April 14, 2016
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SPORTSCENTRAL
Hosts Steve Johnson and Sid Edwards are slated to be joined tonight by State Champion CHS Girls Bowling Team and Coaches Phil Godley and Scott Credeur. Please see programming information just below.
PRAISE FOR HEY REF!
Newsletter subscriber Wayne sent us a copy of a letter he sent to Dennis Dearie and gave us permission to re-print it:
Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed this edition of "Hey Ref". Your writing is getting better and better, you definitely painted a picture in my mind of the excitement of the spring practices and scrimmages, and of what we see and hear on field when we officiate a game, and more importantly, the responsibility we bear each time we step out on the turf to officiate. You may have "retired your legs" but your sharing your years of existence on field and the finer points of what to watch for on field and how to properly officiate various situations, has, and is still greatly appreciated. You have a lot to offer, keep sharing.
All the Best.
Wayne
Baton Rouge
BATON ROUGE AREA BROADCASTING SCHEDULE:
Thursday, April 14: 5pm—6pm: SportsCentral
Radio Amour 91.9 FM, Central
SportsRadio 1310 Radio, Lake Charles Programming of Interest (also heard on KEZMOnLine.com):
Saturday, April 16: 9AM—10AM: All Things Football with Scott Holtzman
Monday, April 18: 8AM—10AM: The Locker Room with John Goodman and Jim Gazzolo
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THE WIZARDRY OF OS
Assistant Basketball Coach and Head Swimming Coach at Central High School
I am sad. I did not know Hokie Gajan or Will Smith personally, yet I am as sad as if we played golf together every month.
Of course, being a huge Saints fan growing up, Hokie Gajan was one of my favorite Saints. I didn’t know the intricacies of the game at the time, but I knew Hokie was someone you could count on to give his best effort. A couple of years ago, I read an article that explained the toll that effort took on Hokie’s body and his quality of life.
Hokie was still someone I could count on as the color commentator for Saints games on WWL. I knew the New Orleans tradition of turning the sound down on the TV while turning up the radio to listen to Jim and Archie as a kid. Almost seamlessly, I and all Saints fans were comfortable doing the same when Hokie took over for Archie.
Listening to Hokie describe the action was perfect for me because he saw the game as I did as a fan. He had the same tone in his voice (or grunt from time to time) as I would have if the Saints botched a play or barely missed an opportunity. Hokie balanced that tone with unique humor, while staying insightful. In addition, he had the courage to say the truth with the same blunt approach he demonstrated as a player.
My sadness extends to the situations that led to the death of Will Smith as well as the two Southern students who were murdered over the weekend. On average, there are 44 murders a day in the United States, yet these two situations have drawn added attention for obvious reasons.
I am going to restrain myself from going too far outside the custom parameters of this article, after I make one more statement. Pause.
That is my statement. That is my wish for society today. I wish more people would see the value in pausing (Habit 1 for Stephen Covey fans).
I will loosely bring this article back to sports by informing you of the process in which I write this column. Often, I type this article, step away, then come back and edit much of what I have written because I have had the time to settle and think better of how I want to communicate my thoughts or feelings.
With thought and deliberation, I can declare that I have disdain for the glorification of instant reaction in our society today. I feel for the reporters who have to submit an article 3 minutes after a game is over. I don’t think they even run their articles through editors anymore.
Often, people in the public eye such as coaches, players, politicians, and celebrities are criticized when they don’t speak “off the cuff.” Whereas others are praised for “unfiltered comments.”
Websites, news stations, and social media are all fighting to give us “instant reaction.” In sports, coaches are interviewed between quarters of NBA games and between innings of baseball games because waiting until after the game would just be way too long of a wait.
Unfortunately, it appears we have lost respect for the art of pausing before we speak or act. We would be better off if we admired those who spoke with knowledge and thought as opposed to those who spoke without reason while overcome with emotion.
Tragically this weekend, the actions of a few were are also made as a reaction to emotion instead of as a result of thought and reason.
HEY REF
The sporting world is saddened by the passing of our own Hokie Gajan just 48 hours ago. Without a doubt Hokie was pure class on and off the field. I always thought of Gajan as the “Rocky Balboa” of the football world. We all know of his successful college and professional careers but for me it was what he did off the field that put him in a class all by himself.
When I heard the news of his death Tuesday the only thing I could feel was that we lost a great human being and a true champion. I only met him twice and each time he was totally approachable in that he’d take the time to talk to those such as myself that had nothing for him to gain by acknowledging us little “Pee-Ons”.
It did make me feel as though I was somehow; someway important each and every time he’d answer any question I’d ask of him. Once again a real champion has been taken from us far too soon and we’ll all miss him because there just aren’t that many people in the sporting universe that can hold a candle to him.
Getting back to the “other” so called happenings in the wide world of sports is the shocking news coming out of the state of fruits and nuts. You guessed it the announcement by the University of Southern California that it has hired former NFL great Lynn Swann as its new Athletic Director. Many are shocked by this news as I am since this powerhouse had more than two months to get someone farther up the ladder.
There isn’t any denying that Swann was one of the best players of all time in the NFL. He was a large part of all the successes that Terry Bradshaw and the Pittsburgh Steelers enjoyed while dominating the league. But I’ve got to question the thinking behind putting him on the payroll. For the life of me the only thing I can remember him doing once he retired from the NFL was “working as a sideline reporter more than ten years ago.
To many of those this has to be nothing more than a feel-good hiring. Just because a player can run down the field and snatch a football out of the air better than any other player in the league is no reason to even consider him as a serious candidate for the job. I look at his hiring in the same way I did when the LHSAA hired John Langlois as the new assignment secretary for the Baton Rouge Football Officials Association.
I remember when John joined our association. He worked hard at his rules knowledge, mechanics and making sure he walked off a penalty correctly. He continued to work hard and eventually became an SEC official which he still is to this day. But when he interviewed for the job the powers that be at the LHSAA saw on his resume that he was an active SEC Football Official and began to droll as they wanted him even though he wouldn’t be able to get our association back on top.
It wasn’t that John couldn’t do the job if he put it above other things but I knew from the very first time I heard he was hired. I asked John soon after he started his tenure if he was still going to work on Sat. for the SEC. “Oh, yeah I’m still gonna call my games on Saturdays” was what he told me. I was a bit unsure how he intended to take on the job along with all the time it was going to take and my concerns were soon answered.
One of the biggest things needed by every association is an assignment secretary that goes out and “scouts” his officials. John had taken on a huge endeavor that I knew he couldn’t accomplish simply because between his regular job, the association and the SEC there just weren’t enough days in the week for him to put in the hours it was going to take to improve an association that had seen much better days.
He wasn’t able to go out and watch his officials working games and to weed out those that shouldn’t be on the field. Instead he relied on the opinions of other officials to grade the membership. Well, I bet you can imagine by doing that things soon started going bad and ended up a train wreck. But the LHSAA just wanted him on the payroll since it would appear, on paper at least, that they made a great hire.
After a few games and I saw the direction my association was taking I just knew things weren’t going to get any better any time soon. Before I came back after more than ten years on the IR I’d talked to some of the coaches (and former) in the Baton Rouge area and I kept hearing how bad things have gotten.
Until the LHSAA gets very serious in their hiring of assignment secretaries things just won’t get any better. Some football coaches have told me, completely off the record, 2015 was by far the worst year they’ve ever experienced when the subject is game officials. I’ve told them that I’d never release names because of the possibility of their schools being fined for speaking out.
When I had my interview for the job I told the board I’d “break down this wall” (Between coaches and officials) and would have at least one coach come to our weekly meetings and give their concerns directly to the membership. This would be done to bring coaches and officials together away from the stadiums so any problems could be addressed in a non-confrontable atmosphere. I just feel that coaches and officials need to work together.
USC has their own “Feel Good” hire in Lynn Swann but feeling good should be accomplished by getting the best and not the biggest name.
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