Jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. was atop Mystic Dan at Churchill Downs, moving in the pack of thoroughbreds, aggressively watching, and with a plan.
The pair was on the inside on the second turn, just sitting there, going with the flow of things, waiting for a spot to open.
It did.
And Mystik Dan shot through it.
He’s not overly anything for a thoroughbred except athletic and smart. And he’s plenty of those.
Suddenly the crease was there and Hernandez and Mystik Dan poured themselves through it, and when they did, things went up a notch at the Shreveport home of Wayne and Kim Smith.
That was only a few days ago — the first Saturday in May, a pretty big day in the horse racing world — and the feeling hasn’t left since the moment Kim and Wayne and two other couples, all close friends, saw with their own eyes and hearts that Mystik Dan, a sort of relative to them all, was going to make a legit run for the roses at the Kentucky Derby in Louisville.
Which he did. A photo finish champion. Winner’s Circle. Garland of roses.
Winner winner chicken dinner.
“We’re still on cloud nine at the Smith house,” Wayne said.
“The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” — and counting. Because Saturday, everything came up roses for Smith’s sister Sharilyn and her husband Brent, co-owners with a tiny group of partners of Mystik Dan, the Man and the Dan of the hour.
“Such a neat story,” said big brother Wayne. “(Sharilyn and Brent) own the mom; they bred her four years ago and now here we are, four years later, and they’ve got the winner of the 150th Kentucky Derby. Incredible.
“When I think about Brent and Sharilyn, just how humble they are and how genuine they are … they’re givers and for this to happen for them, it just makes me so proud of them and happy for them. At the end of the day, it couldn’t have happened to a better group (of owners).”
Sharilyn is a Captain Shreve High and Louisiana Tech business graduate (1989), a former Tech College of Business Distinguished Alumna of the Year and a valued member of the Dean’s Advisory Board. Wayne graduated just a few years earlier, and if his name sounds familiar, it’s because he was the Tech Basketball program’s leader in assists for more than 30 years, a four-year starter at point guard on teams that went to a pair of NCAA Tournaments and an NIT.
Those old competitive juices were flowing Saturday when Mystik Dan headed down the stretch, stride for stride with Sierra Leone and Forever Young. It doesn’t matter that the next time Wayne Smith gets on a horse will be the first time: competition is competition.
“Lot of excitement,” he said. “I thought about when we won at Lamar (in 1984) to end their (homecourt) win streak (at 80 straight) and win the (Southland Conference) tournament, and then Reunion Arena (a loss in the Regional Semi-Finals in 1985). I guess for Mystik Dan, it’s like winning the national championship.
“You can only dream of something like this happening, and when it does, you’re grateful knowing it couldn’t have happened to a better team,” he said. “The Smith Family didn’t have a lot when we were growing up; I was born June 29, 1964, and Sharilyn was born June 28, 1968. She was my birthday present back then.”
And now, little sis has given him another present. One that he can’t open, but one that can’t ever be closed, either.
Go to a baseball park on any day you choose and you’re almost always going to see something you’ve never seen before.
Like Saturday in a Conference USA game in Ruston when the Sam Houston catcher had apparently tied the game at 5-5 after he hit a ball way, way over the fence in left with two out in the eighth inning and then — was credited with only a triple, and was called out, and saw the inning end …
… because he failed to touch home plate.
A “homer” that would have tied the game ends as a triple with a mythical “ghost runner” forever stranded at third. Louisiana Tech held its 5-4 lead in the ninth to win.
The catcher is Walker Janek, by all accounts one of the best all-around dudes on the Sam Houston team and one of the best players in the college game. A junior, he’s expected to be one of the first catchers chosen in the big-league draft.
But he missed home, the only base with an extra side, five instead of four. The most critical of all your bases.
Doesn’t matter that he just barely missed it, stepping over the plate to celebrate with a waiting teammate, missing the plate’s front edge by, as replays showed, the smallest of margins.
Had he been wearing a size 13 instead of a 12-and-a-half, the game would have been tied.
Happens to the best of us.
Such a rule almost seems to go against the spirit of things. He did, after all, hit it way, WAY out. BUT …
Rules is rules. Brings to mind a phrase so familiar that it’s part of the American lexicon: “You gotta touch all the bases” or “Touch ’em all” or “Let’s touch base on this later.”
If a guy forgets to do one thing, he “forgot to touch all the bases.”
It’s the little things, especially so it seems in baseball.
If Glinda the Good Witch of the North had been there, and had this been Oz and not Ruston, maybe Janek could have tapped his cleats together three times and been given a do-over.
But such is sports. And life. Break a rule, break a heart.
Garrett Belding knows a thing or two about touching home. He played high school ball around Dallas, was a middle infielder for Eastfield College in Mesquite, then came to Tech to be an equipment manager and is now the program’s Director of Player Development, part of a Bulldog support staff second to none.
Why he came back to Tech? Home. Where his daddy grew up and where his granddaddy, Billy “Doc” Belding, served as Tech’s athletic trainer during football’s national championship days of the early 1970s. Lots of tears shed and smiles of precious memories shared last spring when Doc passed away.
Garrett Belding knows about home. He was a little boy in Ruston. Knew his way around campus and around the old Love Field and Aillet Stadium and the field house.
For this stage of his career, he’s home where he knew he belonged.
So it should have come as no surprise that Saturday as Janek rounded third, Belding, leaning on the dugout rail by Tech coach Lane Burroughs, was looking closely when Janek made a little hop over the plate and …
“In that split second,” Belding said, “I’m thinking, ‘He didn’t touch home. For whatever reason, he didn’t touch it.’ And then I start losing my mind…”
And then Burroughs gets in on it and the players erupt and then the home fans start yelling and standing (as if EVERYONE saw it!, and imagine me typing a laughing face here) and Tech made the proper appeal and the home plate umpire, who pictures reveal was looking right at the plate as Janek crossed, signaled “Out.”
Replays proved him right.
“I didn’t expect that, but I saw it,” Belding said, “and then it’s disbelief, and then you start to try to re-convince yourself you saw it, and then I decided that this is the hill I’d die on, because I was SURE he didn’t touch it.”
Within the next half minute, the Bulldogs were successfully appealing the play, and the ump’s fist was in the air. Tech still held the lead. They’d end the weekend series in first place in CUSA.
“I wasn’t really looking for it, and I wouldn’t say I was the only one who saw it, but I know this,” said Belding, a future coach as sure as sunrise. “However long I’m in the game, however long I’m a coach, I will never NOT watch a guy run the bases, and I’ll always make sure they step on home plate. Always.”
Tech’s designated hitter and ace reliever Ethan “Toolbox” Bates (he’s got ’em all, every baseball tool you need, plus he can fix your four-wheeler), got the save that afternoon after pitching a scoreless ninth and leads the college game with 14 this season, and he leads all active players in career saves with 24.
But the unofficial save Saturday, a big one, went to Garrett Belding.
And Sunday afternoon, when Tech leftfielder Adarius Myers hit a three-run walk-off homer for a 12-9 win and the series sweep, you can guess which base his celebrating teammates gave him plenty of room to touch.
Baseball fans in north Louisiana whose dads and granddads were raised on the radio sounds of KMOX and St. Louis Cardinals baseball remember Whitey Herzog, who led the Cardinals to a World Series title (1982) and two other World Series appearances (1985 and 1987) in his 10 years as the team’s colorful manager.
The prematurely white-haired Herzog passed away last week at 92, one of the last “characters” of the old-school game.
A tip of the ballcap to Whitey, the architect of one of the great nights of my otherwise feeble life.
It was a July Tuesday in Busch Stadium in 1986, and the San Francisco Giants were in town and so was I, writing stories on some former Shreveport Captains who were now Giants. The Cards were defending world champions but were struggling through a .500 summer, a team built offensively on speed while the Giants were an offense built on power.
St. Louis would sweep the series but it’s that Tuesday game that was the one to remember. The Cards led 10-2 in the fourth.
In the bottom of the fifth, they stole a base.
It’s sort of an unwritten rule that you don’t steal with a big lead. Roger Craig, the Giants manager, knew this and seemed to take it personally when San Francisco reliever Juan Berenguer (blast from the past, right?) came into the game and threw at the first hitter he saw; it was the only batter he faced.
This brought Herzog out of the Cardinals dugout to protest to the home plate umpire and, a scenario you don’t see often, Craig came out of the Giants dugout and joined the conversation. The last time you’ve seen both managers yelling at the home plate umpire at the same time is … when? Only time I’ve ever seen it.
Neither manager, as it turned out, was yelling at the umpire. They were yelling at each other. Fairly quickly they were nose to nose. Fingers jabbing. Spit flying. Then the dugouts emptied, and it were as if Herzog and Craig were each a point on opposing spears, with each team forming an arrow behind their guy.
Heated down there on the Busch Stadium turf, sure, but beautiful from where I sat in the press box, listening to 23,000-plus yelling in favor of Whitey “The White Rat” Herzog.
You knew what the argument was about, and after the game, Herzog explained it to me and other writers, his sock feet on his desk in his office underneath the stadium, leaned back in his swivel chair, a can of beer in his left hand. (A former player, Herzog batted, threw, and drank lefty.)
“Does Roger think he invented the game?” Herzog was saying. “I told him if he promised not to hit any three-run homers, I’d promise we wouldn’t try to steal any more bases. We can’t score the same way he can.”
Some other names from that weekend: Chris Brown, Robby Thompson, Jeffrey Leonard, Chili Davis, Mike LaValliere, Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, Tom Herr, Terry Pendleton. Steve Carlton actually hit a three-run homer in the Monday night opener, the only runs his team scored in an 8-3 loss. Only time I ever saw him pitch live — or hit a home run live. Hit it good too; slapped it off one of those columns in right in old Busch.
Good times.
But the most beautiful part of the whole thing was after the game and Herzog explaining, with a big smile, his side of the argument. His beltless baseball pants unbuttoned to allow that 56-inches-or-so of waist a little freedom. And him holding that can of beer. Of course, in Busch Stadium it was a Busch beer. A freebie.
Didn’t recognize him behind the beard and the years so said my name and he looked up from his lunchtime burger and wiped his mouth and his handshake hand, smiled and said, “Dale Shields.”
Good lord. Dale Shields. (Not the same person, but in the same ballpark.)
One day we were talking about how to pass Mr. Jones’ senior physics class at West Monroe High School or what to do the night of our Class of 1977 graduation, and the next time we talked it was about Medicare and grandchildren in a grill on an overcast Monday.
“So, what have YOU been up to for the past 45 years?”
Some people you dodge or they dodge you by design or by destiny.
And some people you want to see but you just don’t because life happens that way.
We don’t always get to decide.
But life’s a funny dog, so it drops dessert on your plate now and then and serves up an old friend who, if you’re lucky, is either Dale Shields or something close.
He’d driven over from his home in West Monroe for some early morning turkey hunting around Downsville. Still had on his high-water rubber boots. Quietly eating. Available but not obvious. Which has always been 100 percent The Dale Shields Way.
Absolutely one of the best we’ve got in your whole Human Race Department.
Been since the 1987 class reunion since I’d seen him, so he caught me up on the most recent one, just a few years ago. Some classmates had died since the 2017 reunion “so we decided we weren’t going to wait for the 50th one,” he said, and told me about the one just a couple years ago, who was there and all.
Dale Shields. In high school, you could have asked anyone and they’d have trusted Dale with anything from a secret to your wallet or purse. Offensive tackle. FCA. Baseball. Y-Teen Beau. National Honor Society. The “A” in America.
Every single time I’ve thought of him over the past near-half century I’ve thought, for at least a nano-second, of the one-bathroom house he grew up in. One of six boys and two girls fathered by Mr. Hugh, who captained the morning bathroom and somehow got all those kids grown and off to school every day of the world. Funny what you remember. Some mornings before first period: “Hey Dale, how’d it go with the bathroom thing this morning?” Daybreak after daybreak must have instilled in him the patience of Job, an outlook optimistic, a colon of iron. Each morning an adventure.
Major tip of the ballcap to his whole wonderful family.
We talked of his recent retirement after 40 years of work with a local company, and he told me about signing up for Medicare; he’s had his Official Card for two weeks now. When 65 knocks, you and the guys talk not so much about turkey hunting and ball scores as you do about how to successfully sign up for Medicare, which to me seems about as difficult as carving Thomas Jefferson’s face into the side of Mount Rushmore.
I’m about to find out for my ownself, being just a few months younger than Dale…Time is the great mystery.
We traded phone numbers and grandchildren stories. We have one. He has No. 12 on the way, and the parents have decided not to find out the flavor yet since they already have one of each. I told him “Teddy” would work for a boy or girl; he smiled and promised to pass that along.
Dale Shields. Day made.
About an hour later I missed a call from him. Made my heart feel good to see his name on my phone. Probably going to say it was good to see me, talk again soon, that kind of deal. I called him back quickly as I could.
In his humble and sincere Dale Shields voice — I could see him smiling — he said, “Butt dial. Sorry. The ol’ butt dial.”
You don’t think so? I beg to differ. Hang with me and I’ll prove that not since Dean Martin has something been so versatile, so good, and yet, despite a fair amount of fame, still so underappreciated.
Seriously, did somebody say something about an egg? If you did, I’m listening. Eggs get my attention. Were it not for eggs, the world would be a much less happy, less tasteful and less interesting place. What kind of question is “Which came first, the chicken or the … other chicken?”
See? You almost GOTTA have eggs!
It’s been nearly 50 years — 1977 to be eggsact — since the Egg People, that wonderful group of egg enthusiasts who tout this white-shelled miracle of nature, originated “The Incredible Edible Egg” jingle. One of the greats. Its gleeful message is the same now as then: Eggs Rock!
Think of how deeply this tiny food has embedded itself into our culture. There are eggs in cakes, in pie crusts, in brownies, in egg salad and in breads. Eggs help to hold the crust onto its first cousin, the chicken. (Maybe instead of “first cousin” it should be “mother once removed.”)
Eggs are in cookies and creams, in fried rice, and in demand. That’s why the United States production of 75 billion eggs a year is an impressive yet big-picture moderate 10 percent of the world’s supply.
We are an egg society.
Think of this food’s adaptability, if you will. It can be boiled and poached and scrambled and fried. And that’s just at breakfast! What a wonderful thing to wake up to.
It can be served sunny side up, over easy, yellow hard, yellow runny. Omelet, you say? Fine!
It can even be split into either yellow or white. How many everyday foods offer you TWO colors in such a small package? The egg is the fruit of the barnyard.
I could rest my case. But I won’t. Because not only is the egg versatile, it’s good for you. You’ve got 13 essential nutrients in a single egg, the egg publicists tell me, which might be a lie but hey, I’m buying it!, because they know I can’t tell a nutrient from a nutria. But I did grow up around chicken snakes, and not once did I see a sick one.
A large egg contains just 70 calories and has six grams of protein. My sources tell me that this is another “plus” in the “healthy food” column. In other words, an egg as a food is a “good egg.”
See? The word even lends itself to playfulness. You can be a good egg or a bad egg. Some people are egg heads. Some have egg on their face. Or a goose egg on their forehead. Some people put all their eggs in one basket, walk on egg shells, lay an egg, egg others on or protect their nest egg.
“Last one in’s a rotten egg!”
It’s a beautiful word, a beautiful food, and you’ll likely enjoy one today, even if it’s disguised in another food. Which is another reason to love the egg: it’s a simple food of delightful complexity. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Mystery is the egg’s “coop” de gras.
Doesn’t seem that long ago but in 2018, one of best guys we know gave another one of the best guys we know a gift certificate to Superior’s Steakhouse, and he used the card to treat the Shreveport-Bossier Journal staff to lunch with local sports icons Bobby Aillet and Leo Sanford.
We are easily led. Especially when free food is involved. And lunch with heroes.
In a comfy “meeting” room, we sat there for nearly three hours and overate and listened to these two Louisiana Tech Athletics Hall of Famers and, at the time, besties for 70 of their nearly 90 years as bona fide dudes.
There are worse ways to spend time and money.
When Mr. Bobby died three years ago this week, age 93, it was J.J. Marshall who recalled that day and said to me, “I could have sat there and listened to them talk all afternoon.”
We just about did.
And now Mr. Leo has passed this early spring at 94, two of the final members of The National Association for the Advancement of Grandstand Quarterbacks (NAAGQ), an exclusive “club” for more than 70 years, formed by Tech football teens going off to war in 1943, a group whose families grew up together and, through the years, grew old together.
They weren’t stingy about sharing stories — if they were asked. No chest-beating in this bunch. Thankfully, they shared enough of themselves that we’ll always have stuff to carry around.
Leo was a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, the Ark-La-Tex Museum of Champions, a star at Shreveport’s Fair Park High, a Pro Bowler in the NFL, a league champ in 1958 with Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts, a humble bear of a man with oven-mitt-sized paws who, after this playing days, sold class rings and letter jackets to students all over the area; he sold that stuff but the smiles and understated jokes, he did those for free.
He loved to tell about him and another Tech recruit being driven from Shreveport to Ruston by legendary Tech football assistant Jimmy Mize, and Coach Mize asking Leo’s friend what he wanted to major in, and the kid said, “Engineering,” so then Coach Mize asked Leo the same thing, and Leo said he was thinking that if his buddy could learn to drive a train, so could he, so Leo said, “Engineering.”
Another one’s about Coach Joe Aillet with Leo and some other linemen in a crescent moon around Aillet and the coach hollers “I need a dummy!” and nothing happens for like five second so Leo jumped out toward coach and Aillet said, “Not you, Sanford. I need a BLOCKING dummy.” (Leo would tell the story and shrug his shoulders: “He said he needed a dummy so …”)
When Sanford established the largest endowed scholarship in Tech Athletics history in honor of his wife Myrna after her passing in 2018, Leo told his buddies at their Friday morning unofficial club meeting at Shreveport’s Southfield Grill that “I’d be happy to have given the second-largest endowed scholarship if one of you other guys would step up.”
It was an almost ordained sort of special, the times Leo and Bobby and their football friends and families got to share. Disheartening to think it’s over, but then again, these were times built on love, and love never dies. No good thing ever does.
Speaking of love, this is from Myrna’s obit: “On their first real date he told her he was going to marry her, and she told him he was crazy. While she spent the next 68 years admitting he was right, she’d also tell you he was still crazy.”
Curt Joiner, one of Leo’s sons-in-law, will tell you it’s always been a “good” kind of crazy. “I don’t know if there’s any guy in the world I enjoy spending an evening with more than my father-in-law,” Joiner said.
For today, a step away from sports and a step into Easter for a look at a trio who witnessed that first Easter weekend …
Simon of Cyrene could not have known when he woke up that first Good Friday that his life would, in mid-morning, change forever. After all, he was just passing through. By divine circumstance, his path crossed the path of the beaten and bleeding Savior.
A scared and timid step forward, a shove, and Simon was in an unwanted spotlight, “compelled” by a soldier’s whip and order into a moment that would capture his life in God’s Word for eternity.
But it would also capture his heart.
He was told to help carry the condemned man’s cross.
Few people run toward the cross. Most of us have to be compelled by the soldier of misfortune, suffering, disease, and any of a thousand pains and problems. Even then, we pick it up kicking and screaming.
But what if we could be like Simon. Surely . . . after looking into Jesus’ eyes that day, after seeing up close his shredded back, His crown of thorns, surely . . . Simon knew that, in comparison, the yoke was easy. Jesus always does the hard part.
How could Simon look at that and not be changed forever?
That Friday evening, while Simon and so many others tried to process the events of the day, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in strips of linen “in accordance with Jewish burial customs,” John writes in his gospel record. They did it secretly for fear of the Jewish leaders. But, with Pilate’s permission, they did it.
These two Jews — well, Pilate too — knew there was something about Jesus. Something…
As tombs go, the new one where they placed the body of Jesus after the crucifixion wasn’t used for very long.
On the third day, a day we celebrate as Easter, Jesus rose, by the power of God.
That’s the kind of power that’s available to us. Wonder-working power, is how the old hymn puts it.
Our actions say so much about the human condition when we consider how we fret over things that God wishes we wouldn’t. We have his power available to us, and we so often ignore it.
The tomb, the scriptures say, was close to Golgotha, a Latin word meaning “the skull.” But in the shadow of death there on that hill was eternal life. On Easter, God raised his son.
An empty tomb represents what God accomplished in the fullness of time. The empty tomb represents what God offers through his son: grace and life, protection, provision, and peace.
In the emptiness is a fullness only God can offer, grant, and sustain. Forever.
Joseph and Nicodemus must have been among the first to have heard the news of the empty tomb. More than curiosity must have pulled them to the place where they’d placed the dead man. But they’d found only linens. No body. “We knew,” they must have thought, “that something was different.” They just didn’t know how different.
A whole new way of dying. And a whole new way of living.
Then in the days and weeks after, as news of the Resurrection spread and reached Simon, I imagine his horror of that day turned into an overwhelming feeling of honor. I imagine him on his knees and, through tears, gazing toward Heaven, arms extended, awed, overcome. I imagine his arms around his sons, his grateful whisper in their ears: “I walked with that Man . . ..”
Because we are in the middle of high school and college baseball season and because desperate times call for desperate measures, I am having to name myself Infield Fly Rule Sheriff for north Louisiana and maybe even for east Texas.
This is effective immediately. No time to waste …
The Infield Fly Rule can make you look crazier than a road lizard, more foolish than the guy who botched the one-car funeral procession. Not knowing this rule has caused more Walk of Shames than beer.
We’ve witnessed it mangled twice last week.
Once, a defender’s mistake cost his team a run. The other time, a baserunner ran his team out of an inning.
This happens more often than you’d think. And when it does, it looks like a prison break.
“An infield fly is a fair ball — not including a line drive nor an attempted bunt — which can be caught by an infielder with ordinary effort, when first and second, or first, second and third bases are occupied, before two are out.”
Once the umpire declares “Infield Fly!” and/or points to the sky, the batter is out and all force plays are removed, regardless of whether the ball is caught.
This is to protect defenseless runners: an infielder in this situation could drop the ball on purpose and then turn an easy double play.
The rule sounds tricky but it’s not once you ponder it for a moment. And the moment to ponder is not when the Infield Fly Rule has been declared. It’s now, while no bullets are flying and all is quiet on the western front.
So, the examples from last week:
Runners first and second, one out, fly to infield’s right side. Infield Fly is declared. Fielder misses the ball, and the runner on second, safe as grandma’s banana pudding secret recipe, semi-panics and takes off for third. The throw from the second baseman, who’s recovered the ball, is in plenty of time — BUT the third baseman doesn’t tag the runner. Steps on the bag thinking there was a force. But the force is off once Infield Fly is declared. The runner, who was surprised as anyone by his good fortune, then scored on a two-out base hit.
In the other example, runners were on first and second, one out, their team trailing by a run, eighth inning. Big Moment. Infield Fly is declared on a very high pop behind first; it hits the fielder’s glove and drops maybe three feet from him and — the runner on second bolted toward third as if propelled from a cannon. Easy throw to the third baseman, who makes the tag, end of that half inning and end of threat.
Makes your heart hurt.
So it is my suggestion that each team designate an Infield Fly Rule Captain. Or it could be Infield Fly Rule Sergeant-at-Arms or Infield Fly Rule Flavor of the Day/Ringmaster/Man About Town. Whatev. The point is, when the Infield Fly Rule is in effect as noted above, that appointed Infield Fly Rule Specialist is yelling to the baserunners, “HOLD YOUR BASE, FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING DECENT AND GOOD, DO NOT MOVE!”
Whether the fielder catches the fly or not, you are safe. Batter up.
Now if you are a fielder — this will take some practice and communication and work and your coach will have to agree — you almost always “have” to let the ball drop. The batter will be out anyway, the runners probably won’t know the rule or will panic, and you can double one up. If the runners don’t move and the ball doesn’t drop and take a wild bounce, no problem. Ball back to pitcher. Batter up.
And if you forget all that, it’s OK. The important thing is that you find and read “Mitch and the Infield Fly Rule,” an essay by the master of the art, the late and great Mississippian Willie Morris.
In it, when Morris taught a class in the American Novel as writer-in-residence at Ole Miss in the 1980s, a “willowy, full-breasted blond Chi Omega” called Mitch, 21 and a straight-A student, “tall and slender and lithesome, wry and irreverent and whimsical,” stands in class one day, recites the Infield Fly Rule in its entirety and finishes by saying, to her wide-eyed classmates in the cataclysmic quietness of the large amphitheater classroom and with a throaty Bacall voice, “I always thought it a fine rule.”
You sports fans know we’re in the Crossover Season. Lots of moving parts.
In the pros, baseball is in spring training, the NFL is in trade/arbitration/free agency/pass-the-blame offseason, and the NBA is nearing the start of its third trimester.
Yawn…
Then there is college, where campuses might not have enough fans to go around.
Tennis.
Track and field.
Softball and baseball.
Bowling.
For some, beach volleyball. (We see you waving goodbye, Pac-12.)
Golf, for sure.
And in the Cucumber States, pickle ball. (Well, maybe one day …)
But Crossover Season has just one Real Season, one that counts, and everybody who’s ever been in a gymnasium knows that.
It’s college basketball. Until March Madness is over, it’s tough to make more than a token investment in anything else.
The men’s tournament started with eight teams in 1939 and grew with television, to 16 teams in 1951, to 64 in 1985, and eventually 67 games and 68 teams, from the First Four to the Final Four.
The women’s game and ultimately the tournament began to grow in the early 1980s. Check this out: the first Division 1 NCAA women’s champion defeated Cheyney State, 76-62, in 1982 in The Scope in Norfolk, Va. That would have been Louisiana Tech. Hometown team Old Dominion had been upset in the East Regional Semifinals, so the announced sellout crowd of 9,000-plus, thanks to corporate locals buying bunches of tickets, was a bit smaller than that.
TV ratings — CBS televised the title game as part of their contract with the men’s tournament — were miniscule. Still, the ball was rolling, and the Lady Techsters were the bunch that first kicked it down the road.
So Tech won the first one.
And the most recent Division I NCAA women’s champion, if memory serves, is LSU, a 102-85 winner over Iowa in the highest scoring final in the tournament’s history. That game was played before an announced crowd of 19,842 — and most of them were actually there — in the American Airlines Center in Dallas. ESPN viewership was nearly 10 million, a 100 percent increase over the year before.
Good times.
So now the March action is twice the fun for those who are fans of both sports. If you are a fan of only one, that’s enough. That’s how good this tournament-times-two is.
I have not, as a writer, covered an NCAA Tournament beginning-to-end in a hard-to-believe 34 years. So when I write about things that happened in the mid-1980s, let’s say, it would be like me, back then, writing about the tournament as it was in the early-1950s.
In other words, names I’d type today about those 1980s times — names like Loyola Marymount, Bobby Cremins, Bucknell, St. Bonaventure, Bob Knight and Dick Tarrant — would be like me going back 30-plus years then and typing Canisius and Bradley and Clarence Iba and Slats Gill, Phil Woolpert and Adolph Rupp and a youngish John Wooden. Bill Russell and B.H. Born.
Go much further back and you’re talking peach baskets and a jump ball after every made basket.
Time is the great mystery.
Things change. But that Thursday and Friday the first week of the tournament, four games in one day at each site, that’s the best Daily Double of the year.
And always the surprises, in a tournament that’s proven timeless.
Has it been more than 30 years since we’ve been calling you Sweeter?, when your grandboy toddlers said “Sweet Lou” and that morphed into “Sweeter”? Time flies, but the name is timeless. And fits.
So Happy Birthday, Sweeter! Sorry I missed being there. Somehow, after more than 40 years, I have wound up back on the Louisiana Tech Baseball bus, which is why I was calling you from Lake Charles and Sugar Land, Texas this week.
Bad news: I missed “Happy Birthday To You” and the cake and you wearing your goofy Happy Birthday hat the gang bought you.
Good news, we got to talk on the phone and the Bulldogs went 4-0 on the trip, swept the Battle at the Ballpark at Constellation Field in Sugar Land, and have started their season 11-0.
So far, so good.
Since you asked, yes momma, the baseball bus is the same, even after all this time:
Somebody plays the music too loud or not loud enough or the wrong music;
Somebody needs to go to the bathroom and has to run through a gauntlet of shins in the aisle to get back there;
Somebody says too many dirty words too loud;
Somebody forgot something;
Laughs and food and inside jokes.
It’s a beautiful thing. And it’s one of those things that never changes.
But thank goodness, some things do. Like, for instance:
Last year’s Tech team was more up and down than a gopher on speed. Every game was like going to meet your tough-to-read girlfriend: you didn’t know whether to bring a tank top or a windbreaker or a heavy jacket.
Couldn’t throw a strike. Guys hurt. One missed the whole season. Missed a couple of seniors who’d graduated, and no one picked up the Accountability Stick. Most everyone had a sub-par spring …
Just one of those sports deals where few things went right and every game was like going 12 rounds with Tyson. That the program was coming off back-to-back NCAA Regionals made it more trying.
A Pepto-Bismol season.
But maybe Tech’s time in the barrel is up. The Diamond Dogs have come into 2024, as I heard an old cowpoke say one time, “a-rippin’ and a-roarin’, a-rompin’ and a-stompin’ …”
Hard to win 11 in a row in anything in college, but especially in baseball, where the tiniest thing — passed ball, throwing to the wrong base, missed cutoff — can blow it all up.
First trip of the season, the Dogs left the Love Shack Wednesday at 11, teed it up against McNeese at 6 and, on a cold, blustery, next-to-last evening of February, beat the Cowboys 13-4. Were right on every pitch. Maybe three swings and misses.
Slept fast and got on the bus at 8 and were practicing in Sugar Land at noon. Then a 20-minute bus ride to Houston to lift weights at Rice, then finally checking into the hotel back in Sugar Land, team supper, sleep, and in the next three days, beat Army 4-0, Creighton 12-0, and Air Force 8-5. Bulldogs had been in town 72 hours before they allowed a run.
Outscored opponents 37-9.
Is that good? I think that’s good.
It’s early but … cautious optimism. Double cautious. Super-duper cautious. Still healing up from last year’s ulcer(s).
I’ll keep you up to speed Sweeter. You’ll enjoy a game when the weather’s warmer. The crowds for this weekend’s three games against Southern Miss — Friday at 6, Saturday at 2, Sunday at 1 — should get the Love Shack heated up.
See you at the park or at the kitchen table soon. Love you. The boys say hey, and smoke ’em high and tight.
When the news broke more than a month ago that Sports Illustrated was laying off most of its workforce, that the end of the publication was apparently on hand, I re-lived the moment someone told me in the late 1990s that my childhood favorite Red Skelton had passed away.
Thought he’d died like 20 years before.
In the late-January days after the SI punchout, eulogies followed that were heartfelt and expected. They all brought back memories of getting SI in the mail on Wednesdays or Thursdays, back when I had pimples.
Joy. Rapture. Day and weekend made.
But I buried Sports Illustrated 25 years ago. Was grateful for it, mourned it, and let it go. Was semi-surprised to find out last month it was still alive.
It’s like what our SportsTalk friend John James Marshall said about Fair Grounds Field, once the siren song of summertime around here. More than a year ago, after the most recent attempt to clean it up, lots of people started telling it goodbye. JJ, who spent more time at SPAR Stadium and Fair Grounds Field than probably any of us, had made his peace with the death of the place years ago. What you see now from Interstate 20 is just concrete and bat poop and a feral cat palace and a solid illustration of political foot dragging. It ain’t Fair Grounds Field; that was a beautiful place that died a long time.
So was Sports Illustrated.
And it’s nobody’s fault. Not really. It’s one of those time things.
Once it got its footing after its founding in 1954 until the late 1980s, SI was one of the great financial successes in the world of publishing. Its covers were iconic in the culture. It billed itself as the authority — and it was. Sports Illustrated was the Cleveland Browns of the 1940s, the Yankees of the ’50s and the Celtics of the ’60s.
It happened because the most influential guy in publishing then, Time Inc. founder Henry Luce, believed in it, even though he wasn’t a big sports fan. He hired a European sophisticate named Andre Laguerre to be the managing editor. And besides the best photographers, Laguerre hired the three or four best writers in each sport, gave them an expense account, and told them to let ’er rip, tater chip.
“Oh, I thought he should’ve been president,” Dan Jenkins, the magazine’s most influential writer ever, said of Laguerre. The whole thing was a perfect place-time-people deal as Jenkins and a pile of other semi-irreverent writers pumped in fastball after fastball.
But money changed the dynamic between players-coaches and writers. Suddenly it was more opportune for a millionaire forward from the Bucks to spend time with Willow Bay instead of with a writer.
Cable TV happened. Then the internet.
And long before that, the tone of the magazine began changing. Jenkins moved on to Playboy and Golf Digest because the new editors thought they knew more about college football and professional golf than he did. SI became more political, and while a fan of 15 can argue with his 75-year-old grandfather about whether Carlton or Spahn was the best lefthander, they can’t have a fair fight about all the hot-button issues the magazine began weighing in on.
Too much work and not enough play. Sports and Some Non-Sports Cultural Stuff Illustrated. (Boooooo…)
(This is the first in a series on aging, or Getting On Up There. If you or a shriveled loved one are wondering how to get Social Security or Medicare or other things I know nothing about but need to explore, you are welcome to come along for the ride. Seems like one day you are coaching Little League and the next you are filling out complicated forms that will be some of the last forms you will ever fill out. Sobering. Will keep you in the loop every couple of months for a while — unless a vital organ vetoes that plan. Meanwhile, wrote this in 2010 when I was a spry 50. Those were the days…)
I am a half-century old. If my money math is correct, I can retire, somewhat comfortably, when I am 107.
Sweet!
By “somewhat comfortably,” I mean I’ll have to work only half-days by then.
Or teach myself how to get by without a few things. Like food.
(Air’s still free, right? Except at the gas station? Where is the gas station importing this air from that costs money?)
But that’s OK because I recently bit the prune and joined the American Association of Retired Persons, or AARP. I have the $16 cancelled check and a membership card to prove it.
Joy!
It would seem odd that a man would join a retired persons organization when that man plans to keep working for a while. But that is one of the beautiful things about AARP, besides our red, white and gray team colors and the fact that our shuffleboard squad is undefeated this season — you do not even have to be retired to join! Do you hear what I am saying, you AARP members out there with hearing aids turned up to “Say WHAT?” You don’t even have to be retired!
The AARP has been recruiting me with a vengeance for several years now. They’ve wanted me. Badly. It’s a good though unfamiliar feeling.
First they sent random mail. “We’re keeping up with you. Good luck this year.” That sort of thing.
Then there were phone calls, first from AARP marketers, then from some of the higher-ups. I remember a particularly poignant call from one of the vice presidents on my 50th birthday. “Boy, you are really getting UP there!”
At first it was bothersome. But dogged sincerity won me over. A couple of guys in suits came to recruit me, to see how long it took me unravel myself and stand up straight on my way to the bathroom on any of the six trips I make there a night. They saw me take naps on Sunday afternoon, fall asleep in a drive-thru line, have trouble lifting things, like myself.
With each limp, I impressed. You can’t coach this stuff, really. A lot of it is just natural aging ability.
Finally, there was the free swag, probably illegal, like my canvas “travel bag” that has “AARP” on the side and a pocket for cell phone, loose change, wallet, passport, contact information for my primary physician, and next of kin, dentures and Depends.
They beat me down, is what I’m saying. Made me an offer I was getting tired of refusing.
So last week, I made the call. “I’ve decided,” I said to the toll-free operator, “to take my talents to AARP.”
Somewhere, a dog barked.
So, I am in. At least until I’m out. And so far, I like it.
My Official Membership Card (in big-letter type) scans for discounts at restaurants and movies and the drugstore, and the association sends me a monthly magazine called “Geezer Illustrated.” (I’m joking! We old folk, we like to joke, we do.) It’s called “AARP The Magazine” and Harrison Ford (Indy Jones!) was on a recent cover that included stories like “Live Your Motorcycle Fantasy!” and “Your Doctor Is Stumped: Now What?”
Not bad for 16 bucks annually. Plus, online I’m kept informed on money matters and retirement issues, freeing me up for things I want to do in my never-able-to-retire state.
Anybody up for a game of shuffleboard? Or Stump the Doctor?
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…”
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.
(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…’”
Welcome to January 2025! Did 2024 disappear faster than paper napkins at the church barbecue or what?! In case you missed it, a brief review.
January: Striking yet another blow for time-rich champions of political correctness, a woman named Susan returned a Christmas gift, sued the maker and had the name of the “Lazy Susan” legally and forever changed to “Energy Challenged And Genderless Rotating Food Server.” Her husband Lester snored through the entire episode, comfortably, in his La-Z-Boy.
February: Friends, Roman numerals, countrymen, lend me your ears. In Super Bowl XIX, the Atlanta Falcons beat the New Orleans Saints, XXI-XVII, with a touchdown late in the IVth quarter. The Falcons new head coach Bill Belichick, wearing one of the less moldy tops from his NFL-licensed Bereaved Sweatshirts Collection, said, “The New Orleanians are a good team. If we played them X times, we’d probably win V and they’d probably win V. We were fortunate to win this I.”
March: Larry the Cable Guy, in an unfortunate comeback, stars in “True Grits,” billed as a “culinary comedy” that will leave you “hungry for more.”
April: Apple introduces the I-Gadget, a thing that does something but no one is sure just what. Cost: $1,299 per unit. It is the size of a thumb tack. Supply cannot keep up with demand.
May: Marring a month made for affection, a power-broking Hollywood couple announces in a joint statement that they have, “after much thoughtful consideration, decided to split at this time.” The pair’s Facebook page read, “We remain committed and caring friends.” Each Tweeted and TikTok-ed that they would “have no more comments” about the “amicable separation.” Their personal skywriter wrote in the skies over the Hollywood Hills that the pair would “appreciate privacy in this difficult time.”
June: From Joy Story to … this. After falling in love on the set of “Toy Story 3,” Buzz Lightyear and Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl announce the end of their two-year courtship, beginning a nasty split-up. “No one can live with her, I don’t care how big his batteries are,” Lightyear said. “‘Light’ is in his name for a reason,” said Jessie.
July: A postal worker described as “disgruntled” does something bad. Also, a fire “guts” a home, stimulus dollars “make an impact” on the local economy, and a “person of interest” is divorced by a person who didn’t find that person interesting at all. Why do so few people seem happy and gruntled anymore?
August: It was hot.
September: Following Larry the Cable Guy’s lead, Soap-on-a-Rope makes a comeback, as do Pet Rocks and The Waltons — with an expanded cast: there are now 112 Waltons, and four granddaughters are pregnant. Even Brooks & Dunn, the most awarded act in Country Music Association Awards history, scored their first No. 1 since 2005 with their smash single, “Losing Your Love in Fractions, A Fifth At A Time.”
October: Apple introduces the I-Don’t-Like-U, a device that gets you even further away from actual people but still allows you to communicate. Cost: $2,599 per unit. It is the size of a lint ball. People are still standing in line.
November: In between a demanding schedule of shooting commercials for Nestle, Auto Zone, Cream of Wheat, Chevrolet, Dr Pepper, Depends, Junior Mints, Senior Mints and Frosted Flakes, Jesse “Get Your Hands Off My Heisman!” Richards held a press conference to say he’d be returning for his junior season as quarterback at Southern Cal, squashing rumors he would go to the NFL early. “My dream has always been to play in the pros — but I’m already sort of doing that in the NCAA,” he said. “Plus, I just can’t afford to go to the NFL and take the pay cut right now.”
December: Doctors report that more sex decreases worry. But a government study shows that since people worry so much about how much sex is needed to decrease anxiety, the whole thing is counterproductive. The study costs a whopping and worrisome $255 million, plus tax. A government spokesman propped his feet up, lit a smoke and said, “We aren’t that worried about it.”
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.
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 …
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 50th 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.
Unless someone slammed a shopping cart into your shin or cut you off in traffic or sat you by a drunk uncle at Present Opening Time, you might have counted your blessings in the past few days.
The spirit surrounding Christmastime and the New Year usually lends itself to such positive behavior.
Smelling coffee brewing and watching our 17-month-old granddaughter eat an apple and tell the puppy to ‘Get down!’ (a new phrase learned on Christmas Day) and considering that I can sense these things, even at the advanced stage of my development, reminds me that I might be the luckiest piece of protoplasm you could ever meet.
If not the luckiest, then at least in the Top 10 or so. There is really no other excuse for me even being here except by some mistake of nature.
First came winning the Uterine Lottery thanks to my personal mother, and then being born in America and not on some hill in some country whose name I can’t pronounce or even locate without Google and a map.
So started a chain of events of God putting people along my wayward path to teach and encourage and inspire. One of those has a birthday December 28, and since I’ve missed writing to tell him “Happy Birthday” for 80 consecutive years, I won’t make that mistake again this time.
He’s had other jobs before and after, but Keith Prince was the sports information director at Louisiana Tech for 25 years, beginning in 1969 through the time I was there as a student in the early 1980s. It was outside what is now Scotty Robertson Memorial Gym that he asked me if I wanted to go to graduate school and be his graduate assistant.
Once I finished laughing, I thanked him and reminded him it had already taken me six years to earn a four-year degree. But … besides being organized and efficient and a wonderful writer and athlete, he is a kind and persistent man, sneaky convincing, a teacher by example, and I signed on with him for what ended up being one of the great adventures of my life. Even graduated in the legit two years, like a person with any sense is supposed to do.
Sports information directors are today called Associate Athletic Directors for Strategic Communications, or something like that. The job is the same as always though: promote your student-athletes, cover the games, never get ahead, and have four days off a year.
It’s a job that requires stamina, talent, grace, and the ability to deal with egos that often accompany your more dynamic competitors.
To make us better, Mr. Prince introduced us, maybe even shared us, to others who did his job at their schools, to Bob Anderson at what was then Northeast, to Collie Nicholson at Grambling, Jerry Pierce at Northwestern State, Larry Hymel at Southeastern, the incomparable Louis Bonnette at McNeese State, and a bunch of others. They became our teachers but also our friends. Tremendous break.
Mr. Prince had all the tools, but his best attribute was grace under pressure. That, and the ability to convince you that you could earn a place. He gave me and so many others a chance. And he showed us the way. Still does.
For those reasons and many more, I hope this is his best birthday yet.
My friends call it BowlFest, this most wonderful time of the college football year when you can’t swing a cornerback without hitting a Diesel Driving Academy Arkansas Bowl or a Sparkling Caffeine Ice Classic.
It’s a beautiful thing.
It’s easy to get caught up in the momentum of bowl games and holidays and start betting actual real money on the games. Santa doesn’t want you overdoing it. And he’s watching you …
The day I quit betting on ballgames was the day I thought I was about to lose $100 plus juice and nearly started crying like a small wet child.
March Madness. 1993ish? Back when having 100 bucks meant something. I’d bet Xavier to cover against Indiana or the other way around. In the past I’d bet $5 here and there, maybe 10. We figured we were betting $5 to have $5 worth of fun, because nothing makes you interested in a game the way “having action” on it does. Suddenly you’re interested in an Oregon State vs. Louisville score, fanatically so.
But now I was stepping out and betting a Buck, like a big boy, like I had $100 to lose.
It went down to the wire. Was listening on a transistor radio. Sitting in a cheap table chair on Archer Avenue in Shreveport. Living and dying. “If I can get out of this, I’ll never bet again.”
My guys covered. I’d won 100 large. And retired. Wasn’t worth it. I had to work too hard for that little piece of money.
Since then, the stakes have gotten back to normal. I’m in a group that “bets” all the bowl games with the overall winner getting the pot. The capital outlay is about 18 cents a game.
The feeling is the same. Pride. Bragging rights. The joy of thinking of where you’ll spend the $5 each of the guys will have to cough up. Even though both the risk and reward are so tiny, you’ll still pay more attention to the SMU vs. Boston College Fenway Bowl than any sane man should.
Before legal betting in our neck of the woods, you had to “know a guy.” Benny the Bookie or Sam the Human Point Spread. Now you just need your smartphone and a credit card.
Draft Kings. FanDuel. Promo codes. “Free money” to get you going.
Sounds like fun. And with a limit, I bet it is. I just got to thinking that I might as well flip a coin because …
How do I know whether or not the starting center just got a “Dear John” letter from his girlfriend;
Or if the quarterback just failed a big math test;
Or if the professional strong safety might have taken something recreationally before the game, the one I just bet a Honey Bun on.
“Too rich for my blood!” I hear a yokel saying …
You can bet spreads, over/unders, moneylines, parlays, teasers. Prop bets. Futures, in which case you’re betting on something that hasn’t happened yet as always, except this won’t happen for a long, long time. (The Orioles are +1,500 to win the 2024 World Series.)
If all these easy ways of betting — even on stuff mid-game, like coin flips or total interceptions — were available by phone 40 years ago, I might still be glued to that chair on Archer, sure I would get rich by the time they were cutting down nets at the Final Four.
But I backed down. I bet that I really didn’t know what I was doing. And that there would be days when the guys I’d bet on wouldn’t know what they were doing either.
Probably a good bet.
(But … who you got in the Boca Raton Bowl? Asking for a friend …)
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Cries and moans about perceived poor officiating in the NFL this season seem to be louder and more often than usual. Maybe it’s because the season is a game longer now, or maybe it’s because more fans have more TV access to more games than ever before, or maybe it’s because there are more commentators on more platforms than ever and because fans have more ways than ever to express their views.
And who knows? — maybe the officiating isn’t as good this season as it’s been in the past. Only the chief of NFL officials would know that. And he’s not saying.
But a lot of us are. You can slam officials on everything from Facebook to “Insta” to TikTok — if you know how to work all those things. (Some of us don’t.)
Unlike fans, the players and coaches are wise to temper theirs comments about officiating or face getting fined. That threat didn’t stop Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett Sunday for calling the officiating in Sunday’s game against Jacksonville a “travesty” and “honestly awful.”
And his team WON.
Much more publicized and dramatic was what happened in Kansas City, where the homestanding Chiefs had a touchdown (that included a lateral pass) called back because a KC receiver had lined up offsides. The score and extra point would have given Kansas City a four-point lead with a minute to play; instead, three Patrick Mahomes incompletions later, the Chiefs were 20-17 losers to Buffalo.
After that game, Kansas City players and even some broadcasters complained that such a “little” penalty shouldn’t decide the game. The quarterback blamed it on the ref. The coach said “it’s a bit embarrassing for the National Football League” for a dramatic play and score so late in the game to be wiped out by an offsides penalty.
Which is all fine except the professional wide receiver lined up offsides. He has been playing since he was 6 and has been practicing for this season since July. It was the fourth quarter of the Chiefs’ 13th game of the year.
And it’s the first rule in most sports: you have to be on one side of a line or another at some point. Think of all the lines drawn on fields and courts and tracks. You can’t have a sport without a line like you can’t have a trial with a manila folder.
Yet it’s the fault of the official. It’s not dropped passes or turnovers or blown assignments that have the defending Super Bowl champs at 8-5. Neg. It’s somebody else’s fault. Like the official’s. For calling the receiver offsides. For being offsides. For dropping the flag as soon as the ball was snapped.
What a joke. The officials were right and some people are still mad.
It’s just a game and not life or death and the world will continue to spin. Still it’s funny when even professionals, obviously in error, blame someone or something else when things are going badly.
Like playing any sport at a high level, officiating is demanding and an inexact science. It’s my pleasure to know officials at every level of sports, and the ones I know love it and train for it and take it seriously, just as the players do. The imperfections of players and officials and even the journalists who cover them will never go away.
None of this is new, even though there have been several stories this fall questioning officiating. I’ve kept a few dozen Sports Illustrated covers through the years. The one I’m looking at today pictures Terry Bradshaw — then Pittsburgh’s quarterback and probably why I kept the cover — pleading with an official. This is the headline:
He was 6-8 and thin as a celery stick in the 1970s, a young athlete all afro and smiles and jump shots.
“The kids today, they see that afro I had back then — they love that,” says Aaron James. “I couldn’t grow one now.”
Retired in Ruston — “You better believe it!” says the ex-NBAer and college coach and administrator — James is still all smiles. It would be hard to know him and not like the easy-going, lanky dude who led the nation in scoring as a senior at Grambling in 1973 when he pumped in 32-plus a game.
The weekend after Thanksgiving, the Grambling Hall of Famer, Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Famer, and Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer was back on the court, minus the hops and the afro but still hanging with teammates and getting love from fans, just as he did in 1974 when the New Orleans Jazz was born and James was the franchise’s first draft pick.
In Salt Lake City since 1979, the Jazz hosted James and former teammates Truck Robinson — an All-Star forward and still the franchise’s all-time rebound leader — and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Gail Goodrich for a weekend, part of a season-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Jazz. Similar events are planned through the spring, when the organization will release a documentary featuring former players, coaches and owners titled “Note Worthy: 50 Seasons of Jazz Basketball.”
“They really did it up nice,” said James of the weekend, one that included “lots of dinners,” a meet-and-greet with four dozen or so fans who’ve had season tickets since 1979, and, from a luxury suite in the Delta Center, watching the Jazz beat the New Orleans Pelicans.
“I love the Pelicans,” said James, whose All-America hoops career began at the Dryades Street YMCA in New Orleans. “But when they play the Jazz, well, I gotta pull for the Jazz.”
He still talks to several of his teammates three or four times a year, something he understands is unusual for former NBAers. E.C. Coleman. Nate Williams. Freddie Boyd. Paul Griffin. Several others. He’s spent time on vacation with Rich Kelley up in Sun Valley, Idaho, where the former 7-foot center lives, and Kelley and his family have attended the Bayou Classic and shared Thanksgiving with James’ family in New Orleans.
“We were close when we played together,” James said of those first Jazz teams. “We were just like family. Of course, that means we’d fight a little bit too. But we were all just really good friends. At least once a month I talk to one of the guys.”
Good times. Back then, if there was a basketball goal within 35 feet or so, James was taking aim, so much so that former NBA star and Jazz play-by-play announcer Hot Rod Hundley called him “AJ From the Parking Lot.”
“I still get that from time to time,” James said. “Somebody will come up to me and say, “Wait … AJ From the Parking Lot!”
When was the last time, I wondered, he shot a basketball?
“Last week when they had me and Truck and Gail on the court during the Pelicans game,” he said. “We each shot a free throw. They missed; I made mine.”
And yet again we find ourselves within the gravitational pull of one of the most memorable yet misremembered dates in “the storied athletic history” of Louisiana Tech.
If things go gray upstairs in a second, all is forgiven. It’s been a minute.
But any Tech fan old enough to have seen episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show live will likely have some brain cells reserved for December 4, 1982, the much-anticipated opening day of the Thomas Assembly Center. Nearly every year as we close in on December 4, someone will mention that day to me.
It was that big of a deal.
“The Lady Techsters played USC and Cheryl Miller and the guys played USL (now ULL),” my friend called to say; The Date and The Day had just happened to come up in a basketball-related conversation as the 2023-24 Bulldogs have won five straight and get a test at 5-1 New Mexico, a regular participant in postseason tournaments, Wednesday at 8 CST.
Then — and this is the part that gets confusing because, well, Father Time — he said, “And that was after Delaware had beaten Tech in the 1-AA semifinals that afternoon, I think 17-0, in the rain,” he said. “What a day. All in Ruston.”
And he’s right. That’s what happened. Almost.
Here is what actually happened that December 4 afternoon before the TAC opened with a doubleheader that night. This from Shreveport Bossier Journal writer Ron Higgins, who then was writing sports for The Times in Shreveport:
“RUSTON—By land, or rather by mud, and through the air, Louisiana Tech quarterback Matt Dunigan tippy-toed through the swampland of Aillet Stadium for two touchdowns and threw for two more scores as Tech slipped past South Carolina State 38-3 Saturday afternoon in the NCAA Division I-AA South Regional final.”
It was South Carolina State that Tech played in football that day in the national quarterfinals. Then that night, USC beat the Techsters, 64-58, and the Dunkin’ Dogs lost to USL, 46-45. The crowd was 8,700; the place has 8,000 seats. More than jam packed. And it was: as a rookie graduate assistant in sports information, I was there.
The next Saturday, December 11, was also cold and rainy, and more than the week before. Miserable. That gray afternoon, Tech football lost in the semifinals of the I-AA playoffs to Delaware, 17-0. It was the final Tech game for both Dunigan — he was off to his career as a Hall of Famer in the Canadian Football League — and head coach Billy Brewer, off to a few seasons of success at his alma mater, Ole Miss.
Why so many of us often confuse the two dates might be because there was basketball at the TAC that December 11 Saturday, as there had been the Saturday before. After the football loss to Delaware, the Techsters thumped Cheyney State that night, 60-45, to win the Dial Classic. Yes, the good ol’ Dial Classic.
On December 4, Tech won in football and lost in basketball. The next weekend was the other way around.
Some other notes from those two weekends 41 years ago, as all three Tech programs were poised to make more immediate memories:
The Techsters’ loss to USC meant the end of their 59-game home winning streak. They beat USC on a neutral court in California, 58-56, later during the regular season and then, as two-time defending national champs, lost to USC in the title game, 69-67, in The Scope in Norfolk, Virginia. Big doings;
The Dunkin’ Dogs finished 19-9 and second in the Southland Conference that season but Shreveport’s Wayne Smith, Summerfield’s Karl Malone and a host of talented friends found themselves in the NCAA Tournament the next two seasons;
Many of the 1982 Football Bulldogs thawed out enough over the next two seasons to make it to the I-AA finals against Montana State at The Citadel in 1984; and,
Delaware. The Fightin’ Blue Hens haven’t been back to Ruston for football since that sleety Saturday when a dude named “Delaware Dan” Reeder slogged his way to a ball-controlling 114 yards on 22 carries and two of his less-workmanlike teammates got to score the TDs. But that seems poised to change: an announcement that the Blue Hens will become the 11th member of Conference USA is expected this week.
No news from the Dial Classic though. All quiet on the Dial Classic front …
