes to being the future of LSU quarterbacking.

Joe Montana was famously Notre Dame’s seventh-string quarterback in 1974, behind such luminaries as Frank Allocco and Rick Slager. Three years later, he won the national championship. You think that was in the plan?

Good thing Nick Saban didn’t follow the natural order of progression in 2016. Either Cooper Bateman or Blake Barnett was supposed to be the quarterback for the Crimson Tide that year. But Saban decided to give that freshman a shot and Jalen Hurts took them to the national championship.

The recruiting template says that you should try to sign a quarterback every year. Even before the portal came to be, that assumes (1) all of them are good enough to start and (2) all are happy with being a starter for ONE year for good ol’ State U.

Not much of a revelation here, but times have changed. Yes, but given the choice, Kelly would much rather have Walker Howard than not have Walker Howard. But he can’t possibly have been surprised by the news.

The old saying is that if you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. He’d probably also get a kick out of it if you’d tell him about that starting quarterback roadmap which you’ve got all figured out.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

There is still one college football game to be played this year but there are no more bowl games. I know that all too well, because I’m still having withdrawal pains because of it.

What happens in the CFP championship game will have a lasting impact for years to come and that’s fine. It has no “bowl” designation, unlike the semifinals, which were disguised as bowl games.

I love bowl season. It’s right up there with the intersection of the Final Four/MLB Opening Day/Masters, only that happens during the spring and the weather is nice and you don’t feel locked to your 65-inch Smart TV. I want every day during bowl season to be 38 degrees and rainy; zero reason to go outside to even get the mail.

People complain that there are too many bowl games. Or that they are “meaningless games.”

I beg to differ.

Though I’m not a fan of a team with a losing record getting a bowl invite so that they have an even more losing-er record – take a bow, 5-and-8 Rice – but otherwise, as long as you can find a way to get the game, you’re invited.

One caveat – the worse your record, the earlier in the day you have to play. I actually found myself longing for an 8 a.m. game a couple of times during the last week in December. You mean I have to wait until 11 o’clock?

As for the “meaningless games” concept, that depends on how you want to look at it. In its glorious eight-year history, has the Bahamas Bowl really lost its meaning? Of course not! In fact, the first Bahamas Bowl, which I watched (of course), had one of the greatest endings to a game I’ve ever seen. (Look it up.)

I read a description about these games that puts it perfectly: “These aren’t meaningless games. They are games with less meaning.”

Yes, all bowl games are not created equally, whether it’s because of the growing separation between the tiers of games or because of players “opting out.”

But no matter what degree of “meaning,” this may have been one the greatest runs of great games in a bowl season that we have seen.

* Both of the semifinal games were great, which has never happened.

* Tulane’s win over USC was incredible.

* How often do you see a game like the Liberty Bowl (Arkansas in 2 OTs, 55-53 over Kansas)?

* Mississippi State won one for their deceased coach Mike Leach … and for those who bet on the Bulldogs … with an ultimate Bad-Beat victory over Illinois.

* Notre Dame came back from two touchdowns behind – and gave up two Pick-6s – to beat South Carolina.

* With the game tied and only seconds remaining, Oregon’s kicker doinked one against the upright but somehow it bounced through to beat North Carolina.

All told, 12 games were decided by a field goal or less. A bunch more came down to the last possession.

Opt-outs are a divisive issue, but they aren’t going away any time soon. Sure, we all want our school to be at full strength instead of looking like Purdue’s intramural team. And did you notice that it became a news story when Alabama’s Bryce Young and Will Anderson opted in?

You constantly hear that some of these players skipping bowl games are doing so “to get ready for the NFL Draft,” even though they will be lucky to go in the seventh round.

And then there are those like Notre Dame tight end Michael Mayer, who is likely a first-round choice. Interviewed on the sideline during the Gator Bowl, in which he chose not to play, he was asked what he had been doing since the end of the regular season.

Basically he said he hadn’t been doing much of anything, just taking it easy and hanging with his family and friends. So that’s what it takes to get ready for the draft? That gets you more NFL ready than actually playing in, you know, a football game?

Interesting that a couple of hours later, the winning touchdown pass was caught by Mayer’s backup. A guy who actually wanted to play in that game, no matter how much meaning there was. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

When I walked into the Captain Shreve gym on January 11, I knew I was in a place I hadn’t been in a long, long time. No, it wasn’t the gym itself – I’ve seen more than a few games there in the last few years.

This had nothing to do with a physical location. But I was in a professional place – if that’s what you call it – that felt both very strange and very familiar all at the same time.

It was the Captain Shreve-Byrd boys basketball game and I was there to cover it for the Shreveport-Bossier Journal. I hadn’t covered a high school basketball game in almost 30 years, but I quickly came to realize the truth about how, like riding a bicycle, you never forget.

And I knew I was back in a place that I needed much more than it needed me.

The Journal isn’t my main job – in fact, it’s not even my second job – but I grew up professionally as a sports writer. It was a part-time job for me when I was in high school and a summer internship while I was in college, so there was no doubt where I was headed once I found myself in the real world.

I did that for as long as I could (or as long as I could stand it) and moved on to something else, which I dearly love. But covering events like a Tuesday night high school basketball game never really leaves you. (I know … that sounds borderline pathetic.)

It was an otherwise forgettable game – Shreve won by 33 — and I had to explain to both coaches who I was and what I was doing there. But I knew what I was doing there and that it was about to open all sorts of stories to tell.

Such as …

I saw Jaylin Turner come off the bench, grab a bat and hit a pinch-hit, walk off home run in the 10th inning to send LSUS to the NAIA World Series and complete an improbable week-long comeback for the Pilots. (Following the game, I also didn’t see a celebratory water balloon and took one in the onions that literally knocked me to my knees.)

I wrote about the deaths of two people who never met each other and were about as opposite as you could get. Huntington’s Devin Myers, 18, and former Fair Park legend Jimmy Orton, 85, died within a few hours of each other. Their deaths were not similar but there was a bond they shared – athletics.

I was able to turn on the voice recorder and let eight retired coaches tell story after story about their experiences in high school athletics. It was a series that started by accident and one that I could still be doing because of the profound impact they have had on countless lives.

I got a chance to be at Disch-Falk Stadium, home of Texas Longhorns baseball, and witness a capacity crowd start to get a little nervous as Louisiana Tech wouldn’t go away in one of college baseball’s cathedrals.

I wrote about issues like too many players being named to post-season teams or how high school baseball had become too “nice.” Or stupid stuff, like the two-part series about my amazement of the “EAST/WEST” signs at Lee Hedges Stadium, only to see them removed days later.

I was there when things happened. I saw stuff and wrote about it. I got a chance to interact with players and coaches and let them tell me all about what was going to happen or what had happened.

So that’s what 2022 was for me. The Shreveport-Bossier Journal put me back in the sports writing game. To be able to do it with a group of writers such as the one assembled does nothing but make each edition, each group text message, each staff meeting, each staff lunch a total pleasure.

On January 11, I had a feeling that might happen. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

Here’s my advice for whichever team wins today’s Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl and is presented with the trophy: Hang on to it.

With both hands.

Here’s my advice for whoever wins one of the Player of the Game awards: If you see a guy wearing a red blazer headed your way in the locker room with a serious look on his face, stuff the award in your equipment bag. If they ask you any questions, borrow the quote from Sgt. Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes – “I know nothing.”

Here’s my advice to this year’s Spirit of Independence winners, Operation Senior Surprise (better known as “Secret Squirrel”) from Barksdale AFB: There’s 57 of y’all; all we need is one of you to carry that baby outta there.

As detailed last week, the Independence Bowl has a unique history of many things … and some of them actually happened on the field.

This will be the 46^th of these games, so they’ve pretty much got it running on cruise control when it comes to game operations. But when it comes to trophies? Not so much.

You never know what’s going to happen.

The best of all is the 2011 game, when Missouri was playing North Carolina. The Missouri mascot (Truman the Tiger) either had a little too much of a good time in the pre-game festivities or didn’t realize the dimensions of his cartoonish-length tail, but was posing for a picture and bumped into the trophy before the game even started.

Shattered.

Which could also be said for the North Carolina defense, since Missouri put a 41-spot on the Tar Heels. If ever bowl officials needed one team to win over another, it was this one. The last thing they needed was to try to tell interim UNC coach Everett Withers (there’s some trivia for you!) if Carolina had won, “Well, coach, it’s a funny thing about that trophy … it’s sorta broken. In a few thousand pieces. And it was the Missouri mascot that did it.”

It’s one thing to break Aunt Martha’s crystal stemware at Christmas dinner when you reach for the gravy, it’s another to try to explain broken crystal to a national TV audience.

But that’s not all.

After the game, the trophy that was going to be presented to Offensive MVP James Franklin was, you guessed it, knocked over near the locker room and shattered.

Seriously.

Lee Michaels Fine Jewelers came to the rescue, getting a temporary replacement for the post-game team trophy and then eventually shipping two replacements to Missouri.

The next story has a little bit of urban legend to it, but I was in the locker room when something happened. It had to be in the late 1980s or early ’90s, but I know that one of the MVP trophies was given to the wrong player.

I think it may have been in 1988, when James Henry of Southern Miss was the Defensive MVP and the Offensive MVP.

Huh?

Henry never even played a snap on offense in that game, but he did return two punts for a touchdown. Seems like bowl officials couldn’t figure out which one he deserved, so they gave him both, but that was after someone had already received one of them.

Or maybe it was another year. But I know somebody had an MVP trophy one minute and then didn’t have it the next.

And speaking of urban legend – and numerous people have told me this is true – there is the case of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was the recipient of the Omar Bradley Spirit of Independence Award in 1993.

(Back in the day, the announcement of this award was almost as big as the announcement of the two teams.)

There was the usual pomp and circumstance for Justice O’Connor and all sorts of glad handing for a couple of days while she was in town. And I’m sure she was very appreciative and honored by it all – it’s still listed in her bio – but there was only one problem.

When she left town and went back to Washington D.C., she forgot one thing – the trophy.

At least it didn’t break. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

I’ve had an interesting relationship with the Independence Bowl over the years. Not many of us can say we were at the first one, but I was – as a high school senior with very little to do on a Monday night with 19,163 of my closest friends.

From that point, I went as a college student to watch my university compete (Louisiana Tech, 1977, 1978) before becoming a disdainful member of the media that couldn’t understand some of the choices that were made by the selection committee – back when the selection committee actually did the selecting.

Then I stood by, somewhat in disbelief, as the bowl began to grow in stature with matchups that seemed impossible to believe only a few years earlier (Georgia-Arkansas, LSU-Notre Dame).

That was followed by years of ignoring the game – I probably couldn’t tell you who played who for at least a 10-year period – and now I’m residing in the land of semi-fired-up-no-matter-who-is-playing.

Houston vs. Louisiana-Lafayette isn’t going to make anyone forget the Texas-USC Rose Bowl for the national championship, but it beats the crap out of some of these johnny-come-lately bowls. Both teams are driving distance away and the local ticket buying public knows enough about them to have a rooting interest.

But what I love the most about the Independence Bowl? As Bill Murray said in the movie Stripes to his platoon mates – “it’s the stories that you tell!”

The Independence Bowl has plenty of them.

In 2010, Air Force played Georgia Tech and Aurora, the falcon mascot, bored by the lack of offense in the 14-7 game, just flew away. Off and up out. They found her slumming with the pigeons downtown.

To borrow a Lou Holtz line, if a mascot were going to escape, then it’s a good thing the LSU Tigers weren’t playing.

I went to the 2007 game strictly to see another mascot when Alabama was playing Colorado. I wanted to see Ralphie, the literal Colorado buffalo, get let out of the cage, run around the field and then get hauled back in.

Ralphie brought her A game that night – that’s right, Ralphie is a female – making the 200-yard run in fine fashion. The trouble for Colorado was that it was Alabama running all over the field when the game started as the Crimson Tide put up a 20-spot in the first quarter.

Good pub, bad pub, doesn’t matter as long as you spell and/or pronounce the name right, correct?

Oops.

There was also the 2006 game, when a celebrity spokesman for title sponsor PetroSun said on national television that the company was honored to be associated with the “Independent Bowl.”

There was a seemingly never-ending stream of coaches who would bail between the time of being chosen for the bowl and the actual game itself. (Take a bow, Lou Holtz.) To Mack Brown’s credit, he stayed and coached Tulane in ’87 before bolting for North Carolina.

Or in the case of Alabama in 2006, the coach (David Shula) got fired before the Independence Bowl. But interim coach Joe Kines made up for it by giving one of the most classic halftime interviews you’ll ever want to see. YouTube it to find out I’m right.

It’s not exactly the kind of speech that we are used to seeing from the guy who replaced Kines after that game – Nick Saban.

And speaking of Saban, he coached in this game. Twice (1995, 2007). So did Jimmy Johnson (1981). So did Steve Spurrier (2005, 2014). And Hall of Famer Don James of Washington (’87). And Bob Stoops (1999). Plus Frank Beamer (1993, 2015).

All told, seven different coaches who have coached in the Independence Bowl have also won a national championship.

You play a bowl game long enough and stuff is going to happen. But when it comes to trophies and the Independence Bowl, they have retired the … um … trophy.

More on that next week. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

Check me if I’m wrong, but I don’t seem to recall Mike Krzyzewski ever having to completely rebuild his Duke basketball roster from one year to the next.

Sure, Kentucky loves the one-and-done superstars, but there are still quite a few who are two-and-done. Or four-and-stay.

John Wooden was a great coach at UCLA, but did he ever have to go find an entirely new team while he was winning 10 national championships in 12 years?

Welcome to LSUS basketball coach Kyle Blankenship’s world where, after last season, there was no one living.

“It’s been a challenge,” Blankenship said. “We attacked the recruiting process to try to put together a team that could compete for another conference championship.”

So far, so good.

Now that the Pilots have been together long enough to no longer need to wear name tags to practice, they are off to a 7-2 start.

This has all been a by-product of Covid-19 (big surprise there). College players in all sports are suddenly getting extra years because of the pandemic and it created inequities in rosters. LSUS had six players in 2021-22 who were granted an extra senior season.

At Senior Night last year, LSUS literally did not have enough non-seniors to be part of the ceremony, so everyone had to rotate to help out.

Those few who weren’t seniors either left the program or were asked to leave the program – the Pilots only had seven players at the end of 2021-22 – so this roster adjustment wasn’t much of a shock to Blankenship.

To help ensure he didn’t get in this position again, Blankenship got a mixture of players this year who were granted an extra year, as well as transfers and more high school players – especially in-state ones – than he had in the past.

The best story of all may be the recruitment of Jalen Brooks, who was once a star at Woodlawn, then spent enough time at Southern Arkansas to establish tenure. But this is college sports 2022-style, where no one seems to be out of eligibility until at least a couple of years after you die.

Blankenship has known Brooks since middle school and got a call one day that the 6-foot-5 forward was four-and-done at SAU and wasn’t planning to go back. The LSUS coach immediately began to search Brooks out by phone but had no luck. (Someone under the age of 30 actually turns their phone off?)

So Blankenship went the pre-historic route of communication and sent Brooks an email to see if he was interested in continuing his career at LSUS. And, by the way, how about lunch?

Brooks got the message and the two got together over a platter of extra spicy tenders at Buffalo Wild Wings. Luckily, no one spilled any of the Caribbean Jerk sauce on the signing papers, so Brooks signed up to be a Pilot right there in the parking lot.

“The whole process took about 10 hours,” Blankenship said.

The recruitment process, not the digestion process.

If Brooks keeps playing like he has – he’s the Red River Athletic Conference Player of the Week – Blankenship might be wearing out that BWW Blazin’ Rewards card for future recruiting purposes.

Brooks was at it again Thursday night at the Dock as he led the Pilots in scoring with 21 points as the consonants (LSU-S) won out over the vowels of (LSU-A) 82-67 in a game that featured one of the filthiest dunks you have ever seen by Louisiana Tech transfer Stacey Thomas.

“This is a special win,” Blankenship said afterward. “Any time you play your rival you know you are going to get their best shot. We had to fight like heck to win that game. I guess all I can say is that I’m proud.”

It’s an LSUS roster that literally doesn’t look anything like last year’s, but the results have been impressive through the first month of the season.

“It’s a unique approach that we had to take,” Blankenship said. “It’s been a lot of fun starting from scratch.” 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

If you think it’s tough watching high school seniors in the immediate aftermath of the final football game of their lives, you aren’t paying close enough attention.

There’s another entire group – also with Y chromosomes – that is having an even tougher time with it.

When the buzzer sounds and you’re on the wrong end of the scoreboard, it’s a tough deal for a player. They really don’t grasp the totality of it; just that it feels like the team on the other end of the field is tap dancing on your grave. That’s a direct punch to the 18-year-old ego. They are going to play next week, and you aren’t.

There will be a few tears, and that’s usually reserved for the inevitable moment or two with Dad.

For the last three weeks, as Shreveport-Bossier teams have slowly filed out of the playoffs, that scene has played out all over the state. Buzzer sounds. Coach huddles up the team one last time. Coach then talks to seniors only for one last love-you-guys moment. Seniors then take the slow walk off the field, intercepted somewhere by individual dads.

The guy with the shoulder pads on may be the only one with the salty discharge running down his face, but that’s only temporary. He will be over it by the time the bus warms up. But that’s not the case for Dad.

In the moment, Dad is fine with it. The offspring is sad, so he is there to be comforting. Quality move.

But be assured there’s somebody else who is going to need comfort: Dad.

There’s an empty feeling that doesn’t go away soon. So much time, so much emotion, so much pride has gone into watching a boy go from flag football to his senior season of high school.

And now it’s over? What am I supposed to do now?

There’s no more practice to watch and analyze. No more team meals to help out with. No more discussing the next game with the guys at work.

Nothing can begin to prepare Dad for the rest of his post-football fatherly life. You just try to exist until the feeling of living a normal existence — one without Friday nights at the stadium – comes back.

Don’t let anyone tell you that basketball or baseball or soccer is going to fill that void. Because it won’t.

For some reason, the end is much tougher to take over the long haul for Dad than it is for the player. Unless they are headed to play in college, most high school football players are fine with it. Sure was fun playing and being part of a team, a few locker room pranks were pulled, maybe a fake injury to get out of a practice or two. Overall, it was a great three months.

Dad looks at it on a much more global scale. He still can remember seeing his kid with the shoulder pads on backwards or having that “stick with it” conversation. Every season was another step, but Dad always knew where it was going to end. He just didn’t want to think about that, because it was so much damned fun along the way.

And then the other team won on a November night and it all stopped.

So as the scene gets played out all over the high school football landscape, please know that Dad is going to be fine.

It’s just going to take some time.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

This has been one of my favorite high school football seasons ever, mostly due to the advent of the Shreveport-Bossier Journal and getting to cover games and teams I wouldn’t normally get a chance to see.

Of the 19 teams in the SBJ’s coverage area, I saw 12 of them. Kinda hacked I didn’t get to see them all (especially since I missed 66 percent of the Bossier Parish schools).

But I’ve covered 20 games this year – including one that took two days – and each had its own story to tell. I suppose you could get that covering the City Hall beat, but I doubt it.

There’s plenty to love about a high school football season, but there are some things that might want to be looked at in the name of improvement.

And before we go there, let’s go here. The playoff structure in place is the best way to do something that is, by its own nature, imperfect. It will be tweaked and adjusted and re-arranged, but it will never be fixed. So let’s just live with what we’ve got and go from there. (Spoiler alert – the best teams almost always win the state championship, no matter what the system in place.)

REWARDING DISTRICT CHAMPIONS: One of the criticisms about the Power Point system is that it de-incentivizes winning the district. The kids still get a patch on the letter jacket, but that’s about it.

This was once done in basketball and I think it’s a good idea for football: Each district champion gets an extra 1.0 added to their final power point total. A team that finishes at 14.1 would jump to 15.1. It won’t make much difference at the top – you figure those teams would be district winners anyway – but lower-ranked district winners could move up 4-5 spots.

In a few cases, that might even mean a first-round home game or maybe even a bye. Not a bad reward for winning the district and certainly better than a patch.

FLAG THROWING AND CHAIN MOVING: Everybody yells about holding calls. You could bring the best NFL crew to a high school game and you’d still get that complaint. I think the referees do a good job of (1) knowing the rules (2) explaining issues to coaches and (3) keeping control of the game.

But there are two things I see that need to be improved because they can often be game-changers. And it’s nothing new for me because I’ve had this conversation with referee friends of mine for years.

Too often, referees throw flags without regard for where the infraction took place. They just throw them and wherever it lands is the spot. Not a big deal – unless it’s a spot-of-the-foul penalty. If an offensive hold occurs three yards behind the line of scrimmage, but the flag lands eight yards behind, that becomes an 18-yard penalty instead of a 13-yard penalty. That makes a difference.

It’s even worse on kick returns because there are bodies in motion all over the place. Sometimes the flag is being thrown from 20 yards away as the play is continuing in the opposite direction.

But the bigger problem? Ball spotting, especially on fourth down. I guess these referees are watching too much NFL and college where they love showing the side judge hurriedly pointing upfield to signal to move the chains. What’s the hurry?

In the 20 games I’ve seen this year, I’ve seen maybe two measurements. I don’t care how fast the offensive team wants to play. Get. It. Right. Especially in the fourth quarter. Especially in a playoff game. 

AND THE BAND SHOULDN’T PLAY ON: Sorry band people, but there’s a time and a place for everything. Play all you want … during timeouts, between quarters and at halftime. Not during live action.

I applaud the creative band directors who know enough football strategy to play only when the opposing team has the ball, but it should never be allowed. You think referees would allow it if some band wanted to perform a whistle routine during the game?

A team shouldn’t have an advantage just because its band knows how to play “Shake Your Groove Thing” on fourth down in a tie game. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com