I love you more than football,

I love you more than hoops.

I love you more than baseball —

And that’s almost the truth.

There is no way to win on Valentine’s Day.

Sports is about trying to win and sports is about pressure, either imagined or for real. But you can’t win on Valentine’s Day. Can’t do it. Too much pressure for even the best of us. 

You have to do something on Valentine’s Day. Gotta make the free throw. Gotta complete the pass. Gotta get on base.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s like being on the Kiss Camera, or “Kiss Cam,” a popular thing at sporting events. It’s a public torture chamber and should be banned. They show a “couple” on the Kiss Cam and they’re supposed to kiss. Even if it’s a first date, even if it’s a last date, even if they’ve just had a fight over who’s going to get the beer. The guy who invented the Kiss Cam should have to go on a date with Rosie O’Donnell. 

The only time Kiss Cam has hit a homer was when it caught Mr. and Mrs. Met kissing at Citi Field. And that was in the summer. When Valentine’s Day should be.

No one can be perfect all the time. Baseball millionaires get a hit just 30 percent of their at-bats. But Valentine’s Day demands that you barrel it up. On demand. Not just a hit, but extra bases. 

Tip of the hat to the guy who made up Valentine’s Day. He’s rolling in the dough and the rest of us are trying to figure out how to do “something special” for our significant others on a blah day in February, which would be just another day if this Valentine’s Day Creator hadn’t ruined it.

The best way to combat Valentine’s Day is to admit it. Admit your romantic game is in the cellar. What I know about women and relationships, you could fit in a walnut shell. But I DO know that when you’re staring into the loss column, the best thing to do is to say so.

“I love you but I don’t know what to do today to express that. BUT, would you like to go eat out in a couple of weeks? Also, I will buy you new underwear and some socks.”

Boom.

That’s what works for me. Just move Valentine’s Day to another day. A random day when you express to your beloved that you think they are Johnny Unitas reincarnated. Give him or her a card on Valentine’s Day, then eat out and send flowers on a Wednesday in March. Watch a March Madness game with them.

End of story.

That’s really what’s wrong with Valentine’s Day. There is nothing to do, sports-wise, in mid-February. Super Bowl’s done. Basketball is mid-season. Spring training just started, but how many of us can take time off in winter to go to Scottsdale or Cocoa Beach?

Too bad, because America’s best sports song is about dating. It’s about love.

“TAKE ME OUT … to the ballgame. Take me out to the crowd…”

If only there were a game to go to.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

Once again out of frustration, I am going off course today and away from fishing to express my discontent with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. From the day I completed potty training, I was a Dallas fan. I learned how to spell Cowboys before my own name.

Since being labeled “America’s Team,” they have become the most valuable franchise in all of sports. The Cowboys set the standard for winning all through the 70s, 80s and 90s with five Super Bowl championships. So why am I so disappointed with “MY” Dallas Cowboys?

Let’s first begin by looking at their history. They have the all-time highest winning percentage in the history of the NFL at 57.4. The Green Bay Packers are No. 2 at 57.2 followed by the Baltimore Ravens at 56.1.  That being said, the ‘Boys have not won a Super Bowl since January 1996. That’s a drought of 28 years by a franchise that prides itself on winning Super Bowls.

So, what’s the problem? Why are the Cowboys no longer winning Super Bowls? Not only are they not getting to the Super Bowl, but they also aren’t even getting to the NFC championship game which determines who goes to the Super Bowl. Despite all the coaching changes since the late 90s, Dallas is not any closer to winning a Super Bowl.

Of all the issues and the many excuses over the years, what is the one constant? We don’t have to look far. It’s the father-son duo of Jerry and Stephen Jones. I’m all for family-owned businesses, but every now and then you must be able to recognize your weaknesses and be honest with yourself.

After so many years of failure, you would think they would look in the mirror and realize it’s time to bring in a real general manager who knows football and can make educated decisions about selecting the coach and draft picks, and recommendations on who to hire for key positions within the organization. They need to put their egos aside and do what’s right for the organization. They owe that much to their fan base.

Since the worst divorce in all of sports between head coach Jimmy Johnson and team owner Jerry Jones, the Cowboys only have five playoff wins. Egos played a huge roll in the divorce, as neither were able to set aside their differences. Champagne bottles have remained in the wine cellar for 28 years since their last championship victory. We could dive deeper into the reasons Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson parted ways, but that would be a story for another day.

Jimmy left in 1995. The Cowboys won the Super Bowl the following year with head coach Barry Switzer. But it was Jimmy’s talent that allowed them to win their fifth Super Bowl. Since then, the Cowboys have hired one head coach after another looking for the secret recipe to winning a championship. Five other head coaches have come and gone including a coaching legend in Bill Parcells. The Cowboy fan base thought Parcells would be the answer since he had won multiple Super Bowls and was a proven winner.

After being let go by Jerry Jones, the greatest departing quote ever heard came from Parcells when he made the following comment at his final press conference: “They want me to cook the dinner, but I can’t shop for the groceries.” What a great analogy, a shot directly at Jerry Jones for his controlling and meddling of football operations. This is why the Cowboys need to hire a true general manager.

As Cowboy fans, I think we are destined for failure as long as the Jones family is in charge. In 2008, in one of the last conversations I had with my dad, he said Jerry Jones would be the demise of the Dallas Cowboys due to his controlling nature as an owner. Sixteen years later, he’s been right so far.

The Cowboys have had great success in the regular season over the years, but for Dallas fans that’s not good enough. Their recent three straight 12-4 seasons is not good enough. Most NFL organizations would be shouting from the roof tops with that kind of regular season success. But when it comes to the Dallas Cowboys, they are judged on winning Super Bowls, not just divisional titles.

We’re still waiting … and hoping.

Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com

Anyone who knows my marginal academic ability is aware that there are many things my simple mind does not understand. But during Super Bowl week, the floodgates seem to open.

To wit –

I don’t understand why anybody who cares about football would go to a Super Bowl party. If you arrive at someone’s house and they can’t name both of the starting quarterbacks, get out of there as fast as you can. The guacamole dip can be someone’s problem.

I don’t understand why people don’t realize that the famous Jackie Smith dropped pass in the end zone wasn’t at the end of the Dallas-Pittsburgh Super Bowl. It wasn’t even in the fourth quarter. The former Northwestern State tight end has taken way too much grief over a play that happened in the third quarter.

I don’t understand why the Doug Williams/how-long-have-you-been-a-black-quarterback story keeps getting brought up. Mainly because it isn’t true. That’s not at all what was said by the reporter (now deceased) who once worked in North Louisiana, but you wouldn’t know it from all of the stories that keep getting brought up about how inane the questions can get during Super Bowl week.

I don’t understand why I can recite the sites of almost every Super Bowl, but I do. It’s a sickness, I realize. But what I really don’t understand is why I can remember the first 50 like they were yesterday, but the last seven are a little iffy.

I don’t understand why such a big deal is made about the halftime show. Somebody please get Up With People (1980, played at the Rose Bowl … told you!) on the horn and really shake things up.

I don’t understand the movement to make the day after the Super Bowl some kind of national holiday. Are you kidding me? Just because you had too many lemon pepper Buffalo wings or spinach dip, you think that is a valid reason to sleep in on a Monday?

I don’t understand the consternation over the Taylor Swift cutaway shots during the game. Until about a year ago, I wouldn’t have known Taylor Swift if she hit me in the face with a Grammy. And I still can’t name a single song of hers, but I do get that the young lady is more than a little bit popular. Chill out people; it’s three seconds before we cut back to Tony Romo. We should be thankful for the break.

I don’t understand why we need a seven-hour pregame show on CBS. You mean six hours wasn’t enough? That’s enough time to do a four-minute feature on every player dressed out for the game, including the long snappers.

I don’t understand – I truly don’t – why and when the Super Bowl became such a big deal. Somewhere along the line, probably in the mid-1990s, it stopped being just a football game. Suddenly, we starting having Michael Jackson at halftime and over-the-top production values both at the game and on the broadcast. I find it to be an interesting event, and certainly worth a watch, but far too grandiose for its own good. It doesn’t resemble itself anymore.

I don’t understand how I could take San Francisco in this game, assuming Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes doesn’t break his leg falling off the bus at the stadium. And even then, the Chiefs might still be the choice. The 49ers have a lot, but you know what they don’t have? The guy wearing the red No. 15 jersey with the helmet that doesn’t seem to fit correctly on his head.

That I do understand. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

Growing up in the country, there were sights and sounds I became accustomed to never thinking these would ever fade from the landscape. There were birds we took for granted, birds that have seemed to fade away over the years.

One is the shrike, or butcher-bird as we called them. They’re colored a lot like our mockingbirds but have totally different habits. Mockingbirds feed on insects, seeds and berries. Shrike feed on lizards, frogs and small rodents they catch with their hooked beaks and sometimes hang what they catch on the barbs of a fence to enjoy later. I have not seen one of these birds in years.

Another is the meadow lark, a bird we knew as field lark. They sported a coat of mottled brown with a distinct golden chest marked by a black vee over the gold. They spend their time feeding on insects in fields and like to sit on fence posts with their distinctive whistle call. Again, this is another bird that has escaped my sight for the past several years.

Another bird has all but disappeared. I’d love to be able to see a shrike or a meadow lark but I’d be super thrilled if I was out for a walk and heard the distinctive clear ringing “Bob WHITE” of a bobwhite quail.

These game birds enjoyed decades of popularity as species to hunt and provide some of the best eating of any wild game. Folks fed their pointers and setters all year long for the chance to see these special dogs work for a month when their noses were filled with scent of a covey of quail.

Few sights in the outdoors can rival a bird dog running, sniffing the air and then suddenly come to a complete halt, frozen in one position where the covey is located. Nothing is more thrilling than to walk up behind the dogs on point, step forward and the covey explodes from underfoot, causing heart palpitations to increase and giving you about two seconds to find one in your shotgun sight.

I mentioned quail problems on my Facebook page as my topic for my radio program this week and the responses from those who read it were instantaneous. So many comments were like mine; they had not heard or seen a quail in years and sorely missed hearing and seeing them. Others pointed toward loss of habitat, predators and fire ants as being the source of the problem.

Austin Klais is Conservation Delivery Coordinator for the Mississippi Valley Joint Venture with the focus on enlisting property owner’s involvement in attempting to bring back quail to areas where they formerly lived.

“Quail have been hit by so many different directions. Predators and fire ants are problems for sure but the main thing that will help their numbers increase is habitat management,” said Klais.

“The purpose of our Arkansas-Louisiana Open Pine Landscape Restoration program is to enlist property owners to enroll in the program to enhance habitat and as a result to help quail have everything they need to survive.”

Property owners who enlist in the program will be involved in putting in fire breaks, have controlled burns to remove undergrowth and undesirable trees such as sweet gum and elm.

We asked Klais how long after enlisting in the program and following guidelines before positive results can be expected.

“Usually after thinning and the first burn, we have been successful in quail showing up on the property. We’ve seen quail show up we didn’t know were there,” he said.

To learn more and to enlist your property in the program, contact your local National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) office. Deadline for signing up is February 16.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

On Sunday, January 12, 1969, the editorial cartoon in The State, the daily newspaper from Columbia, S.C., was of a young colt smiling and stomping on a jet that was grounded and broken in two.

Both the colt and the airliner had on little helmets with the logos of the teams they were representing.

That’s how most people figured that day’s Super Bowl III would end, with Baltimore’s Colts of the NFL beating New York’s Jets of the AFL by five or six touchdowns — although the official betting line was 18.

Of course, cocky 25-year-old Joe Namath and the Jets beat Baltimore, 16-7, in Miami. Baltimore’s quarterbacks played a bigger role than Namath: Earl Morrall and Johnny U. combined for four interceptions, two in the end zone and one at the goal line.

The great defensive lineman Fred Miller of Homer, LSU and the Colts, passed away at 82 last February and said until the end that it was that loss to the Jets that troubled him the most, made him angry whenever he thought about it.

I remember it because it was Super Bowl I to me, the first Super Bowl that activates any memory. My pre-10-year-old brain had not been able to register Green Bay’s sweep of Super Bowls I and II.

It was a big year for a kid in a Carolina farming town of 750 to begin realizing that the world expanded beyond Myrtle Beach and Columbia. New York was, I figured, the only team that got to win titles: the Jets won, the Mets beat Baltimore, and the Knicks beat the Los Angeles Lakers that year. 

Two more things about 1969. That Super Bowl III lit some sort of sports fire in me, expanded everything. The Baltimore Orioles and their Arkansas third baseman, Brooks Robinson, became my baseball team, and the Birds being upset by the Miracle Mets that October taught me at an early age a bit about love and loss.

The other thing: Willis Reed from Lincoln Parish, who passed away in March of last year at 80, was a bad, bad man (in a good, good way). The former Grambling star limped onto the court before what many call the Greatest Game 7 Ever Played in NBA history, and his inspiring return from injury was the shot the Knicks needed to demolish the visiting Lakers that day to win the title in Madison Square Garden, back when the Garden was Eden. That scene was probably a lot more dynamic in person than on our little black-and-while Sylvania. Or was it a Philco …?

Sports matter.

If you are a sports fan and, like me, nearing the time when Medicare and Social Security are things your friends are reminding you to familiarize yourself with, you can remember when you could recite every Super Bowl matchup, along with the score and where it was played. 

I can’t do that anymore. (New Orleans 31, Indianapolis 17 in Miami, 2010, is an exception.)

Used to, the game was the thing. It was actually a really big deal. Halftime shows for Super Bowls I and II were Grambling’s “World Famed Tiger Marching Band,” a bad, bad band (in a good, good way). Today, halftime is an “extravaganza,” the commercials are more anticipated than the contest, and the pregame show is longer than the game. Today it’s Super Bowl parties and prop bets.

Which is fine. Things change. And they needed to. Fred Miller and Willis Reed were the best at what they did, and they had off-season jobs. 

Still fun to remember, though. 

Last year, Kansas City beat Philadelphia, 38-35. Great game (I think; had to look it up to remember. Insert confused-face emoji here.) Sunday in Las Vegas, San Francisco is a two-point favorite over Kansas City, an organization playing it its fourth Super Bowl in five seasons. 

This bureau will pull for KC because L’Jarius Sneed of Minden and Louisiana Tech plays cornerback for them. If he plays as he has all season, maybe he’ll give us something fun to remember. No matter what, it’s a better bet we’ll be talking about either halftime or a commercial.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

After what we have gone through weather-wise over the past two weeks, I might have an inkling of why all this has come to be.

Could it be something called El Nino or La Nina? I don’t have a clue what these weather phenomena is all about but I’m searching for something – anything – to explain why we here in the south have taken such a beating from Mother Nature.

It all started last summer. As April showers brought May flowers, the clouds which up to then had been friendly, blessed us with sufficient rains to get things going. Tomatoes were up and growing crimson and plump, purple hull peas were sprouting and we could hardly wait to pick a mess, cook a pot of them and serve them up with a pone of homemade cornbread and slices of those beautiful tomatoes.

Then, just like that, Mother Nature shut off the spigot. Days turned into weeks that turned into months without rain. We watched our ponds slowly shrink in size until all that was left was dry cracks as the pond that was once home to crawfish and turtles and frogs and minnows. Cows in the pasture would walk by, give what was once their water hole a longing look, swish tails at horseflies and sadly walk away.

We had a neighborhood red tailed hawk that spent much of the day on the power line overlooking the pond, looking for a morsel. As the pond disappeared, so did the hawk. Why hang around to sit and look at cracked ground?

Finally, the skies became more friendly and gave us a few showers. The pond bottom became a puddle; dry cracks thirstily lapping up the scant few gallons of precious liquid.

Things started looking up somewhat in November and December giving us a false hope that whatever Mother Nature had against us was beginning to wane just a bit.

Then came January. We welcomed the New Year clinging to the hope that finally things would start to settle out and return to a semblance of normalcy. The weatherman began talking about an event due the middle of the month that caused us a bit of concern. An artic front was due around January 14 with the forecast of not only frigid temperatures but with the possibility of frozen precipitation.

No problem, we were duped into thinking. It’s January and a little snow might provide a bit of excitement and would probably be gone the next day. Boy was that a misnomer. We went to bed Sunday night with falling temperatures and by daybreak Monday, we were wrapped up with snow, sleet and ice with a temperature in the 20s and heading south.

We became prisoners to the elements; there was no way we could leave the house and that became a growing concern as I watched the level in my jug of milk sink lower and lower. We were down to eating the last end pieces of the remaining loaf of bread. The heating unit never seemed to shut off and take a breath before kicking on again. I might have to float a loan to pay my utility bill.

Finally, things thawed enough to drive the road to the grocery store to replenish the milk and bread. By week’s end, we could at least function a bit better. Things looking much better, right?

Forecast for last week said otherwise. All the rain we missed last summer was dumped on us all at one time with heavy rain all week long.

I found a statement online that says it better than I can.

“It’s like Mother Nature is mad and keeps storming out, then comes back yelling, ‘And one more thing’!”

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

(Editor’s note: One of prop bets for Super Bowl LVIII [or 58 if you’re tired of Roman numerals, which we don’t use except at Super Bowl time because we are not Roman, DUUH! ] is whether Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce will propose to superpower Taylor Swift, who has recently been classified as her own planet, displacing Pluto, on the field. As of Tuesday, odds were long on Super Love Sunday: to wager on “no proposal,” you’d have to bet $2,200 and, if there were no proposal, you’d win $100 and get your $2,200 back. Betting-wise, not a great proposal.)

Sunday’s two NFL conference championship games were examples of why it would be fun for coaches to interview journalists now and then, instead of always the other way around. 

Because first, the games were shining examples of why sports are the only true reality television.

Baltimore had the best running game in the NFL in the regular season, rushed for 229 yards in a 34-10 route of Houston Jan. 20 in the AFC Divisional round — and ran the ball only 16 times in a 17-10 loss to Kansas City in the AFC title game. The Ravens running backs rushed just six times. The Ravens defense held Kansas City and Patrick Mahomes scoreless in the third quarter, gave up just 17 points, but did not even really try to run, just expected quarterback Lamar Jackson to be Superman and/or silver-armed Tom Brady, so did NOT do “what brung ’em,” and lost. 

Detroit pretty much DID do what brung ’em, but they lost too, 34-31 in San Francisco. Dan Campbell, a big man who in three years as head coach has turned Detroit’s franchise around and made them winners for the first time since Moses was cleaning Red Sea slime off his sandals, has gambled since he took over the team, running and gunning on fourth down, rolling the dice, all that sort of thing. Playing with a reckless, carefree confidence. Those results paid off — until they didn’t Sunday, when ill-timed fourth-down decisions in a game with No Tomorrow didn’t go as Campbell and Detroit and their long-suffering fans had hoped. 

“Part of the gig,” Campbell said afterward, having been around long enough to know you win some, you lose some, you get praised for some, you get criticized for some, but you dress out for all of them. He didn’t read the room right Sunday, but you’ve got to love the guy.

This is what might have happened had Campbell gone to the press box 45 minutes after the game and had a press conference with the writers, tables turned, concerning several stories and TV reports that all those critical failures to convert fourth downs contributed to Detroit’s loss, which they did. Same as they’d have contributed to a win had they succeeded.

Coach: “So here’s the lede you wrote: ‘Four chances. Four chances on fourth down for Detroit to show the football world what it’s made of. The Lions blew them all.’ You start a sentence with a NUMERAL and end a sentence with a PREPOSITION?! Where did you learn grammar, K-Mart?”

Writer: “I got your ‘starting a sentence with a number’ right here. How about ‘Four score and seven years ago.’ Sound familiar? How about this?: ‘Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made OF.’ It’s only one of the most famous nursery rhymes ever and has been around 10 times longer than since Detroit last won a playoff game.”

Coach, to another writer: “You start a story with ‘It,’ the ultimate in lazy. You wrote, ‘It will go down as one of the great blunders in NFL Championship history.’ As in, ‘I can’t think of how to describe ‘it’ right off the bat so I’ll just say ‘it’ and explain later. Hopefully.’ Pitiful.”

Writer: “Really? REALLY? ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ If it’s good enough for Chuck Dickens, it’s good enough for me. I almost went with ‘Call me Ishmael,’ ‘Ishmael’ being Arabic for ‘Guy Who Should Have Taken The Field Goal.’”

Coach: “You said our second-half defense was a ‘colander.’ Did you mean ‘sieve’? The phrase is ‘a sieve-like defense,’ not a ‘colander’ defense.”

Writer: “Sieve. Colander. Sling blade. Kaiser blade. Potato. PoTAHto. You’re nit-pickin’ now! Tell me, when’s the last time you wrote on deadline? The next time will be the first time, that’s when. You make a B+ on a freshman theme or win an award from the Optimist Club for an essay and think you’re Grantland Rice. I’m done here: I still have to write a column and a sidebar…”

Coach: “Well why not try for something lighter, something more optimistic, something like, ‘It was the best of times, it was the could-have-been-a-little-better of times…’”

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

Ruston’s Jeff Perot was deer hunting in Richland Parish on December 28. What caliber was he toting? He wasn’t carrying a rifle; he was armed with his camera as he has contracted with a landowner to spend time on his land and photograph as many deer as he can to give the owner an idea of just what he has on his 7,200 acres.

Perot is an architect by profession but he is also one of this area’s most notable wildlife and nature photographers. He sums up what he does…”I DRAW pictures as an architect and TAKE pictures as a photographer,’ he quipped.

Perot has shared some of his outstanding photos on Facebook and especially some of the deer he’s photographed on his Richland Parish project. Perot’s ability to take a photo that just grabs you when you see it confirms his expertise at the craft. He shares photos of not only deer doing what deer do in the wild but also of turkeys, ducks and herons and egrets and a variety of other creatures. He shared with me one of the most unusual finds he has ever had on his outdoor photographic jaunts.

“I have walked over just about every acre of this plot in Richland Parish but on the morning of December 28, I found something that made me stop and first thank the Lord for giving me the opportunity to find what I found,” Perot began.

“While walking through some tall grass in the woods on the property, I saw something that caused me to pause. There were bones of a deer, laid out in a manner like the animal had just laid down and died. There was no evidence that a coyote had killed it or rodents had gnawed it because everything was laid out in order,” he said.

He saw what he thought were bones from the deer’s rib cage sticking up out of the grass. Walking closer, Perot was looking at something that he at first couldn’t believe.

“Upon closer examination, what I was looking at sticking up out of the grass were antlers the likes I had never seen. Realizing what I was looking at, I didn’t pick it up immediately before thanking God for giving me the opportunity to stumble upon something like that,’ he said.

When he reached to pick up the antlers attached to the top half of a skull, Perot was in total shock. He held in his hand the rack of a buck that almost defied description.

“I got to counting points and ended up with 25 on a non-typical rack. The antlers were in good shape, not starting to deteriorate but faded somewhat and having lost most of their natural color after it is believed the deer had died two years ago,” he continued.

Perot took the rack to Cecil Reddick, a Buckmaster official scorer living in the area who put the tape on the rack and came up with 244 5/8 inches of mass and the jawbone revealed the buck was only 4 ½ years old.

In sharing his find with the property owner, Perot learned that this was a mystery buck; nobody had ever reported seeing it nor had photos of the deer. It’s a mystery that will likely go unsolved because there was nothing left of the carcass to indicate why it died.

What are Perot’s plans for his unusual find?

“I’m going to see if the rack can be preserved and maybe made into a mount to have it look like it did before it died. Right now, all I have is the top half of the skull to which the antlers are attached. I’m in no hurry and want to explore all possibilities as to how to preserve it,” he said.

Perot is back at work in his office drawing pictures as an architect. However, he’ll probably never forget the photograph in his excitement he forgot to take when he found the remains of a mystery buck lying in grass in Richland Parish.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

After reading of Jack Burke Jr.’s death last week at age 100, I thought about a day in October of 2018 when I got to spend a few hours with the man himself at the Champions Golf Club.

My friend, Tommy Wertz, drove me to Houston and introduced me to Burke, touting my credentials as a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Burke, suitably, was not so impressed, which fit his crotchety yet lovable personality. Nonetheless, he agreed to sit down for about an hour visit in his office, and he then surprisingly joined Tommy and me at lunch in the club’s dining room.

Burke was revered at Champions Club. He was a two-time major champion. He won the 2004 Bob Jones Award, the USGA’s highest honor that goes to an individual who demonstrates the spirit and sportsmanship of the award’s namesake. He owned 16 PGA Tour victories. He was also a co-founder of Champions Golf Club with fellow Texan Jimmy Demaret in 1957 – a year after he won both of his major championships. In 1956, he won both the Masters Tournament, rallying from eight strokes back, and the PGA Championship in a match-play format, defeating Ted Kroll 3 and 2.

He told me of a teacher who made an impression on him as a youth. It was a Father Higgins of St. Thomas High School, a Houston Catholic school founded in 1900 by a few priests from the Congregation of St. Basil. As a teacher might do, Burke, who mentored major champions Hal Sutton, Phil Mickelson, Ben Crenshaw and Steve Elkington, said his teacher wrote “50” on an erase board and wrote “51” on another.

“’If you’ve got this much,” Father Higgins said to our class, “pointing to the 50, ‘never spend this much (pointing to 51).’  I learned first things first from Father Higgins.”

Burke’s disciple Sutton, a Shreveport native and 2009 Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer, lives in Houston and operates a golf academy there. “I remember when Hal was an amateur,” said Burke, “and he wanted to know about the pro circuit and what it was like. He was standing on a ledge there and I kind of pushed him and he was balancing himself. I said, ‘That’s what it’s like; you feel like you’re on the edge of a cliff all the time and somebody’s about to push you off.”

When Sutton was named the USA team captain for the 2004 Ryder Cup, he quickly persuaded Burke to serve as assistant captain. Speaking to Golf Channel after Burke’s passing last week, Sutton called him “a protector of golf.”

Burke was born into the game since his father, Jack Sr. was the teaching pro at River Oaks Country Club in Houston.   

“I don’t ever remember not being in golf,” he said. “I shot a 69 when I was 12. I came up in the Black caddie yard because I wasn’t a member of the club. My dad was an employee. I was shooting dice at 9.”

A combat instructor in the Marine Corps, he had a martial arts degree and taught that at Camp Pendleton. “The first weapon I picked up was in the Marine Corps,” he said. “There were no guns in our house.”     

His life was about golf and he loved talking about it. He reminded me at times of eccentric rancher and golf instructor Johnny Crawford (Robert Duvall) in the movie “Seven Days in Utopia.”

“You learn a lot playing golf,” Burke said. “You learn how to create. Timing, tempo, tension and trust – you trust your swing. You don’t try to control it or guide it. You don’t try to show somebody how good you are. If you do, you’re just pretty stupid. It’s about balance and timing. Everything is about balance and timing. Surgery is about balance and timing.”

On his favorite golf hole: “My favorite hole? The one I’m on. I don’t have favorites.”

On the best golfer ever: “I don’t know any that was the best. They might have been the best that day. It just varies. Good goes back and forth.”     

On caddies: “I can take a target and judge distance wherever I am. I can see that green down there, and I know what it’d take to carry over there. I can tell you the club. I don’t need a caddie. I tip caddies heavily if they’re never on the green with me, and I keep ’em two club lengths from me.” 

On how he’d like to be remembered: “Remembered?  I’m not gonna be remembered, and neither are you.”

There aren’t many who can disarm you and leave you laughing or feeling the wiser for it. Jack Burke Jr. was one such man, and, yes, Mr. Burke, I am remembering you for that. 

Bob Tompkins enjoyed a 43-year newspaper career as an award-winning writer and editor, serving the last 39 years at the Town Talk in Alexandria ending in 2015. He is a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame as a 2016 winner of the LSWA’s Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism. An Alexandria resident, Tompkins is a contributing columnist sharing his talents weekly with Rapides Parish Journal readers.

 JOURNAL SPORTS 

It was a very good week for Shreveport native Sam Burns on the PGA Tour, until the last two holes of Sunday’s The American Express tournament in LaQuinta, Calif.

Burns had a sensational week, including a professional career-low round of 61, and was tied for the lead at 29-under par with Alabama amateur Nick Dunlap on the 17^th tee.

But Burns’ next two tee shots, on the par-3 17^th and the par-4 18^th, both found the water. He double-bogeyed each hole while Dunlap finished with a pair of pars and became only the seventh amateur since World War II (1945) and the first since Phil Mickelson in 1991 to win a PGA Tour event.

For Burns, a Calvary Baptist alumnus who was an All-American and the college Player of the Year at LSU, the disastrous 43-minute span was the difference in the $1.5 million first prize and a $311,000 payout for his tie for sixth place after a closing 71, one under par.

It was the 28^th top 10 finish for Burns in his PGA Tour career, in his second start in 2024. He was 33^rd at 18 under in The Sentry in early January.

His 61 came on the Nicklaus Tournament Course at the PGA West in Friday’s second round. The tournament uses three courses until a 54-hole cut after Saturday’s play, then those remaining all play the Pete Dye Stadium Course, where Burns shot a third-round 65 Saturday – parring both 17 and 18.

Burns, Dunlap and Justin Thomas played in the final group Sunday. Thomas dipped from contention but made a late move to card a 27-under. The threesome was obviously friendly – before the tournament began, Thomas used his social media to share a photo of Burns with a “R-T-R” carving into the side of his scalp, paying off a bet on last fall’s LSU-Alabama football game.

While Thomas and Dunlap were long-established pals, Burns was welcoming in Sunday’s round, as Dunlap shared in his comments to The Golf Channel moments after his win – after Burns was first to congratulate him.

“(The emotions) were nothing like I have ever felt. It is so cool,” said Dunlap. “I told Sam numerous times (during the round), it is so cool to be out here and experience this as an amateur.”

Burns, who now lives in Choudrant at Squire Creek Country Club, was bidding for his sixth PGA Tour win, and the first in 10 months.

Meanwhile, five hours across the Pacific Ocean, Shreveporter David Toms had a strong week on the PGA Champions Tour, finishing fourth in the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai in Kona, Hawaii.

Toms closed with a 65, a seven-under round for a three-round 17-under total. Steven Alker won at 25-under.

It was another impressive outing for Toms, who had the clinching putt in December as the United States team rallied for a win over the International Team (221-219 points) with Europe finishing third in the first World Champions Cup competition. His two-putt on the 18^th clinched the outcome for the USA on Dec. 10.

Is it time?

That’s got to be one of the hardest decisions a professional athlete has to make. 

Ryan Harrison knew last January. 

After 16 years playing professional tennis, the Shreveport native knew he had a decision to make. It had been a couple of years since he was able to play on the level he knew he could, so he decided to give it one more year. 

“Basically, I said I was going to put all of my resources into last year’s season,” Harrison explained on a recent phone call from his home in Florida.

Putting all of his resources together meant trying to get through a season on the ATP Tour injury-free, which is something Harrison had been battling throughout his career. It was a career that began at the young age of 15, when the phenom from the courts at Pierremont Oaks played in his first ATP tournament at the 2008 Houston Open.

After battling through the qualifying to make it into the main draw, Harrison won his first-round match but fell to James Blake, one of America’s top men’s players at the time, in the second round. To this day, he remembers the words Blake shared with him when they shook hands at the net.

“I’ll never forget it,” Harrison recalls. “He said, ‘You’re gonna have a great, long career. Enjoy it.’ I didn’t understand the magnitude of those words at that point.”

At that point, Harrison was just a young kid getting to do what he always wanted to do – play professional tennis. 

“That was the start,” he says. “It was lights on.”

The lights were on. And they were bright.

As Andre Agassi was closing out his Hall of Fame career, Harrison was the one expected to carry the mantel as the next great American men’s tennis player. After all, when he won his first round in the Houston Open, Harrison had become the youngest player to win an ATP Tour debut since Raphael Nadal in 2002.

Imagine carrying that load on your shoulders when you’re not even old enough to get into an R-rated movie.

While success would follow, so would injuries.

By 2017, Harrison had cracked the Top 40 in singles and reached a career-high No. 16 doubles ranking after winning the French Open with Michael Venus. That was also the year he won the Memphis Open – a special victory because that is where he had watched his first professional match at the age of 7.

He also helped the United States make it to the semifinals of the Davis Cup twice (in 2012 and 2018) and represented America at the 2012 London Olympics.

The expectations took their toll. 

“What you don’t realize back then is that it’s impossible to get there without peaks and valleys,” says Harrison. “I tried to meet those expectations, but at times I thought they were unfair.”

For a young kid, they were. 

A fiery competitor who, admittedly, wore his heart on his sleeve, Harrison had to battle more than just injuries. More painful was when the media misread his competitive edge as a selfish attitude on the court.

It was that competitive edge that led to Harrison’s success on the ATP Tour. And it was that competitive edge that wanted to give it one more year. 

After a couple of setbacks in February – when his back acted up and kept him out of competition for a couple of weeks – Harrison battled back.

“Three different times last year, I’d spend four to six weeks getting in shape, but my body wouldn’t hold up,” he says. “By the summer, I had pushed the gas pedal as long as I could.”

It was time.

The realization hit Harrison as he stood on the court at this past U.S. Open as he and Danielle Collins were playing mixed doubles. Right before match point, the youngster who grew up on the courts at Pierremont Oaks – the one who always wanted to “represent my country, my community, my family, and Shreveport” — took a moment and looked at the crowd. 

“I knew at that moment that it was time,” he says. “And what a fun environment to have that moment.”

One year after he decided to give it one more season, Harrison announced his retirement in an Instagram post on Jan. 9 at the age of 31.

But he’s not finished giving everything he has to the game of tennis. 

In addition to running the Harrison Tennis Performance Academy in Bradenton, Fla., with his father Pat, Ryan Harrison is looking into a career as a television commentator.

“May main goal now is I want to do everything I possibly can for as many people as I can in the game of tennis,” he says.

James Blake was right when he said Ryan Harrison would have a great, long career in tennis.

As an outdoor writer, my paths cross with interesting people. Some are adept at fishing; some at hunting; some that are just flat-out interesting.

A couple of years ago, I met such a person in Anna Ribbeck. She lives in Baton Rouge, works at the LSU Ag Center and just received her graduate degree in plant science, including her thesis on invasive aquatic plants. 

There are lots of folks who have done what she’s done scholastically, but it’s here where Anna Ribbeck sets herself apart from others, especially young attractive women. Meet Anna the Archer, someone who got hooked on archery and is carrying her knowledge and expertise to a high level.

Introduced to archery at the beginning of her years as a student at LSU, she is accumulating a reputation, not only as being deadly on the archery target range but in carrying it another step. She is a serious bow hunter, having already taken several deer with her bow.

From hunting deer, she became interested in using her bow to try to put a dent in the burgeoning population of nutria, the orange-toothed rodents that are decimating the coastline habitat by uprooting and foraging on the valuable plants that hold the marshland together.

Upon learning that she would introduce women to archery at the Claiborne Parish Library a couple of years ago to present a seminar, I contacted her for material for my columns and for my radio program.

“I want to educate the public, especially women, on archery,” she told me then. “I do a lot of You Tube videos on social media under the name, Anna the Archer and I visit bow shops to teach women about archery.  I also participate in competitive archery and that has not only been lots of fun, but getting to hang out with others in the sport has been a big help in developing my skills and my love for the sport.”

Her love for the sport has led to something else that may seem like something females would have little interest in, alligator hunting. She is now a vital part of the popular television series, Swamp People, aired every Thursday night at 7 o’clock on the History Channel.

“To get to do this with these well-known alligator hunters, like the star of the show, Troy Landry, and to do it with my bow is like nothing else,” Ribbeck said.

She is a member of an all-girl team featured in the show. Her partner, Ashley Jones, joins her to form the Double A team.

“I’ve lost count of how many alligators Ashley and I have taken. It’s in the hundreds, I’m sure,” she added.         

Ribbeck is also involved in another venture that is featured on the show. Landry assisted her in starting the Swamp Mysteries portion of the show where she chases down and dispatches feral pigs with her bow. 

“We have so many hogs on the landscape that are harming the environment down here, much like you have in north Louisiana. We go after them with bows, with guns and even hunting them from helicopters,” she said.

I have had the privilege of interviewing a wide variety of individuals over the years but have found few as interesting as Anna the Archer. 

Visit her site on Facebook, Anna the Archer, for a veritable plethora of stories, photos and video clips of her chasing nutria, alligators and feral hogs. Mark your calendar to watch her in action Thursday nights at 7 on the History Channel. You won’t be disappointed.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

It was one of those NFL playoff weekends that suggested someone put another log on the sideline bonfire.

The National Frozen League.

Consider the piercing minus-4 degrees in Kansas City Saturday afternoon when the Chiefs beat Miami, 27-7, easily a record for the coldest game at Arrowhead Stadium. The hard part was the 25 miles-per-hour wind gusts that equated to a tear-inducing minus-27.

A day at the beach compared to Sunday afternoon in Buffalo, where the Wild Card Round matchup between the Bills and the Pittsburgh Steelers was delayed until Monday because of high winds and blinding snow. 

“When I heard they were delaying it I told somebody that sets a bad precedent,” said Bo Harris, who starred at Captain Shreve and LSU before playing eight years for Cincinnati, including a start in Super Bowl XVI in 1982, a 26-21 loss to San Francisco inside the Pontiac Silverdome (while outside, a blizzard semi-paralyzed Detroit). 

“Hours later I saw what was happening in Buffalo and had to call the guy back and say, ‘Check that,’” Harris said with a laugh. “My mind wasn’t understanding what was happening.”

What was happening was you couldn’t see the field. Visibility near zero. The team even hired fans to shovel snow for $20 an hour Sunday to help clear the stadium. The online video of Buffalo crazies doing just that is as fun to watch as the game was, won by the Bills, 31-17, in a clear but cold Highmark Stadium.

Kyle Williams watched that game from the comfort of his couch in Lincoln Parish, six seasons removed from a 13-year career playing defensive tackle in Buffalo after four years starting for Ruston High (he was a hard-to-bring-down running back as a freshman!) and after helping the Tigers win a national championship at LSU. Grew up hot, but figured out quickly that life in the National Football League can be a cold business. 

“In Cleveland my rookie year, during warmups it looked like just a normal winter day game,” said Williams, a father of five who helped coach Ruston High to a state football championship this fall in his semi-retirement. “Field was green … perfect. Twenty minutes later we come back and the whole field is snow.”

Then there was December 23, 2007, “the coldest I’ve ever been,” he said. Final regular season game, the Giants needing to win to get into the playoffs, New York at Buffalo, and it’s a first-half downpour, a storm front off Lake Erie. “After halftime, it drops down to 19 degrees and the wind starts blowing. It got colder the more we kept trying to hang on to (Ahmad) Bradshaw (151 yards rushing) and (Brandon) Jacobs (143 yards). We never got going.”

The Giants won, 38-21, and went on to upset New England in the ‘Helmet Catch’ Super Bowl. Good news?: Williams, a Class of 2022 Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer, lived to play another day.

“You can never really prepare, gear-wise, for the cold,” said the sneaky funny Williams, a master of understatement. “You’ve got Spandex pants, a Spandex jersey, cotton socks, and athletic shoes. Your attire’s not covering all your parts that need covering.”

There’s chicken broth on the sidelines, and those welcoming and lush heated benches thank the good Lord, but it’s a “never ending tango,” Williams testifies, of what to keep warm and just how warm to keep it, like managing your helmet’s insides so the plastic pads will stay warm and loose instead of getting too cold so they’re brittle or too hot so holes are burned in them. 

“All kinds of issues,” said Williams, recalling from the warmth of his den a time of ice and mud, a calm man with a security blanket, a man who can now go to bed at halftime if he wants. “Easy for guys in those conditions to make a mistake doing what they’re needing to do to stay warm.”

This weekend when he heard about the delay in Buffalo, he knew how bad it must be. A decade-plus of living there coached him up on how prepared Erie County is for the worst. “The world does not stop,” he said, not for any ol’ storm; businesses and road crews are ready to counteract just about anything. 

“In all my years up there, only one time did the weather affect us where we had to postpone or cancel,” he said, recalling a “wall of snow” halfway up the house he and wife Jill shared with their very young, very cold family. 

Once the county got 80 inches of snow in a 48-hour period. The Bills Emergency Alarm went off — picture the Bat Signal above Gotham — and players were hiking to the interstate to get rides on snowmobiles to the airport so the team could fly to Detroit, practice a couple of days, and play a “home game” against the New York Jets in Ford Field. Weather won, the Bills won, the Jets lost. 

If you’re in the mood to shiver, you can Google “Freezer Bowl” and watch Bo Harris and his Bengals teammates beat San Diego, 27-7, in Riverfront Stadium in January 1982 to win the AFC Championship. The temperature was between minus-8 and plus-5, but it was the wind chill — a mind-numbing minus-57 during gusts — that made it the coldest NFL game ever.

“San Diego came out during warmups with ski masks on under their helmets and defensive backs were backpedaling with their hands in their pants,” Harris said. “I looked at one of my guys and said, ‘Oh yeah. We’re winning today.’” 

Dan Fouts. Gary Johnson. Louie Kelcher. Kellen Winslow. Wes Chandler. Charlie Joiner. Chuck Muncie. San Diego had a very good team. That Sunday in Cincinnati, they had a very cold team. And the Bengals had a secret weapon.

“Vaseline and panty hose saved the day,” said Bo, who coated himself in the stuff to protect his skin, then layered up with the hose. Any port in a storm; dude had one of Cincinnati’s two sacks in the win.

Also now retired in Lincoln Parish, Petey Perot is a Natchitoches Favorite Son and former Northwestern State Demon and Philadelphia Eagle. And like Bo, he played in a chillier-than-chilly Conference Championship game.

“1980 against Dallas in the Vet,” Perot said. “Minus-17. Santa Claus had gotten beat up in the stadium the week before,” (a true story illustrating that it’s cold in Philly in more ways than one; you can look it up).

“I don’t think it ever really bothered me,” said Perot, who was 23 at the time, an age of blissful unawareness. “I didn’t think about how cold it was. I didn’t even know how cold it was when we went out there. We wore fishnet jerseys and a half shirt and didn’t even try to do anything to keep from being cold. Our deal was, we were just focused on trying to get to the Super Bowl: who cares how cold it is?”

And if he had free tickets and great seats to the same kind of game today?

“I wouldn’t go,” he said with zero hesitation, almost offended at the suggestion, a man warm and wise.

At left guard, Petey and the gang sprang Wilbert Montgomery for a 42-yard touchdown run on the Eagles’ second play from scrimmage that icy day as Philadelphia beat the Cowboys, 20-7, and made it to Super Bowl XV. The bad news? They lost to Oakland. The good news? It was in the Superdome and 72 degrees with no wind.

This Sunday at 7:15 p.m., Kansas City will visit Buffalo in one of four Division Round weekend playoff games. The expected forecast is like Houston at Baltimore at 3:30 p.m. Saturday: 16 degrees with a 15 percent chance of snow and light winds.

Like taking a candy football from a warm baby.

Contact a very toasty Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

Colby Dark is an 18-year-old first-year student at Louisiana Tech from West Monroe. Until recently, his goal in life was to become a success at construction. He wants to be a builder; that’s his college major.

However, he is putting the hammers and nails and saws and levels on the back burner for now because he’s in the process of building something else, a successful bass fishing guide business. There is a good chance for success in the guide business, and more, because of something phenomenal that happened on Caney Lake in Jackson Parish not long ago. Fishing with a partner, 19-year-old Gage Struben, Dark and his pal hit the mother lode of big bass.

The pair, fun fishing on Caney that trip, experienced something not many other bass anglers have accomplished anywhere. Fun fishing it was because they were obviously having a blast when over the course of two days, the two teens landed 10 bass that weighed 86 pounds and change.

Folks, that’s over an 8-pound average topped off with Dark’s personal best weighing 13.5 pounds and Struben’s best weighing almost 12 pounds.

I was able to chat with Colby’s dad, Randall Dark, who shared how this amazing two days on the water happened.

“The boys had been out the day before and were fishing shallow in spots they knew,” said Dark. “They didn’t have any luck fishing shallow so they decided to try another place and were just idling along using a side scan sonar when they spotted something that captivated their attention.

The sonar picked up a big school of what they believed to be large gizzard shad being followed by a gathering of big fish that were obviously interested in the shad.

“At first, they felt the big fish following the shad were probably carp but they decided to see just what they were. Casting jigs, the show was on. Between noon when the first fish was caught – not a carp but a huge bass – and 3:00, the guys brought 38 pounds of bass to the boat, including Gage’s personal best 11.8 pounder” said the proud dad.

“My son had just signed to fish the pro series this year and he had arranged for a cameraman and media guy to work with him. They decided to go back to the same area the next day to see if they could duplicate what they had done the first day.”

With the camera rolling, they second day was even better. The pair brought to the boat five bass weighing 46 pounds, 6 ounces topped off by Colby’s personal best 13.5 pounder. 

We were able to visit with Colby later that day to pick his brain a bit. He is a member of the Louisiana Tech Fishing Team and was headed for the College National Championship last weekend on Lake Tohopekaliga in Florida.

“I went to Florida to pre-fish and was able to locate some good bass, catching 30 pounds two days straight,” Colby said.

He’ll be putting his school work on the back burner for a while as he will be fishing tournaments and inviting people to go to his Facebook page and check out his Hooked Up Guide Service.

What is this teenager’s secret? “I’ve just been lucky,” he said.

In my opinion, it has taken much more than luck to produce the amazing results he has enjoyed catching big bass. The professional bass fishing world has a young fellow from West Monroe who is on a path to eventually see his name up there on the same level as the Kevin Van Dam’s of pro fishing fame.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

Over the past quarter century, the South owns college football national championships. Monday night’s Michigan-Washington title matchup was rare as a Baptist who hates bacon.

Hope our northern football-playing brothers and sisters enjoyed Monday’s scrap — hat tip to the Wolverines, a fast and fun-to-watch 34-13 winner over the Huskies — because history suggests it will be a while before such shenanigans happen again. 

In the 1998 season, trying to break free from naming a national champion by poll voting (and because the new way would mean more money for the TV schools), college football moved to a Bowl Championship Series.

The first BCS Championship game was the 1999 Fiesta Bowl.

Tennessee beat Florida State, 23-16. Rocky Top.

The second was the 2000 Sugar. 

Florida State beat Virginia Tech, 46-29. Remember how VA Tech teams were mean back then? Blocked like four kicks a game? 

The third was the 2001 Orange.

Oklahoma beat Florida State, 13-2, to finish the season undefeated in a game no one remembers — outside of the opening coin flip by beloved actor Denzel Washington (who I almost ran over in my Jeep, corner of Lake and Louisiana, years ago — another story for another time).

You can’t help but notice something about those matchups, right? All the teams, both the winners and losers, are from Southern states. (And yes, Oklahoma, our geography books say, is part of the West South Central States, along with the Ark-La-Tex. Boomer Sooner.)

Nebraska, an Official Northern State, at long last made the finals in 2002 and was summarily handed its helmet by Miami, 37-14, back when The U was still The U and Nebraska was enjoying its final days of football glory.

We will summarize here to make the point: counting Monday night’s Michigan-Washington game, there have been 26 title contests since the BCS began. Of those, 22 have been won by Southern teams. Four have been won by Northern teams: Ohio State won it all twice (in 2003 against Miami in OT, 31-24, and in 2015 against Oregon, 42-20), USC beat Oklahoma in 2005, 55-19, and Michigan beat Washington Monday night.

So the South is 22-4 in The Big Pigskin Enchilada. That overwhelming. That’s rain water against Noah. Consonants verses verbs. No mas.

Of the 26 title games since the first one in 1999, 15 have been All Southern matchups. Nine have been North vs. South, and the South has won seven of those; the North’s two wins came when Ohio State beat Miami in ’03 and USC beat the Okies in ’05. Two title games have been All North: Ohio State over Oregon in 2015 and Monday night’s scrap down in Houston.

If those illustrations aren’t enough, the following names and numbers, to me, hammer home the South’s dominance in the past quarter century.

From 1999-2006 (the BCS infancy), eight different schools won the title, and four of the eight title games were All South matchups. Of the 16 teams in those eight games, only three were non-Southern schools.

From 2007-2014 — the BCS National Championship Game series over eight seasons — Alabama won three titles, Florida won two, and Auburn/Aubrin, Florida State, and LSU won one each. You’ll find Big Foot before you’ll find a non-Southern champion during this run. (Only Ohio State twice and Oregon and Notre Dame, once each, even played for a title during those eight seasons.)

Finally, since the “College Football Playoff National Championship” began with Ohio State beating Oregon in 2015, the Buckeyes in 2021 (52-24 losers to Bama) are the only Northern school, until Monday night’s matchup, to play in the title game. The other seven games have been All The South, All The Time. A whole bunch of Bama, Clemson/Climpson, Georgia, and LSU. Over and over and over. TCU wandered in from “over Texas way” last January representing the South and played as if they were from the North, getting drubbed by 58 by Georgia. Still, they were America’s next-best opponent and the Bulldogs found them just one time zone over.

It will be no surprise when next season’s 12-team playoff is Southern flavored. Book it. And it should come as no surprise to learn, in case you didn’t realize it, that the campus of the 2024 CFP champs is in Ann Arbor, and that Ann Arbor is in … southern Michigan. Deep Southern Michigan. Almost to the state line. Figures … 

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

JOURNAL SPORTS

NATCHITOCHES –  Two versatile and acclaimed sports writers, Opelousas’ Bobby Ardoin and Ron Higgins of Baton Rouge, have been selected for the 2024 Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.

The duo will be inducted in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame June 22, LSWA president Raymond Partsch III and Hall of Fame chairman Doug Ireland announced Wednesday.

This year’s recipient of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award, to be announced today, will complete the Class of 2024.

Ardoin and Higgins began their decorated sports writing careers in the 1970s and are still producing compelling content today, having made the shift from newspaper to online publications. Ardoin, an Opelousas resident, is the backbone of St. Landry Today. Baton Rouge native and resident Higgins covers LSU for the Journal Services network, including the Shreveport-Bossier Journal and Rapides Parish Journal.

Both have written for a variety of state publications and dabbled in broadcast journalism while  covering professional, college, amateur and high school sports since their teenage years, and have amassed a wide array of honors.

Ardoin’s broad-based and impactful career is rooted in Cajun country, while Higgins has worked around the state and beyond, earning enshrinement in the Tennessee Sportswriters Hall of Fame and serving a term in 2008 as president of the Football Writers Association of America – the only Louisiana native to do so.

The DSA honor means Ardoin and Higgins will be among an elite 12-person Class of 2024 being inducted in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. They were selected from a 28-person pool of outstanding nominees for the state’s top sports journalism honor.

The Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism recipients are chosen by the 40-member Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame selection committee based on nominees’ professional accomplishments in local, state, regional and even national circles, with leadership in the LSWA as a beneficial factor and three decades of work in the profession as a requirement.  

Distinguished Service Award winners are enshrined in the Hall of Fame along with the 479 current athletes, sports journalists, coaches and administrators chosen since 1959. Just 73 leading figures in the state’s sports media have been honored with the Distinguished Service Award since its inception 41 years ago in 1982.

Ardoin and Higgins will be among the 2024 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction Class to be spotlighted in the annual Induction Ceremony on Saturday evening, June 22, at the Natchitoches Events Center. The Induction Ceremony culminates the 2024 Induction Celebration beginning two days earlier.

The Class of 2024 is headlined by a star-studded group of nine inductees from the LSHOF “competitors ballot,” led by national sports celebrities Drew Brees, Seimone Augustus and Daniel Cormier.

This year’s class also includes Grambling’s Wilbert Ellis, who becomes the second-ever recipient of the Louisiana Sports Ambassador Award. During his 43-year baseball coaching career and since, Ellis has made local, statewide and national impact not only in his sports field but also in other endeavors. A native of Baton Rouge and a 1979 LSU graduate, Higgins has written for seven newspapers, three online websites and a magazine in four states during a sports writing career that now spans six decades, and has won more than 190 state, regional and national writing awards including more than 85 first places.

Higgins won his first LSWA first place award in 1980 as a 24-year-old correspondent for the Baton Rouge Advocate with a deadline news story as the only person to talk with Greg Williams just hours after the LSU assistant coach had put head coach Bo Rein on a plane in Shreveport which flew off course and crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Higgins was honored by the National Sports Media Association as Writer of the Year in Tennessee in 2001 and Writer of the Year in Louisiana in 2015. He was a 10-time Tennessee Sportswriter of the Year and was inducted into the Tennessee Sportswriters Hall of Fame in 2011.

Higgins has covered three Super Bowls, 18 men’s Final Fours, three women’s Final Fours, three Summer Olympics, 70 bowl games including seven national championship games, one NBA Finals, 12 NBA playoff series, three NBA All-Star Games, 20 PGA Tour events, a heavyweight championship fight (Tyson-Lewis) as well as several seasons of Class AA minor league baseball, the Arena Football League, the AFL2 and four minor league pro basketball franchises.

He covers LSU for Journal publications in Shreveport and Alexandria.

It is often necessary to adjust the game plan at halftime when a football team is engaged in an important game. If the defensive backs are locked in on the receivers every play, consideration is given to a few quick-hitters into the line by the running backs. Conversely, if the defensive linemen are clogging up the middle expecting a run, it’s time to air it out to receivers.

By the same token, as deer season reaches its final weeks, it’s often necessary for hunters to adjust their game plans. Why? Because the bucks are making adjustments and if hunters don’t figure out what’s going on, they’re left wondering what the heck happened.

What happens during the latter days of hunting season after the rut is over? Bucks aren’t chasing does, unless the few that does not breed during the first estrous cycle are still available for breeding. Basically, it becomes a rather difficult game to play as the bucks, exhausted and worn down from breeding and fighting other bucks, become rather difficult to pattern. For many hunters, if they don’t get their deer early, they hang it up after the rut and head for the lake where the bunched-up crappie are more predictable. 

David Moreland, who retired from the Deer Study Leader position with LDWF several years ago, offers suggestions as to the best way to hunt bucks late in the season.

“In Area 2, northwest Louisiana, December generally marks the end of the rut. However, bucks may be looking for a few does that have not bred, but generally by mid-January, it’s over,” Moreland said.

This time of year in this part of the state, a game plan change is necessary to improve your chances at a good buck, according to Moreland.

“This is the time of year where hunting between the feeders may pay off as bucks move around looking for does. In late December, the trails through the woods leading to food plots and feeders are generally quite distinct and visible and this should be areas hunters ought to check out, determining where the deer are coming from and then locate a stand to catch the deer as they come to feed late in the evening,” Moreland added.

Another tactic that can work on tagging a late season buck, according to Moreland, is to move the feeder.

“I like to change a feeder location or hang a bucket feeder in an area where you have seen deer but have not hunted. Keep in mind that prevailing winds this time of year are generally from the north-northwest so your stand location should be in the south-southeast corner of the area. Again, hunters should stay on their stands until last light,” he added.

Moreland also suggested that hunters might want to freshen up their food plots toward season’s end.

“With bucks going back to the feeding mode after the rut, you might want to consider adding some nitrate to the grass patches and keep them attractive. Also if the weather is good; clear and cold with high pressure, plan to stay on the stand longer than normal.”

What about native brows plants? Hunters should plan to utilize what Mother Nature has already put there.

“Since many of the woody shrubs and trees lose their leaves, the focus will be on those that still have them. Blackberry, privet and honeysuckle would be three to look for since these will tolerate the cold temperatures and put out new growth on warm days. I have especially seen heavy use of honeysuckle in northwest Louisiana during late winter,” said Moreland.

Want to be on the winning team when it comes to getting a late season deer in your sight picture? Be adaptable. Change your game plan to correspond to what the deer are doing.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

Cool Old Dude and Tons of Fun guys like me went to bed at a slick 7:30 p.m. New Year’s Eve. Didn’t mean to stay up that late but had forgotten to start the grill and the dead chicken and sausages were later getting done than I had planned. 

Hate it when that happens. Especially on a holiday.

Some of us are old enough to remember when we were crazy enough to actually stay up to watch the ball drop in Times Square — “10, 9, 8… !” —  or when we would be out somewhere with other sickos (meaning other “normal young people”) waiting for midnight to ring in the New Year.

Festive and whatnot. Mainly awake.  

But I was another kind of sick this New Year’s. Something is “going around” and I hate it when that happens too because it usually gets around to me and you. Stuffy head. Ribs hurt. No energy.

On the bright side, New Year’s night I made it to 8 and to the end of Michigan’s win over Alabama. Old-school game, my opinion. Woke up in the middle of the night for bathroom duty — another elderly issue — and saw that Washington had beaten Texas in another thriller. 

“For entertainment purposes only,” the early line has No. 1 Michigan as a 4.5 favorite over No. 2 Washington in Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship game from NRG Stadium in Houston at 6:30 (I might can stay up!) on ESPN. I like Washington to cover.

So take Michigan. Because … 

As recently discussed, I can pick winners in games like Germany could pick winners in World Wars. Sleep was easy for me by the time Washington teed it up with Texas New Year’s Night because my hopes of winning the ESPN BowlFest Fantasy competition were as gone as the clouds in yesterday’s sky. An 8-0 start in mid-December was followed by a whirlwind of pitifulness, as predicted, that left me in the 50^th percentile of pickers, which included real people but also included turtles, stumps, and some fish. I couldn’t spell ‘win’ if you spotted me the “w” and the “i.”

But this predicted ineptness did not keep me from enjoying, immensely, BowlFest. My favorite bowls, strictly because of names and present company excluded (we’re looking at you, Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl, always No. 1 in our hearts), were these:

The Tony the Tiger Bowl in El Paso, because I love Sun Bowl Stadium and because, well, Frosted Flakes. Notre Dame was ggggggreat and beat Oregon State, 40-8, for the record;

The Cheeze-It Citrus Bowl because Cheeze-Its should be its own food group, and more on that another time. Tennessee beat Iowa 100-2 or something like that. The Vols might still be scoring;

The Duke’s Mayo Bowl because this advertises a Carolina staple I grew up with. West Virginia out-condimented North Carolina in this year’s bowl in Charlotte. Of course, I foolishly had the Tarheels;

The Avocados From Mexico Cure Bowl in, oddly enough, Orlando, where every other bowl game is now played. For some reason, I felt healthier after watching it;

And my favorite of all the bowls, the Pop-Tarts Bowl (from, guess where?, Orlando!), even though Kansas State beat N.C. State, 28-19, and I had (naturally) the Wolfpack. Didn’t matter because:

One of the mascots was edible. True story. The winners ate a giant Pop-Tart after the game. To the winners go the spoils. In light of this development, would you rather play in the prestigious Cotton Bowl or the Pop-Tarts Bowl? That’s what I thought;

Speaking of giants, the non-edible mascot who ran around the sidelines of picturesque Camping World Stadium most of the game showed up by being popped out of a huge toaster on the field. Yes, this is next-level mascot stuff;

The mascot tried to catch a missed field goal with a net. We’re talking about a fruit scone with a net chasing a ball;

And finally, the winning players dumped a couple of coolers filled with Pop-Tarts onto the winning coach as he made his way to midfield to shake hands with the losing and thus non-Pop-Tarts-eating coach immediately after the game. The only other thing this bowl needed was some milk.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

JOURNAL STAFF

When considering who should be the Shreveport-Bossier Journal Sportsperson of the Year for 2023, there was no shortage of strong candidates.

But Mikaylah Williams’ string of success through the year was incomparable. The LSU freshman basketball star has sustained her level of excellence from leading Parkway High School’s state championship season, through being a fine competitor for the Lady Panthers in softball and track and field, graduating at the top of her class, earning her second straight MVP award on the USA Basketball age group 3-on-3 gold medal team, and seamlessly stepping into Kim Mulkey’s starting five with the Tigers.

She was a unanimous choice of the SBJ staff for the award. The Journal’s inaugural Sportsperson of the Year capping 2022 was Shreveport native and PGA Tour star Sam Burns, who was one of several top-notch contenders for this year’s honor after earning his first spot on the USA Ryder Cup team.

Burns was joined in the top four for 2023 by Airline product Hayden Travinski, who became LSU’s biggest bat in the second half of the Tiger baseball team’s College World Series championship season; and Rodney Guin, the 16-year veteran local high school football coach who steered Calvary Baptist to an unlikely unbeaten season against a challenging non-district slate and a postseason run to a state championship triumph at the LHSAA’s Prep Classic in the Caesars Superdome.

There were even more quality nominees considered, but Williams’ consistent brilliance made her the stand-alone selection.

Parkway was unbeaten in the state in its 2022-23 basketball season as the Lady Panthers set their sights on a return trip to Marsh Madness in Hammond, and a happy return home this time around. A double-overtime 80-79 loss in the state finals to Ponchatoula ended Williams’ junior season.

It was avenged in this year’s championship game – by a blowout 80-57 margin over Ponchatoula, as Williams scored 34 points and snagged 11 rebounds. She had 23 points, 17 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals in a 61-28 semifinal rout of Barbe. The Lady Panthers hammered each of their postseason foes and finished with a 30-5 overall record.

Williams was the Non-Select Division I tournament Most Valuable Player, and she also had to be hustled back on the court after draining a 3-pointer at the halftime buzzer in the state finals to receive her All-Academic Award among the elite girls’ scholar-athletes in a presentation at intermission.

She repeated as the Louisiana Gatorade Player of the Year and claimed her second Miss Louisiana Basketball from the Louisiana Sportswriters Association. The 6-0 guard was rated as the nation’s No. 1 senior by at least three recruiting services and was named the 2023 Morgan Wooten National Player of the Year while starring in the McDonald’s High School All-America Game.

The biggest challenge for the SBJ staff was figuring out what photo to use in the graphic. During the summer, she was named the MVP at the FIBA 3×3 U18 World Cup while leading the USA to gold.

She has started all 13 games this season for LSU and is the Tigers’ second-leading scorer with a 17.2 average, topped by a program freshman-record 42 while sinking 15 of 20 shots from the floor, including five 3-pointers, Nov. 14 against Kent State. LSU (12-1) has recovered from an opening loss to then No. 20 Colorado (when Williams led the Tigers with 17 points) and is ranked seventh nationally heading into 2024 and the defense of last year’s national championship.

Williams already ranks among Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer Alana Beard as the most highly-sought girls’ basketball recruit from Shreveport-Bossier, and is on pace to rival Beard’s legendary college accomplishments at Duke and her professional success overseas and in the WNBA.

Like Beard, she subjugates her individual statistics to play whatever role her team needs, for coach Gloria Williams at Parkway and now for Mulkey on the star-studded LSU roster.

That makes her a fitting winner of this year’s Sportsperson of the Year honor – and a tough act to follow.

JOURNAL STAFF

Happy New Year! We’ll ring in 2024 happily with high hopes, wishing all the best for our Shreveport-Bossier Journal readers and our local community.

The Journal will be here in your e-mail box, on our website and on our Facebook page covering news, sports, entertainment, culture, with entertaining features while providing advice, insight,  opinions and much more.

It’s all free of charge to you without annoying pop-up ads or stories that have no local relevance.

But we won’t get started in 2024 until Tuesday morning. We’re giving our staff a holiday and will not publish on Monday, Jan. 1.

Tuesday’s edition will have plenty to read, including Ron Higgins’ insightful coverage of LSU’s bowl game against Wisconsin, and much more local news and sports content that we will bring on weekdays all year long.

Enjoy your New Year’s Eve celebrations, and New Year’s Day holiday traditions.

As deer season begins to wind down, squirrel hunters using dogs to locate and tree squirrels are gearing up for their favorite time of year. Late season deer hunters are not too keen on having to contend with barking dogs and squirrel hunters tromping through the woods. 

Squirrel hunters using dogs usually patiently wait until deer stands are vacated to have their time in the sun – or in the woods. Most, however, will have already been busy getting their favorite pups ready for the action that will last until the end of February. 

For Ruston’s George Seacrist, working with his squirrel dogs is a year-round proposition. He raises his own squirrel dogs and begins some preliminaries with pups as young as a month old while they’re still in the kennel, deciding which ones of the litter will eventually be sniffing out and treeing squirrels.

“Dogs that have the inborn desire to hunt can be detected at a really young age,” said Seacrist. “I’ll fan a squirrel tail in front of them and watch their reactions. Some have no interest while others want to reach through the kennel gate and grab it. I’ll keep my eye on those that do and start working with them right away.

“When pups are out in the yard playing, observe which ones seem to have an interest in birds or squirrels in the yard. Once you decide which of the pups seem to be alert to creatures in your yard, sniffing the ground with tails wagging, start right then working patiently with the puppy. I’ll tie a squirrel tail to a string and drag it around the yard so they become accustomed to the smell; they see it as a game and those that show promise become interested real quick. 

“When you get to the actual training, take the pup to the woods with a trained dog and let him observe how it’s done. If he’s going to make a good squirrel dog, the light will eventually come on and he’ll be able to do it on his own,” Seacrist added.

Even though a dog may learn to tree squirrels, two other possible obstacles have to be faced. Some dogs are hesitant to bark on the tree while others may be frightened by gun fire.

“Sometimes when one of my dogs trees close to me, he doesn’t bark. However, if I step back behind a big tree where he can’t see me, he’ll bark. I’ve learned that when a dog barks after treeing, he’s not barking at the squirrel; he’s barking at me and it’s his way of telling me there’s a squirrel up there and I need to come shoot it out.

“I had one dog that was gun-shy so I started out hunting her with a .22 or 20-gauge shotgun. I also purchased a tape that plays music and periodically, the music stops and a gun fires. It took awhile but eventually, the dog became accustomed to the sound of a gun shot and now, she no longer has that problem,” Seacrist continued. 

Another consideration in deciding which puppy will learn to tree squirrels is the dog’s heritage and blood line. Several species of dogs, such as the mountain cur, usually make the best squirrel dogs, but Seacrist prefers smaller breed of dogs.

“My dogs are a feist and rat terrier mix and they’ve worked out really good for me. These are smaller dogs and won’t range out as far as the larger dogs. I like a dog that will hunt close so I can stay in contact with the dog and have a better ‘read’ on him and what he’s doing,” he added.

You want good exercise? Hook up with a squirrel hunter and his dogs. I have made several hunts with Seacrist and his dogs and after a day of tromping through the woods, sprinting to the tree when the dog barks, I don’t have to be rocked to sleep that night. It’s wholesome; it’s fun and the squirrel mulligan that usually follows goes down mighty nice and easy.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

This story was originally published on September 21, 2023.

There’s something about the deer we hunt. They’re sharper than we are and the blink of an eye or a slap at a mosquito may be all it takes to cause a deer to turn tail and run.

As a result, it’s more to the hunter’s advantage to hunt from elevated positions as deer usually are looking for danger at eye level or lower. Sitting 16 feet up a tree gives the hunter an advantage and when it comes to waylaying a wily buck, we need all the advantages we can get.

When I started deer hunting years ago, there were no tree stands on the market. If you hunted from an elevated position, it meant gathering up a bunch of two-by-fours, hammer, nails and saw to construct something that would keep you above a deer’s line of vision.

Some of the first ones I constructed were not only weird looking contraptions, they were also unsafe. Switching your Red Man from one jaw to the other was often all that was needed to flip you out and send you to the ground.

Years later as climbing stands and ladder stands came on the market, these proved safer than the man-made contraptions. Because they were so heavily used, news began filtering in of accidents resulting in falling out of stands. 

Dr. Bobby Dale, a life-long hunter, is also an emergency room physician who practices medicine in his hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi. Visiting with Dr. Dale at the annual conference of the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association in Johnson City, Tenn., several years ago, we had occasion to talk about what is more likely to injure hunters while hunting. Dale noted that contrary to what many believe, it’s not the older and more fragile hunter who is more apt to be injured; it’s the strong, virile, younger guy.

“From what I’ve observed from patients I have seen in the ER where I practice, it’s the younger one more prone to suffer serious injuries while hunting. This is particularly true concerning falls from elevated deer stands. In fact,” Dale said, “I recently read a report that revealed the majority of bow hunters who fall from tree stands are in their 20s and 30s. Also, about 10 percent of these injuries are alcohol-related.

“While it is true that guys in their 50s and 60s and older have bones that are more easily broken, I don’t see nearly as many injuries from falling from a stand from this older group. It’s just a fact that the older guy is more cautious,” he added.

Dr. Dale noted that a fall, even one from just a few feet, can result in serious injury. Obviously, the further you fall, the more serious injuries become, he said.

“I’ve seen victims who fell from stands come to the ER with everything from closed head injuries, bleeding on the brain, spinal fractures with paralysis, broken arms, legs and ribs, collapsed lungs, ruptured spleens in addition to profuse external bleeding,” Dale said. 

While mishaps using home-made deer stands are more likely to result in serious injuries, manufactured stands can also cause falls if not used properly.

“Manufactured stands have to meet a safety code and the vast majority of these stands are safe when properly used. However, they still have to be secured to the tree in the proper manner to be completely safe. Climbing stands are quite safe but when care is not taken in using them, they can result in twisting or slipping when not correctly secured to the tree. The result can be disastrous,” he added.

With deer season rapidly approaching – archery season begins October 1 — make sure your tree stands are in top-notch working order and that you practice all the safety rules having to do with elevated deer stands. It takes only one moment of lapse in judgement or one misstep to make looking for a big buck the least of your concerns.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com